[INFO] What's going on with ICG? Population information vanishing from ICG site

[raghavsood]

I have several coins that have been graded by ICG over a long time frame.

I looked up the information for many of them when I bought them, and it showed up just fine on the ICG website.

I'm re-looking at grading now, and realized that none of the coins I have can be found on the ICG website:

Code:

6941930301 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=6941930301
5437561701 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=5437561701
2013930201 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=2013930201
2543250101 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=2543250101
3616550302 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=3616550302
3616550618 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=3616550618

Moreover, they state:

If your serial number is not populating using our online verification tool, it is likely a serial number that has been lost during some software updates to our grading applications. This can be corrected, but requires the coin to be sent in and assigned a new serial number. Please use the attached form to send your mis-verified coin in under Quality Control. There are no service fees in doing so, and we will cover return shipping and insurance back to you.

It seems to affect a significant portion of crypto collectibles - I don't have any non-crypto ones to cross check.

Does anyone know more about this, and whether there are any archival records?

Perhaps someone close to their physical locations could find out more?

[gpfrag]

I have several coins that have been graded by ICG over a long time frame.

I looked up the information for many of them when I bought them, and it showed up just fine on the ICG website.

I'm re-looking at grading now, and realized that none of the coins I have can be found on the ICG website:

Code:

6941930301 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=6941930301
5437561701 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=5437561701
2013930201 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=2013930201
2543250101 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=2543250101
3616550302 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=3616550302
3616550618 https://www.icgcoin.com/load_SNSearch.php?sn=3616550618

Moreover, they state:

If your serial number is not populating using our online verification tool, it is likely a serial number that has been lost during some software updates to our grading applications. This can be corrected, but requires the coin to be sent in and assigned a new serial number. Please use the attached form to send your mis-verified coin in under Quality Control. There are no service fees in doing so, and we will cover return shipping and insurance back to you.

It seems to affect a significant portion of crypto collectibles - I don't have any non-crypto ones to cross check.

Does anyone know more about this, and whether there are any archival records?

Perhaps someone close to their physical locations could find out more?

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

[raghavsood]

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

Somewhat comforting to know I'm not alone.

Unfortunately regrading isn't an option for me - there's simply no way I'm shipping these back to the US from the other side of the world. There's some extremely high value/rare stuff there.

Somewhat baffled that a grader could lose (parts of?) its database - maintaining that verifiable track record is a significant part of the value prop.

[minerjones]

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

Somewhat comforting to know I'm not alone.

Unfortunately regrading isn't an option for me - there's simply no way I'm shipping these back to the US from the other side of the world. There's some extremely high value/rare stuff there.

Somewhat baffled that a grader could lose (parts of?) its database - maintaining that verifiable track record is a significant part of the value prop.

I helped out gpfrag with his regrade/reslab.
I have asked ICG about this when I go there to drop off coins, and they have told me in person that there was no back up for the registry that contained the older graded coins.

Maybe we can compile our own list of early-ICG graded coins and go from there?
Not sure how that would work since I would assume many collectors do not want to divulge some of what their collection contains.

[raghavsood]

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

Somewhat comforting to know I'm not alone.

Unfortunately regrading isn't an option for me - there's simply no way I'm shipping these back to the US from the other side of the world. There's some extremely high value/rare stuff there.

Somewhat baffled that a grader could lose (parts of?) its database - maintaining that verifiable track record is a significant part of the value prop.

I helped out gpfrag with his regrade/reslab.
I have asked ICG about this when I go there to drop off coins, and they have told me in person that there was no back up for the registry that contained the older graded coins.

Maybe we can compile our own list of early-ICG graded coins and go from there?
Not sure how that would work since I would assume many collectors do not want to divulge some of what their collection contains.

I would be comfortable letting you handle it - it's the international shipping that rules it out for me. I'm not keen to send over 5+ BTC in already-graded items to fix an error that should have been avoidable.

I will be adding grading information to my Collectible tracker shortly - For now, I intend to source it from public sources such as auctions here and on S&B/GC, but if any members wish to include ICG information they're welcome to submit it to me directly - their identity and ownership of the items will not be included in the item record.

A really unfortunate situation, but if the data is really gone from ICG I don't see any solution - perhaps archive.org captured some of it? I'll try it out shortly

[gpfrag]

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

Somewhat comforting to know I'm not alone.

Unfortunately regrading isn't an option for me - there's simply no way I'm shipping these back to the US from the other side of the world. There's some extremely high value/rare stuff there.

Somewhat baffled that a grader could lose (parts of?) its database - maintaining that verifiable track record is a significant part of the value prop.

Wholeheartedly empathize and concur with value prop comment.  The burden is on them to correct, make whole. Europe poses a logistical concern unless they either sent someone out there or reimburse collectors for traveling there.

[rsincognito]

This proves in my opinion that PCGS is far superior to ICG for grading, their data base and tech is next level. i know a lot of old school people would argue ICG is better being their stacks are mostly graded by them but the honest truth they are not,  ICG had ONE job to do, was to grade and record our coins and store in a data base. they failed.  I would be demanding a refund. I only use ICG for coins that PCGS wont grade. they need to do better.

