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.