Jeff Isaac, an industry veteran who has served as an NGC Finalizer for the last two years, has announced his departure. Isaac will pursue a new venture as a rare coin wholesaler.

Isaac has over 25 years of professional experience in the US rare coin market and is recognized as one of the premier coin graders in the industry. He has been a key player in several high profile coin companies including Jeff Isaac Rare Coins, Inc. and Eureka Trading Systems. Before joining NGC he worked for Spectrum Numismatics.

“Jeff is a very skilled numismatist, and we are enormously appreciative of his contribution during his tenure at NGC. We wish him great success in his future endeavors, and we know that his return to the commercial marketplace will certainly be noticed,” comments NGC Chairman Mark Salzberg. Employees of NGC are prohibited from the commercial buying and selling of rare coins, thus Isaac has suspended his wholesale trading activities while at NGC. (more…)

As a general rule, modern proof error coins are scarce. There are several reasons for this. The requirements of special production hinder the number and types of errors that can occur. For one, during production of proof coinage, dies are frequently replaced and, therefore, many of the errors associated with late-state die failure seldom occur. Also, proof coins are placed into special packaging which means that any aberrantly shaped error coin will likely be discovered at the packaging stage. And last, the Mint employs an exceptionally high level of quality control surrounding the production of proof coinage.

NGC did, however, receive a Proof Presidential $1 error coin almost as soon as we began receiving submissions. Surprisingly, this was a relatively dramatic and scare type of error, a coin struck from nonparallel dies also called horizontally misaligned dies. This type of error occurs when the dies are not level with each other during striking. The result is a “wedge-shaped” coin. The misalignment also creates a gap between the collar and the dies. During striking, metal will flow into that gap forming an enlarged and distorted, raised rim or flange. A handful of similar errors of this type have been seen by NGC. Read Full Story

By Numismedia on NGC

Today’s collectors benefit from statistics. They want to know the original mintage of an issue and beyond that, how many coins have been certified in a specific grade. We have taken that one or two steps further in making a comparison of the original mintage of three specific issues to the total number of coins certified in all grades by NGC and PCGS. Once we determined that percentage, we then developed a ratio of the total number of coins graded in MS65 and higher to the total number of coins certified. Modern issue coins have a greater percentage of high grades certified compared to original mintage than older classic coins. This is a fact that eludes many of today’s novice collectors upon entering numismatics. This same fact is not lost on those advanced collectors searching for the “real deal” in rarity.

Certified coins offer the consumer protection from the vagaries of grading subjectivity. However, collectors must be aware that dealers value NGC and PCGS above all other services. Therefore, we will use NGC and PCGS exclusively for the comparison study in this article.