35 Years: From Print to Chip

When PCGS was founded 35 years ago on February 3, 1986, society was still a largely analog place with a media scene dominated by magazines, newspapers, AM/FM terrestrial radio, and just three main television networks. It may be hard to fathom now, but there was a time when third-party coin grading and encapsulation was a novel concept. So, getting the word out about PCGS, what we do, and how we do it required a blitz of brochures, pamphlets, and print media advertisements to educate the public about the importance of grading and encapsulating coins.

By 1987, we were publishing PCGS Population Reports, which were offered on a periodical basis as bound books. The PCGS Population Reports were revolutionary in offering collectors, dealers, and numismatic scholars hard numbers on encapsulated coins and better insight on the larger picture behind overall survival figures for various coins across the grading spectrum.

The gold standard of grading accuracy and secure encapsulation established by PCGS inspired the creation of sight-unseen trading, an area of the marketplace that saw collectors, dealers, and even lay investors buy and sell coins much as one might stock shares. The advent of this newfangled coin marketplace was fueled by the creation of American Numismatic Exchange, an electronic trading arm of PCGS that helped propagate the coin-investing boom of the late 1980s.

PCGS jumped aboard the information superhighway in 1996, and the groundwork was soon laid for a wealth of digital resources that the numismatic community enjoys today. It was a period of unprecedented evolution for our company. We were rapidly developing a rich blend of online resources while launching a variety of popular offerings in the late 1990s, including the PCGS Set Registry, PCGS Market Report (the forerunner of PCGS Rare Coin Market Report), and the PCGS Price Guide.

The dawning of the 21st century ushered in digital horizons that were virtually inconceivable in our hobby just a few years earlier. We took a bold step into the future by adapting the PCGS Set Registry for the internet in 2001, becoming the first third-party coin-grading service to introduce such a platform online. As hindsight clearly shows, this was one of the most important moments in the modern history of our hobby. The PCGS Set Registry gives collectors a place to show off their collections to the rest of the world while also competing for prizes, awards, and honors for the completion and upgrading of coin sets. The creation of the PCGS Set Registry also led to new marketplace demand for top-grade modern coins.

By 2010, PCGS had taken the PCGS Price Guide, PCGS CoinFacts, and PCGS Cert Verification online, bringing one of the most comprehensive hubs of numismatic information and real-time pricing trends to computers, tablets, and smartphones everywhere. We also began the development of interactive and informative apps for smartphones to provide collectors a world of numismatic knowledge right at their fingertips, wherever they go and whenever they need it.

And while our research and development team created new technologies to help make coin collecting easier and more fun, it was also working to make the hobby a safer place for everyone. In 2010, PCGS unveiled Secure Plus, utilizing laser scanning to detect coins that had been altered or artificially enhanced since their prior certification. With further enhancements we revamped this technology under the name PCGS Gold Shield, which cross references each coin against a vast proprietary imaging database that aids our graders in more quickly ensuring the authenticity and originality of the coins they examine.

Our mission is to continue raising the bar on anticounterfeiting protections, and we achieved a major milestone in late 2019 with the introduction of Near-Field Communication (NFC) chips in our holders. This initiative, implanting secure, solid-state devices in our holders, helps collectors and dealers ensure the coins or banknotes in our holders are the ones referenced on their labels. The simple tap of a smartphone on an NFC-enabled holder reveals all the pertinent information about the encapsulated coin or banknote, instilling buyer confidence while helping stamp out counterfeits.

As PCGS marks its 35th anniversary in 2021, we will continue creating new ways to make numismatics safer and more exciting for all by offering collectors what they want – and need – to enjoy our hobby. Even as we continue leading numismatics on the technology front, we realize there is something about our hobby that technology will never replace – physically holding something of value.

Coin collectors need to touch, to feel their coins… And so many of these collectors still prefer thumbing through pages made of paper to glean knowledge, which is why even in this evermore digital world, print publications – including the PCGS Rare Coin Market Report, have an important place in our hobby. It just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And just as in 1986, we at PCGS will continue evolving so that we can better serve you, the collector, while protecting the security and value of your coins and collectibles.