Mike

Hi @SovereignSaurus, this might be useful : https://www.coinarchives.com/w/

Im thinking about buying a Synology DS720+ for home and work. Does anyone on here have any practical experience of these or comments / advice? reason being the interface sounds the easiest for a medium tech ability / interest person like myself and its a well known and established company … as apposed to a QNAP which although sounds very good it seems like its more benefit to those who like tinkering

@SovereignSaurus thats my type of set 😊 yes unfortunately in terms of Sovereign the George VI is only available in a 1937 Proof. However, you can get a gold South African George VI 1 pound which might fill the gap if you didnt want to fork out for the 1937 proof. These normally aren't that expensive. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces44913.html

To just illustrate what NGC are capable of photography wise, they took HD photo's of all the coins they had graded for the recent Sincona auction. link below. For me, these photo's are excellent and the light balance superb, to the point of possibly being too detailed and give a better impression than even an inspection by eye, which could put some off: https://www.ngccoin.com/gallery/sincona/

Hey @Shaun, I don't know where their stats are, i've had a quick look but without luck. I just go from personal experience, sometime ago now I had a 1937 sovereign in a PCGS PR65DCam slab cross to a NGC PF63Cam an 1893 proof half go from an PCGS PR64Dcam to an NGC PF63Cam and a similar experience on a 1937 half (I can't remember exactly now). The short story was it was obviously costly, but on the 1937 sovereign particularly I knew I'd bought a lemon the moment it arrived, but naively at the time hoped NGC would honour the PCGS grade. In all honesty, In terms of grading, on average I think they are as good and as bad as each other. Both have some bias' to certain groups of coins but it averages out across the total number graded and both definitely make big mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate why you prefer PCGS, their back end, registry management and presentation is a lot cleaner, fresh and accurate. However the NGC one is ok for those who just want somewhere to build registry sets and compete, fully accepting the less than perfect data management, there is something quite nice and endearing about it in someways for those that aren't too bothered about the technology side. For me though, I choose NGC because I prefer the slabs, the aesthetics of the coin and its presentation way outweigh the differences in the registry. I also choose NGC because they've stumped up and backed the British collector and have a presence in the UK. Yes, it isn't perfect but they are here, PCGS aren't. At the end of the day, NGC and PCGS are direct competitors over a market space that is booming and jointly they are changing the landscape of the hobby globally and in my opinion are in no small part responsible for the value growth and the attitude towards it by investment companies. At one point though I think there was a working relationship, at-least NGC were willing to recognise PCGS graded US coins in their registry and allow them to compete. However a few years back I understand PCGS went on a big marketing drive to get people to cross to them (in the primary market of the US), this escalated with the NGC CEO posting an open letter accusing PCGS of over grading to attract crossing and destroying the value of rare high grade valuable coins, PCGS reciprocated by posting an equally derisory letter accusing NGC of the same and so the relationship collapsed and we are where we are today, where from collector through the CEO of the respective companies there is an attitude of superiority of one TPG over the other and to be honest, its garbage in my opinion, its like BMW vs Mercedes, both very good with faults, but different. Which isn't a bad thing imo 🙂 Agree, the NGC photography is very basic in the registry and tells you nothing about the coin, but a collector can pay for the HD photography if they wish and that can be used which is equal to the PCGS photography, NGC is also cheaper, so perhaps if the services were balanced the cost would be similar. Personally though where the NGC photography tells you nothing, I find the PCGS photography can be misleading and are over exposed, you have to look closely to fully understand the photo in front of you and you have to be experienced to know what you are looking at unless there is something very obvious. I take a more honest photo than both with my iPhone! (imo 😄). That said, I would prefer that NGC took HD photos by default rather than exception. Nothing is ever going to beat having a coin in hand but you are right, we are moving rapidly away from that and have to buy the grade in a lot of cases, hoping the TPG got it right.

