Certification Opinion Sought

For graded certs, I've found that items graded by PSE in the early 2000's will potentially grade lower if resubmitted today. I had this happen several times with some of the older green paper PSE graded certs. In some cases it was a double grade drop, from like a 95 to an 85.

Rhett: thank you for sharing. The trend you describe is noteworthy and doesn't surprise me one bit. The issue is the hierarchy of the expertizing groups that reflect maybe a truer truth but impact on market perception and realizations which sometimes is the greater goal.

The same is analogous with the coin market where:

ICG=PSAG
ANACS=APEX
NGC=PSE
PCGS=PF

Whether you believe I have the order right between PSAG and APEX or it should be the other way around, whereas there would likely be an incremental bump for an updated cert within a non PF company, I'm not sure that this would remotely compare to a clean jump to either (PF in stamps) or PCGS in coins.

The only way to stop the recertification by a buyer is to not sell the stamp.

The only way to prevent a loss to yourself is to sell with a contract condition that prohibits the new certificate's opinion from being considered. This will likely prevent a sale, ever.

My question to you is, what did you do with the item you were purchasing to convince your self the six or seven figure purchase was warranted? (If a minor "ding" can cost five figures the underlying value needs to be in the range mentioned). Once you answer the question about what you did before buying, I then ask you why you will not let the next buyer do the same? Likewise if you were willing to just trust the certificate and seller, good for you but a buyer has a right to make an informed purchase decision before a deal closes or is terminated.

Lastly, dings happen, deterioration happens, if you cannot afford that to happen to one of your philatelic items then you really can not afford the item in the first place.

Not to get off the current subject, but I notice in this discussion and even in a number of the auction catalogs there is almost no mention of APEX certificates. Is there a reason they are not more commonly used?

Parcel post guy: this was a hypothetical question. Nonetheless I think this discussion brought out a couple of interesting responses, particularly those of Rhett which revealed in his experience, recertification was most likely to be positive when recertified within the same company. When you add that to all the other responses, for me personally it would make little sense to purchase an expensive stamp going forward with anything other than a PFC. For me, whether to recertify, if required, within a non-PF company or to recertify with PF would depend on how much I have paid for the stamp.

Actually PSE=NNC or SGS and APEX=NGC in my opinion, at least when it comes to U.S. revenue stamps. I put PSE at the absolute bottom of the list. I would easily take APEX and Crowe certs ahead of PSE.

At least with APEX I can find out who the experts were on any cert. That amount of transparency is worthwhile... not as ideal as printing the names of the expertizers on the certs, but given that is no longer a practice, I'll take what I can get.

Revcollector: I don't actually dispute anything you say although I am thinking generally and not specifically with regards to revenue stamps. I'm just reporting my perception of the market as influenced by what companies certain auction firms do and do not do business with.

Frankly, I have never understood the disrespect shown towards ANACS in coins or APEX in stamps.

One thing not mentioned about re-certification is how old the cert is and which auction house is offering the item. For example, Siegel's Conditions of Sale states that if a cert is less than 5 years old and is from PF or PSE the item cannot be returned, even if the opinion or grade has changed.

I put all single stamps on extension if a cert is older than three years. Siegel does all of the work for just the cost of the cert so it is a no-brainer. Plus you tell them where to send it (PF of course).

There was a point in time when APEX relied on collectors in a particular area to sign on their certificates. Their opinions were uneven, especially about condition. Now they are better. In fact as they use experts from the Canal Zone Study Group for Canal Zone, their certificates may be the best ones in that area. As I understand it APEX now uses some APS Dealer members for expertizing. To place an opinion for an APEX item you must be a member of the APS.

Perhaps, one area the auction houses dislike is the length of time APEX can take. They rely on sending out items to their experts and when sent via registered mail there can be delays of as much as 3 weeks in each direction going to and from one expert.

It is interesting to see the comparison of Philatelic Expertizing services with the Numismatic services. The PF was started in 1945 by NY collectors who were unhappy with the APS service at the time. PSE was started in the 1980s due to Randy Shoemaker's unhappiness with The PF. Randy sold PSE to Collector's Universe (PCGS) in the late 1990s or early 2000s. PSAG was started circa 2009-10 when Randy left PSE. PSE was sold off circa 2012 to the current owners when the owners of Collector's Universe found it unprofitable.

The Philatelic services are only as good as the people who actually sign on the items. All four have strong points and weak points.

I am not surprised that some early stamps with early PSE graded certificates receive lower grades in the 2020s. Before Bill Litle became associated with PSE the grading was done by Randy Shoemaker. Bill tried to introduce consistency and would keep records of stamps he recorded with higher grades. Bill had Scott Murphy make up grading charts with examples of each Scott number in various grades for the experts to use. Now it is easier thanks to StampSmarter as you can see on line each Scott number certified by PSE. Unfortunately, the latest version needs cleaning up as a search for Scott 14 will also get you C14, E14, etc.

Hi Bill,
I am unsure if you are referring to the Advanced View of the Stamp Smarter PSE but it supports filtering for just a single Cat number like '14' as shown below.

I think that this is the most advanced search filtering tool online for any of the philatelic databases but it does have a learning curve. To filter for a specific cat number it means selecting "Equals" instead of "Contains" as the filter criteria as shown here.

https://stampsmarter.org/public/PSECertFUSA.php
Don

I am not good at screen shots. If you go to

https://stampsmarter.org/Learning/PSEView.html

and use the default for Scott number 14 you will get - in order Scott C14, C14, C14, K14, 14, 14, O14, C14, RW14, C14, This will continue until page 6 and certificate 1403271. Until recently this was the way to go and no filter was needed. Something changed causing a need for a filter.

Don, I think Mr. Crowe is correct. If I enter the search you did for 14 (Catalog Number Equals 14) in the advanced view above I get K14s, O14s, C14s, etc. as well as 14s.

Yes, looking into it now...appears that I blew some of the catalogs numbers for the certs I added during the last update. I'll work fixing this over the next week or so, sorry about that.

The 'work-around until I get the last updated certs fixed is to click on the 'Year' column so it sorts by year. This will bring all the 10 Greens to the top of the list.
Don

I have fixed the mistakes I made during the last update and apologize for them. Thank you for bringing the issue to my attention, if anyone spots anything I may have missed please let me know.

Note: my mistake impacted only the Stamp Smarter lookup of the last updated certifications, it had no impact on the correctness of the certification data itself.
Don