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evansuk2000

Easy & cost effective way to grade with PCGS

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Hi all - just after some advice...I was looking at getting a few coins certified / encapsulated by PCGS. I initially looked at a third pary doing it...I won't mention names but I was shocked at how much I was going to be charged....along the lines of £49.99 by PCGS (Okay that's fine) £39.99 by the third party for postage and insurance...then a further £10 handling fee per coin! So all in all to get my raised edge 1935 proof encapsulated I was looking at about £100!

Is there a way an individual like myself can send say 4 coins to PCGS directly? As in post them...or would I need to attend some sort of convention? Any advice on this would be great....as I do want to have about 4 coins graded...but am put off by paying £200+ for them all!

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Sending them yourself would mean becoming a PCGS member. So, gold membership costs $149 which you can register online at pcgs.com, with the $149 fee you get a voucher for 4 free gradings, each grading costs €43 normally.

PCGS EUROPE where you'll post your coins to imsist that the coins are sent with fedex or some other parcel company that gives adequate insurance for the coins you've sent them and they ship back with fedex which normally costs me €66.

the thing with the 3rd party is that they are maybe shipping between 30 and 50 coins at a time using one shipment, now if each coin has a different owner, well, you do the maths at how much they can possibly earn just from the shipping alone....

P.S, next Paris grading week starts around 25th Aug, so get your skates on if you want them done this month, turnaround is about 10 days

Edited by azda

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That sounds great...could you walk me through the process?

So register with PCGS....how do I arrange the postage to them etc?

Edited by evansuk2000

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Looking at the cost of flights between 10.00am and 3.00 pm , if i had some that were valuble or was a dealer with a lot think i would just take them.

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19 hours ago, evansuk2000 said:

That sounds great...could you walk me through the process?

So register with PCGS....how do I arrange the postage to them etc?

You make all the arrangements yourself, i usually use Fedex as they have a facility quite near me, you can also get fedex to do a pick up, you just have to fill all the details online...

Register online here https://www.pcgs.com/Store/membership_account_info.aspx?pid=14 this will give you 4 vouchers, i think they are digitally sent now, whereas when i purchased membership they were posted, the voucher should be sent with the coins

Edited by azda

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1 hour ago, PWA 1967 said:

Looking at the cost of flights between 10.00am and 3.00 pm , if i had some that were valuble or was a dealer with a lot think i would just take them.

You can take them yourself, but you must make an appointment beforehand, if there is a fair on and they are attending then they'll bring your submitted coins back with them saving you the postage price, or vice versa, they can pick them up for submission

Here is a list of places throughout the year that they'll take submissions on site (saving you one way postage)

http://www.pcgseurope.com/internationalshows?l=en&utm_source=eusite&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=genericshowen

They're at the London coin fair on the 3rd September if you are around the area and are doing on-site grading in Paris between the 12th and 16th September

And here is the link to the submission form

http://www.pcgseurope.com/submissionform/paris/englishform.pdf?v=1.3

You can download and save that and re-enter the info anytime you wish to send coins off for submission, when the PDF form is printed off the submission number then becomes unique to your submission, as i was saying regarding your initial quote from the 3rd party which i assume is the London coin company, just think about how much money they are about to make on the postage alone, when in all probability they will just be handing them over at the fair in London on the 3rd September, they should have offered you that opportunity, but obviously don't want to lose out on some nice profit :ph34r:

Edited by azda

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It is a shame they don't attend the Midland for submissions at least once a year....

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29 minutes ago, Nonmortuus said:

It is a shame they don't attend the Midland for submissions at least once a year....

I think if they went to every fair world wide it would be quite tedious, they obviously attend the bigger events though. Don't you know anyone who perhaps lives nearby that you could give the coins to, they come to Munich around March, i handed my first few coins over to them this year at the Munich fair, it only cost me the return postage as i had a voucher for 4 free gradings

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Nope Azda, I have looked at the train costs and it isn't too bad if I book in advance so if I go down the PCGS route I will probably join before hand and get the train down with my submissions.

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I'll be submitting several coins to PCGS at the London Fair. Happy to assist as long as you cover your own grading fees.

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Anyone have any views re: PCGS vs NGC? Most of my slabbed coins are NGC but that is just an accident of purchase.

 

Edited by jaggy
Typo

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A couple of points:

PCGS' website seems to imply that coins can only be submitted in person by prior appointment - would this apply to the London Fairs?

Where are coins submitted in London graded  - if it is in the US, there would potentially be VAT/Customs duties to pay on their return (I assume this would not apply to PARIS while we are still in the EU)   

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1 minute ago, pokal02 said:

A couple of points:

PCGS' website seems to imply that coins can only be submitted in person by prior appointment - would this apply to the London Fairs?

Where are coins submitted in London graded  - if it is in the US, there would potentially be VAT/Customs duties to pay on their return (I assume this would not apply to PARIS while we are still in the EU)   

There is no liability for goods returned to the UK from abroad provided documentatary proof of export was completed at the time.

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On 19 August 2016 at 2:33 PM, jaggy said:

Anyone have any views re: PCGS vs NGC? Most of my slabbed coins are NGC but that is just an accident of purchase.

 

Never used NGC personally, BRG is of the opinion that they are better, i'm the other way around, so it's just a matter of choice. I used PCGS because they grade in Paris, there's an NGC office here in Munich but they only take your submissions and deal with all the paperwork regarding re-entry in the EU as they only grade in the USA, so everything is sent there and it has a 6 week turnaround.

