Crackout Challenge - PCGS to NGC - How Do the Grades Compare? - 3 Blind Mice 

Same thing happened to you with a bad NGC grading of nickels and then PCGS made it right. If you mix up the letters PCGS and NGC, it spells INCONSISTENT

You know what would be a fun secondary exercise? Sending these to PCGS in the NGC slabs and requesting crossovers, and seeing the results. Would they still see "cleaning" or would the straight grade from NGC affect their bias and cross them over?

A guy could really make a living picking through details coins

It feels like we could buy PCGS detail coins that were graded over the last two years and have a decent shot of getting a straight grade

What a huge difference! Much more realistic now.

TOTAL REDEMPTION!!! Great job BEN!!! I love crackout videos!!

AU Details-Cleaned to MS63BN is a wild jump on that 1916-S. PCGS grader was half asleep. Congrats on the upgrades!

Nice job brother! Justice has been served!!!

Unbelievable. What a crazy difference in grades. The toning on the Morgan really is spectacular, and the Barber dime looks fantastic, too. Congratulations on the major upgrades!

Really like these type of videos.

You taught me something today! Thank you.

I really look forward to and enjoy watching these crack out videos.

The toning on the 1900 Morgan is beautiful to me. You made a good decision to have the toned side on the front of the slab. I didn’t know that you can have the reverse side of the coin facing front. I like toning and that’s an excellent way to display your favorite side. Would one need only ask PCGS by including that in the comment section of the submission form? Nice video with a helpful tip. ❤

Nice to see you have a win 👍 A clock is right at least twice a day 😂

Great video awesome Coins. I love the dime.

Wow I’m so happy for you! Good eye bro! You are a true BOSS. If you have kids, they are lucky to have you as a dad. When you die, your coin collection will be wonderful for them to look through and remember you!

I generally learn something from just about every video you make, thanks!

Great video and kudos to you for recognizing that the coins should have better outcomes. I, too. sometimes really scratch my head with some of the results from TPGs. My 1938D 50c WLH was judged to be Unc but cleaned. I sent it to the other company and it came back MS65! I'm surprised that your coins had such huge differences in grade as these coins are very nice to begin with. Be well! Ed

Wow

great results!

Hi, Ben. I like the toning on the 16-S cent. It looks better than 63. The 1890 dime also has nice toning. It looks better than a 63 also. The 1900 Morgan looks nice too. It is just a little dark. Nice grade from NGC. PCGS hates you. Great results. Thanks. *TYU*

Wow! It really is crazy and just a racket. I have guys at my local coin club better than our “industry standard” at grading

Love the dime.

Great video!

Finally some justice!

Home runs. Congrats on the cross over 👍😁

Love the Morgan,

wow...love the fact that they got the grades right...i have a ms 62 maine commerative that was graded by pcgs...i think it is a higher grade myself..this video makes me want to pull the crack out trigger...

perfect score!

To be honest, I feel bad about the grading company inconsistency. Even if you sent them back to PCGS, probably would have graded differently as well. Seems like such a crap shoot.

Tore the mice's to pieces . Good grade video . Thanks

Winner, winner, winner, chicken dinner. Since when does NGC like you, Ben? 😁

Another fantastic video! Thanks for your effort in bringing these to the community. I ranted on your crossover video regarding PCGS not crossing over obvious wins. As a numismatic masochist, I didn't take my own advice and sent a key coin in a VF20 ANACS soapbox holder to the gravity bandits at PCGS for crossover. Before doing that, I had a guy who grades for PCGS look at it, and he said ANACS undergraded it by one, maybe two grades. Same thing with a guy who used to own another grading service. I sent it to PCGS using Express service, and have received the grade a month later. I though I was going to have to apologize for my previous rant. Why did I think that? Because the Express service coin spent five full business days in the Encapsulation stage. But when crossovers are involved, the Encapsulation stage appears only a whip the PCGS sadists use generate excitement with an eye to flog your hopes. My previous rant++ remains valid. Cheers.