[aoluain]

I had a similar situation.  Coin had to be regraded by them at no cost.  There is a guy on this forum who lives near there who had helped me.  I’ll let him chime in if he wants but he’s definitely very knowledgeable about the space in general.

Somewhat comforting to know I'm not alone.

Unfortunately regrading isn't an option for me - there's simply no way I'm shipping these back to the US from the other side of the world. There's some extremely high value/rare stuff there.

Somewhat baffled that a grader could lose (parts of?) its database - maintaining that verifiable track record is a significant part of the value prop.

Wholeheartedly empathize and concur with value prop comment.  The burden is on them to correct, make whole. Europe poses a logistical concern unless they either sent someone out there or reimburse collectors for traveling there.

And you would think its in their interests to accommodate in this case raghavsood
particularly with an extremely valuable collection.

Surely it would be in their interests to make it clear to the crypto collectibles community
that they are at fault and are willing to right their error

This proves in my opinion that PCGS is far superior to ICG for grading, their data base and tech is next level. i know a lot of old school people would argue ICG is better being their stacks are mostly graded by them but the honest truth they are not,  ICG had ONE job to do, was to grade and record our coins and store in a data base. they failed.  I would be demanding a refund. I only use ICG for coins that PCGS wont grade. they need to do better.

I would imagine the advantage ICG have is that they dont pit barriers in place
for someone looking to get a coin graded. PCGS want everyone to pay for membership
before they grade your coin.

[raghavsood]

Just as an update - I wrote to ICG's listed email shortly before posting this thread. Till date, I have not received any reply from them even acknowledging the data gaps, let alone offering any form of resolution.

I will likely start working on compiling my own list of ICG-graded items, and look for ways to establish authenticity - I'm sure this opens up the door for bad behaviour from unscrupulous people.

[DaveF]

Just as an update - I wrote to ICG's listed email shortly before posting this thread. Till date, I have not received any reply from them even acknowledging the data gaps, let alone offering any form of resolution.

I will likely start working on compiling my own list of ICG-graded items, and look for ways to establish authenticity - I'm sure this opens up the door for bad behaviour from unscrupulous people.

I wonder if there can be any resolution. If there was no backup and they don't have paper records there is no way for them to know what was lost.
Sad but I have seen it before, people don't think about what would happen with a major data loss and figure they can 'just fake it'

Had that with a client who always put data 'wherever' and then freaked when a bunch of old systems that had info on them were retired.
Sorry, you should not have current CAD files on the old CAD server.

-Dave

[raghavsood]

Just as an update - I wrote to ICG's listed email shortly before posting this thread. Till date, I have not received any reply from them even acknowledging the data gaps, let alone offering any form of resolution.

I will likely start working on compiling my own list of ICG-graded items, and look for ways to establish authenticity - I'm sure this opens up the door for bad behaviour from unscrupulous people.

I wonder if there can be any resolution. If there was no backup and they don't have paper records there is no way for them to know what was lost.
Sad but I have seen it before, people don't think about what would happen with a major data loss and figure they can 'just fake it'

Had that with a client who always put data 'wherever' and then freaked when a bunch of old systems that had info on them were retired.
Sorry, you should not have current CAD files on the old CAD server.

-Dave

It's understandable that if it's gone, it's gone (although portions of it may be recoverable through paper trails/emails - hard for me to say without insight into their processes and systems).

At a bare minimum though, I would at least expect some transparency - simply knowing the serial/date ranges for which data is unavailable would be a step forward in identifying potential fakes or tampered items, even if the grading details for the items themselves can not be recovered.

Complete silence is simply not professional, and erodes trust. I'm not even asking for a free re-grade or compensation, just information.

[Cryptogreatdane]

Heres a resolution. They are probably required by law to regrade ever coin lost. Money was paid for a service that was lost and i believe they are absolutely liable to make us whole. There may be a class action suit that springs up. There one job was to keep their records intact and they failed miserably.

[DaveF]

Heres a resolution. They are probably required by law to regrade ever coin lost. Money was paid for a service that was lost and i believe they are absolutely liable to make us whole. There may be a class action suit that springs up. There one job was to keep their records intact and they failed miserably.

Since they are offering this as stated in the 1st post

If your serial number is not populating using our online verification tool, it is likely a serial number that has been lost during some software updates to our grading applications. This can be corrected, but requires the coin to be sent in and assigned a new serial number. Please use the attached form to send your mis-verified coin in under Quality Control. There are no service fees in doing so, and we will cover return shipping and insurance back to you.

Unless there was specific text somewhere that they would maintain a public database / record of all grades then there is no real way to sue them.

They are offering to zero cost to people and free return shipping. About the only thing you could possibly sue them for is the cost to ship to them and yeah, that's not going to happen.

-Dave

[owlcatz]

I was told yesterday by a ICG rep via phone it's really about the order #'s that were lost in the db migration ...

I was advised to CHECK one or two of your coins per order number - if ONE out the order number is missing, the rest may be.

As for the rest, yeah they won't reimburse ya for travel costs either from what I gather so far.

<Still need to check when I have some spare time which is like never... >

Thanks