I've always had a good experience with ICG on my regular coin submissions. Haven't tried any cryptos yet, but will be in the future. $29 is total BS for ANACS to be charging.
Does anyone have a link to the their form or whatever? Thanks!
Agreed, it would be good to add a link to their form. What does ICG charge for grading?
A few years ago I cracked some slabs from ICG and sent to ANACS and they grade them differently. ANACS was consistently 1 grade lower. The thread showed me cracking the slabs and getting new grades etc... I do recall it being in auctions for some reason...
Not uncommon among grading companies for there to be a variance. Even NGC and PCGS rarely agree, unless they are fresh from the mint moderns. ICG may routinely grade higher in the hopes of you using their service again. ICG and ANACS trade at a discount relative to NGC and PCGS anyway, so I wouldn't send any coins to them that I was hoping to get a super premium for the grade.
For cryptos I don't see it as a big deal if ANACS says something is a 67 and ICG says 68. For a rare Morgan CC that could make a huge difference in price, but for this market it's more the 3rd party trust of the encapsulated coin and intact hologram versus the condition of the coin. Especially since most of what is in this space are just brass tokens or plastic poker chips. Some silver and gold splashed in here and there, but mostly ugly looking brass.
The big issue for me is that we have used the ANACS standard since 2013. I would just assume not grade coins at this point rather than using an even lowered tier grading service such as ICGS.
Well that's fair enough. To each his own. FWIW though eBay recognizes ICG as one of 4 approved 3PG companies that you can list on their site. Also, if you look at ICG's grading team on their website they have as much experience as any graders in the business and a couple of them worked for NGC and another for ANACS. One guy was even a consultant for the Secret Service in authenticating coins. So it's not like some random guys that opened up a grading service with little or no experience.
With that said, I'd love it if PCGS or NGC would start grading cryptos, but after the nonsense coming out of ANACS lately ICG is at least worth consideration.
I agree that ANACS sucks and is considered #3 grading wise after PCGS and NGC. I think it sucks to move from the 3rd best to the 4th best service though. Why even bother grading these if the name on the slab is considered crap? I only graded coins in the past for higher resale values (buy the coin sell the slab). Personally, I am done grading these coins until PCGS or NGC starts accepting them. I think we should really reach out to them and see what it takes for them to grade for us.