I personally could see some double guessing on the penny. Dime and dollar, however, look spotless.

If I get a job there, I'll fix the crackout issue for you- just because I'm a fan!

Wow, three wins! That's pretty rare. They were all head scratchers, but I have to think that they cent was the biggest head scratcher pf them all. I'm not a big penny collector but even I can see that's not AU.

Nice redemption for your time and money. All beautiful coins and still maybe undergraded. I think that Morgan should at least have a star for eye appeal.

More crackout challenges!

I always find it interesting how little descriptions they put on their labels. For example they could put "$1.00" instead of $1 or "1 cent" instead of 1c. Are they trying to save on ink costs because I don't think a few extra letters amounts to much especially for how expensive it is to get coins graded.

although i don't have these coins in hand, i did not see them cleaned either. what is PCGS thinking. I guess with their backlog they are whipping thru grading, or you can look at the other side and maybe NGC is speeding up their grading and letting things slide. Sometimes it is like a factory processing line and things get missed due to getting the items out quickly to make a quota. hopefully ben your luck may be changing HA!

The concern I always have about crackouts is that the grading companies keep a tally of how many example of each coin in each grade that they've done. This is useful to know the relative rarity of each coin in question. When you crackout and regrade, doesn't that throw those numbers off? I mean, I'm not thinking that you notify the original grading company of your actions with their slab.

Nice

Vindication.

There's a coin I'm looking at in an upcoming auction that was labeled by NGC as whizzed. I mean, they put the word whizzed on the slab, not cleaned, not damaged, whizzed. So NGC isn't always softer on grading, they will call out a coin when it's obvious.

I thought PCGS had their own cleaning division.

Hard to believe PCGS is that bad. I have done what you have done here today and got pretty much what I expected. Maybe these graders were rookies or out all nite drinking and came In with a hang-over Ben. Good call on your part

Greetings Ben, You gave me an idea for a future video you can do. Take two coins and ask - which would you rather have using price points. Like I would choose the 1890 dime over a nice MS65 Morgan any day. Best wishes

PCGS showing their true colors. To much work just put details on it. I also love how NGC put Morgan backwards to show beautiful toning.

TPG'ers are the ultimate love-hate relationship

How can they say that those were cleaned wow nice coins thx for sharing great video

I think PCGS just slaps details on coins to push through the backlog.

nice

Wow, not sending anything to PCGS any more.

Hi Ben, I was just wondering what type of tripod you use for overhead shots of coins? Really enjoyed the video! Keep up the great work!

I still think each coin could be a point higher, possibly 2 for the dime.

I like the toning of that 1890 seated dime. I’m assuming it’s been sold by now?

That Morgan is a beauty! How much??

This is why I used NGC plus I dont wanna send my money to a state like California and i liked the holders better.

Ben , with such disparity in the 2 giant coin grader's opinions which can amount to a great deal of money at times, let's not forget ANAC , poor guys , wouldn't it be good for just 1 grading numismatics company , in my opinion this is not a fair way to price coins, from buyers to sellers. Correct me on my view so I can more understand, again another reason I choose bullion over nusematics, I love coins and the history of them , but from buying and selling it's all monkeyed up . Thanks for what you do, great show !!! PEACE

What do these PCGS graders think they're cleaning these coins with? I try to think these graders are generally consistent but the differences in grades here are incredible.

Just demonstrates how subjective coin grading is and how fine the line is between W and L .. how fragile the hobby is relying upon the “top 2 in the industry” and yet, 36 years later, such a wide disparity and “margin of error” continues to exist

Comment down below! Helping that Al Gore rhythm.

PCGS is a Cleaned grader.

How aggravating! These two companies get to decide how much your coins are worth...

It's all about The Gold Shield Service - stay away from it

We're all the coins sent in together ? That's the rest of the story.