Topic split 🙂

Although I don't doubt their stats, i do believe that both registry's make it a point to show they are more conservative than the other and crossing is a challenge for them at times. I’ve had coins fail to cross or come back significantly lower (when ive elected for cross at any grade) and also coins cross as expected when going from PCGS to NGC. All this 100% justifying your statement of buy the coin, not the grade, although in current times that is sometimes difficult. edit: its been a while since ive crossed as now I crack the slab and send in raw and i have done this on some valuable coins. Again, it comes down to your confidence in the coin rather than the grade it has been given

Does anyone know if these two TPG's work together and notify the other when a coin is crossed to keep the respective registry's accurate?

@Shaun Just a thought, is it possible for members to have their own referral link to invite people to the forum? If so could a “founding member” badge be then added to their profile? It could be awarded to any member who has say 10 inbound referrals through their link?Could run for 6months or a year… It might not be possible but add’s a little incentive. I think FB groups have a similar idea after that it could be something we could run competitions and other awards on or points gained for referrals of referral's etc…

I think a lot of us have followed that path @CaptCaveMan 👍

Cat is officially out the bag, the mint are releasing a 5 coin pattern set (first they have done since 1937). Basic information that I believe is accurate, is that each coin will be a piedfort, 1/4 sov through to Quintuple. Each will be plain edge and the set will have a mintage of 70. So it going to be sort after. Someone has posted as set up for sale on ebay as a pre-sale (incorrectly describing it, but close enough) and there is chatter across other forums and groups. If anyone hears anything post here.... 🙂

More so over recent years. I was selling PF70UC's for 1400 ish about a year ago 😄

No problem 👍

Can we have a “withdrawn” or similar tag on the sales forum please @Shaun ? new tags look great by the way. If each tag could have a different colour it would make it a bit quicker to flick through when it gets busy in there?

Just noticed the rankings only seem to be showing on the mods, not the other members.

This sold today, buyer paid hammer +24% 😮 amazing how these have increased im value.

I’ll start this by saying I know very little about the crypto world, however from what you have said I assume they purchase the gold to match the mined currency to keep it in balance, if so it’s similar to a gold ETF surely? The difference being you can put an ETF in an isa wrapper. that said, perhaps its of interest to people who only want to hold crypto and the idea is it gives them a safe(r) haven to go in times of high volatility without stepping outside of crypto and the various instruments that exist? I can’t see how it can make the investor any money though other than by gold spot movement, unless they started removing crypto from circulation, the opposite of a mining? its not for me, but I do understand the argument those that don’t want to hold physical make and that’s fair enough.

I’ll try and get better images, thanks @Shaun

Recently bought this in an auction, not quite blind but I relied on the description. This was a mistake, it was described as good condition / high grade. On receipt its not, its ex-mount and probably too bright, so I was in the process of preparing to return it when I noticed the striking of the lettering. From the photo’s, is it an R6 Marsh 11B “6 over small 6 and GEOR over small GEOR”? Im in two minds. To be honest it wont change my feeling about it but may give it some numismatic relevance. if it is, does it have any value considering its problems? if not, well I doubt anyone will pay what I did, so it’ll go back

Yeah, looks great 👍

Personally i’m a type set fan, which means I have side interests of other coins (all sorts) but im always looking for higher grades for my type set. a date run is very impressive when displayed though

Some amazing coins there, not that im crossing 😄 but I disclike the sincona label a lot and ive sent my purchase in to have it relaballed with something normal. Out of interest, did you get any of the provenance from Sincona for the coin(s) you bought? mine was ex-terner, seems sincona must have binned it all, including the PCGS label that it had previously sat on when the crossed it to NGC, which I know gets sent back with the coin. Which is very annoying

Im not sure @Shaun, I think it may be ok or you’ve already changed it? attached is an image ive zoomed in on after clicking in it and it would be fine for me on this type of photo

To be fair, thats not a bad price for one of them, they are a nice box. Weird to only allow for 19coins rather than 20

I used to use these guys years ago for domain name sales. However they also offer the service for general goods, including high value. Im just wondering if anyone has used this or a similar service for selling coins? Their fees are quite reasonable I think: https://www.escrow.com