Paris is just around the corner and when their grading week is on then it takes only a 10 day turnaround

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18 minutes ago, pokal02 said:

A couple of points:

PCGS' website seems to imply that coins can only be submitted in person by prior appointment - would this apply to the London Fairs?

Where are coins submitted in London graded  - if it is in the US, there would potentially be VAT/Customs duties to pay on their return (I assume this would not apply to PARIS while we are still in the EU)   

PCGS accept submissions by mail as well as in person but they don't like using the normal delivery system because of insurance purposes, for instance if you send with Royal Mail you are not covered bt their T&Cs as coins are in fact prohibited to be mailed, i use Fedex, you can order a Fedex pickup from their website unless you have an office near you. You can drop the coins off at the fair i listed above but ONLY if you are a PCGS member, no membership equals no submission unless Alan @mhcoins can help out there should you not wish to become a member, but i'm not sure if he wishes to become overrun with people asking him to submit their coins....

All coins are taken and graded in Paris, they won't be graded in the USA

 

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Thanks for the replies, will probably take the gold membership route and submit at Coinex, this fits nicely as I have four proof crowns I'd like slabbed (not in favour of slabbing circulated coins at present). .  

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Thought you might be interested to hear about my recent experience with PCGS.

I decided to get a couple of nice coins graded/slabbed and took out Gold PCGS membership a few days before the London Coin Fair in June. I received a receipt of my payment ($149) and a customer number by e-mail.  Unfortunately I joined too late for the 4 free grading vouchers to arrive in time, so I was unable to use these to pay for the grading of my coins. At the London Fair I submitted the coins to the PCGS Europe representative, they took my credit card details to pay for the grading and return postage (by FedEx), and I received numbered receipts for each coin. A couple of weeks later, I received an invoice from Collectors Universe Inc. PCGS Europe for the cost of the grading and postage.  On inspection of this invoice, I noticed that they had also charged me €69 for "Collector Club Membership: 1 year" despite the fact that I took out Gold membership before submitting the coins (my customer no. is actually quoted on the invoice!). I immediately sent a reply asking for a refund of the amount I was charged in error. However, to date I have yet to receive any acknowledgement of this or a follow up e-mail sent to PCGS Europe or of another e-mail sent to PCGS in the USA.  My latest attempt to obtain a refund has been a letter addressed to the PCGS President Don Willis. This should have arrived about a week ago, so I will give them another week to see what happens before considering my options. I am reluctant to send more coins to them for grading before I have received a refund.

Oh, by the way, I did receive the graded/slabbed coins about a week after getting the invoice. The grade seemed a bit low on one (1826 Sixpence) and a bit high on the other (1897 US 20 dollars), but happy that both coins are now protected/authenticated.

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They work a lot better with phone calls if you can manage (?).....I think all of us are probably small fish to them, and not really that they don't care but actually a small deal - they have always taken care of little bits fairly well.

 

And your experiences with grading to me seem a microcosm of what is the general experience - some high, some low. Occasionally they are way off, but surprisingly IMO still reasonably satisfactory.

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When I joined it was about 2 weeks before the Munich fair and hasn't received my vocher, I explained this to the PCGS lady, they emailed about a week later asking if I had received it, it came by post, I scanned and emailed it and wasn't charged for the gradings.

I've read recently that they are now sending vouchers out digitally now.....

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Hi again, so I've got my 4 free vouchers! At what point do I pay for the postage back to myself after the grading?

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On 19/08/2016 at 9:08 AM, azda said:

You make all the arrangements yourself, i usually use Fedex as they have a facility quite near me, you can also get fedex to do a pick up, you just have to fill all the details online...

Register online here https://www.pcgs.com/Store/membership_account_info.aspx?pid=14 this will give you 4 vouchers, i think they are digitally sent now, whereas when i purchased membership they were posted, the voucher should be sent with the coins

Hi azda, so if I send them to Paris myself - how do I arrange the return postage?

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Sorry for so many posts...but essentially I just want to post them and arrange delivery back to me. Nearest FedEx is about 80 miles away...any other suggestions? This whole process seems VERY complicated!

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13 hours ago, evansuk2000 said:

Sorry for so many posts...but essentially I just want to post them and arrange delivery back to me. Nearest FedEx is about 80 miles away...any other suggestions? This whole process seems VERY complicated!

You can always phone them, they speak English. If you go onto the fedex website you can give all your details in there and they will pick your packet up, PCGS will automatically send your coins back with the carrier you sent them with, i'm not sure who else they'll accept as a carrier from the UK, but they won't accept all packages from all carriers. You can also check out the show schedules that they'll be attending, you can always hand your coins over at the shows or even pick them up.

I'm going to time a submission so i can pick them back up at the Munich coin fair in March, it does save postage 1 way

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12 hours ago, azda said:

You can always phone them, they speak English. If you go onto the fedex website you can give all your details in there and they will pick your packet up, PCGS will automatically send your coins back with the carrier you sent them with, i'm not sure who else they'll accept as a carrier from the UK, but they won't accept all packages from all carriers. You can also check out the show schedules that they'll be attending, you can always hand your coins over at the shows or even pick them up.

I'm going to time a submission so i can pick them back up at the Munich coin fair in March, it does save postage 1 way

How do you arrange to pay for PCGS to send them back via FedEx though? And how do you arrange to submit them at a coin show? Can't find the details anywhere apart from the schedule.

Edited by evansuk2000

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I have not got a clue,but as Dave said why not just phone or email them and get your answers straight away :)

They maybe at the London coin fair early Feb but again i dont know.

Edited by PWA 1967

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