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What is the reputation of the ICG grading company? I have a MS-70 ASE graded by them. If their grading "talents" are bogus, I'm going to rip the coin out of the capsule and toss it into the hoard as just another coin.

In the case of ASE's, all of the grading services seem to slab more 70's than truthfully exist. See the link for a brief comparison.

http://coins.about.com/od/coingrading/q ... _tiers.htm

Thank you for that article, MC. It was really helpful for me to better understand the grading community.

ICG =
I Can't Grade

All grading of bullion coins is just a big scam. Check out Youtube for videos of people that purchased MS-69s that were scratched to hell. Bulk grading is destroying any value that grading used to add. There's just no way the graders could possibly evaluate the volume they are doing. My guess is that the dump a roll on their desk and just start slabbing without looking at them. I'm sure ICG can do this just as well as the others.

I wouldn't rank ICG any higher or lower than the top two scamming companies NGC and PCGS.

db23 wrote:All grading of bullion coins is just a big scam. Check out Youtube for videos of people that purchased MS-69s that were scratched to hell. Bulk grading is destroying any value that grading used to add. There's just no way the graders could possibly evaluate the volume they are doing. My guess is that the dump a roll on their desk and just start slabbing without looking at them. I'm sure ICG can do this just as well as the others.

I wouldn't rank ICG any higher or lower than the top two scamming companies NGC and PCGS.

While I think your premise is possibly true, the fact that there are "videos on Youtube of X" doesn't prove "X is prevalent".

With 1,000,000's of certified coins naturally there are errors. In fact, I have seen coins that say the name of a different coin on the label, so of course the grade could be wrong occasionally as well.

The question is -> is the grade wrong 50% of the time? 10%? 1%?

I would wager it is closer to 1% than the other 2 numbers.

PCGS/NGC graders do "churn lots of graded coins" but they are also good at their job and know what to look for. So are there mis-graded examples? Of course. But if you have an NGC/PCGS certified coin that means 2 things:

1. The grade is guaranteed, so the scratched examples can be traded for "good" examples very easily.

2. The grade is generally very close.

ICG is one of the top 4 and they do one thing that the others don't do and that is blind submissions. That means they do not know who they are grading the coins for and they have to grade the coin and not who submitted it. The guys that submit 1000's of coins a year to PCGS and NGC seam to get much more favorable results than the hobby guy that sends in 3 or 4. Leave it in the slab.

My LCS does periodic coin auctions and their ICG-graded silver eagles always go for PCGS prices... Of course, most everything is sold for too much at those auctions, I have got a couple micro-deals on foreign silver though, everyone in my area seems to care only about Morgans and Peace dollars.

ICG. Never liked them, really. I still subscribe to the theory of buying the coin and not the holder. But...given a choice of the exact coin in an ICG, vs. PCGS/NGC, it's a very easy choice.

Don't know how accurate it is, but I've developed my own pecking order of grading services. After the obvious 2 at the top comes ANACS and ICG. Everything else is low tier and very questionable in their motives. I remember attending a major coin show where many of the grading services were present. Among those were Accugrade. I stood nearby in disbelief as the Accugrade rep asked the customer what grade they wanted on the silver dollars and Walkers they were submitting. No challenge from Accugrade on any of the coins and they were slabbed on the spot according to the customer's wishes.

Let the buyer beware is really an understatement.