CAC 'em!

Is that toned Morgan already spoken for? I don’t see it up on the website

Went from $200 to $2000!!!

I have a question for you. My latest NGC submission was a '52 and a '53 Franklin proof. My guesstimate was PF65 on the '53 (possible CAM) and PF66 - MAYBE PF67 on the '52. So... the '53 came back PF65 (no CAM). Cool, I'll take it. But the nicer looking, no hairlines, naturally toned '52? It came back as PF64! (Noooooooooooo!!!). Here's the question that I'm almost positive nobody really wants to answer: With early Franklin proofs, am I doing myself a disservice by NOT dipping these coins? I know I wouldn't dream of doing so on 19th and early 20th century proofs - all the way up to Walking Liberty halves, but are Franklins and Kennedys a different ballgame? Because I did NOT see that PF64 coming. Of course there's always the possibility that I just really suck at this. 🤷‍♂

Tell me why I should ever send a coin to PCGS??

Send them to ANACS now and see what happens. Lol

You probably used up all your grace from the grading deities for year! Beware if you were planning more crackout viiideooossss!

I think NGC got them all right. There is no consistency with either grading companies any more. Those are three beautiful coins.

This illustrates both the rationality and utter irrationality of where grading has gone over the past 40 years. Rational in that the grading companies made coins comparable with each other in the first mostly "objective" sense and brought order out of the many "subjective" adjectives dealers had used for decades. However, this morphs into irrationality when taken too far--that is when you try to completely "objectify" the process. Dealers has known forever that there is a bit of subjectivity factored into grading decisions, which translates to 1-2 points on the grade scale--good, even well-experienced dealers can disagree by this margin, while the grading companies pretend that they can hairsplit to a 1/2 point margin (with all the "plus" grading nonsense)--they can't and they never will have this actual ability, this is but a very clever way to extract an additional fee out of millions of submissions. Further, this particular video illustrates the additional absurdity that where toning is involved, the grading companies can't even agree as to which coin surfaces are original or fiddled with! Toning can and does hide the fiddling, and even the experts are consistently fooled. This should be a cautionary tale to anyone paying exorbitant fees for "great toning." Also, in this particular case, look what happens to value with these 3 coins: the 16-S cent on PCGS is at $100 for a straight grade, so as AU details cleaned you probably sell it for about $50. NGC gives a MS63 Brn and voila the coin is now worth $220! On the 1890 dime, PCGS has it at MS60 $225, so maybe you sell that at about $135, NGC grades at MS63 and voila the coin is now worth $250! Likewise, the 1900 $1 Unc Details, PCGS has at $72, and retail about $45, NGC grades MS64 and voila the coin is now worth $125! No wonder collectors and dealers both feel great insecurity in the grading arena--the "experts" themselves give consistently contradictory results. And you have now entered the Coin Twilight Zone (of Irrationality)--enjoy your journey!

So the lesson of the day is, stop sending coins to PCGS until they remove the stick from their anus. I want my coins graded fairly and accurately but it seems like they have a different scale. They treat MS 67 or 68 as the "perfect" coin grade and an normally 67 graded coin is now a 66 or even a 65. I believe in high standards but they have to be obtainable.

Just goes to show you how subjective coin grading is.

This just proves the uselessness of these grading companies. AU Cleaned to MS 63? Not a one of those coins looked cleaned based on what we saw in the video.

Seems like PCGS has bad graders. Go with NGC.

The Morgan is a 65 in my eye.

I've been hearing stories about population control on grades, and PCGS seems to be the biggest offender from what I can see. Your last name has to be Hall or your business have Bowers in its name to have accurate, consistent and expedited grading!

Once again, it's a crap shoot when you submit coins to the big 2! HOW does a reasonable person explain these outcomes? One day you get "cleaned UNK details" AND THEN MS64, WTF???

Butes

You say “right” way too much

Wow

Wow