PCGS expands Plus designation

By Steve Roach
First published in the August 23, 2010 issue of Coin World

The month of July closed with two bold announcements.

The first was that the Professional Numismatists Guild has adopted a definition of "coin doctoring" and the second was that Professional Coin Grading Service has expanded its Plus designation to include a broader group of submission tiers.  The image is a 1910 Barber half dollar graded Mint State 66+ by PCGS, in the service's Secure Plus holder.  That coin is to be offered at auction by Heritage Auction Galleries on August 11.

The first announcement will likely change little in the day-to-day lives of dealers and collectors, but the second will have broad implications in the marketplace.

The PCGS announcement alleviates a problem that the collector and dealer community had seen with the PCGS Plus grade.

Before the change, coins submitted to PCGS for grading were only evaluated for a Plus grade if they were submitted under the Secure Plus grading tier.

This created the perception in coin buyers' minds that coins housed in a PCGS Secure Plus slab without a Plus grade were inferior.

In fact, some dealers reported that non-Plus coins in PCGS Secure Plus holders were becoming challenging to sell, while the market's appetite for Plus coins seems to be growing as the coin buyers become more comfortable with the concept.

In contrast, Numismatic Guaranty Corp. has evaluated all submitted coins for the "+" designation under most tiers since adopting the "+" designation.

As NGC explains, "a coin graded NGC MS 64 + is close to the quality of a coin graded NGC 65. The + is synonymous with the term 'PQ' or 'Premium Quality.' "

The announcements serve as reminders to collectors that all coins of a given grade are not equal in terms of quality or eye appeal.

The PNG press release also is a reminder that the mechanics of the rare coin marketplace still allow for it to be profitable for "coin doctors" to destroy the originality of coins in an effort to increase their numerical grade.

One hopes that PNG dealers will conform to the requirement that they must refrain from knowingly dealing in doctored coins without fully disclosing the status to their customers.

But what – if any – impact defining "coin doctoring" will have on the market remains to be seen.