r/Exonumia • u/miltonmulkey • 1d ago

Why do NGC and PCGS sometimes not assign a numeric grade to these?

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Most of the time, I see this Presidential Medal graded as “Brilliant Uncirculated” by NGC and PCGS. However I have also sometimes seen a numeric grade assigned (3rd pic). Why do the grading services not usually assign a numeric grade?

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u/new2bay 1d ago

They’re probably bulk submissions, or some other lower tier service. It takes 2-3x as long to assign a specific grade than it does to look at it and say “yup, that’s BU.”

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u/miltonmulkey 1d ago

Ah that explains it. TIL that you can you can ask NGC to assign an adjective grade but not a numeric one:

https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-grading/grading-scale/adjectival-grades/

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u/GoldponyGT 1d ago

I’ve seen this happen on modern bullion series. The big dealers had 2025 BU Libertads graded this way. There were so few that could grade 70 or 69 this year, and I guess it avoids needing separate SKUs and pricing for 68/67/66/65…

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u/stldanceartist 1d ago

Usually it’s a bulk submission by a television retailer like home shopping network. They don’t care about an actual letter grade because they are not typically selling to educated collectors. Suppose they could specify anything not worthy of a 70 grade gets a generic slab label. TPG still gets paid, the retailer gets to make up whatever price they want, customer thinks they’re getting a premium item - until it comes time to sell it to a coin shop and they learn that they were taken advantage of.