Owner Comments:
In early-July 2008 an NGC MS65 1932-P quarter became available on eBay. This was the 4th coin added to the set and was in a very old-style holder. The seller had taken pictures in such a way that suggested the toning was much lighter than it truly was and that the coin had a better chance of upgrading to MS66 than it really did. We decided to keep the coin for the time being to fill the hole, but I think it was always clear that this coin would need to be replaced at some point.
As it turns out, less than a month later while at a coin show we found a seller offering this PCGS MS66 1932-P. We decided to pass on it at the time, but we saw the same dealer offering the same coin at another show approximately two weeks later. We decided to purchase this because its toning and overall appearance matched the 1932-D and 1932-S that had been added to the set. That improvement to the visual agreement of the coin with the set made it worth it.
This coin later became a bit of an oddity in the set, in my registry and in the NGC registry as a whole. It’s the only PCGS graded coin in the 1932 set, it’s one (I’m pretty sure) less than 10 total PCGS graded coins that we own and it’s now one of a small (and I’m sure dwindling) number of “grandfathered” PCGS graded coins in US competitive sets in the NGC registry. When this coin was purchased in 2008, NGC and PCGS coins were equally allowed in all of the competitive sets and categories in the NGC Registry. About 4 years later, in 2012, NGC removed all PCGS graded coins from world sets. Also in 2012, NGC started recognizing “Best in Category” and “NGC Best in Category winners in every US set category – even when the same set wins both honors, as has been the case for this set for 7 years now. About five years later, in 2017, NGC decided that PCGS coins would no longer be allowed to be entered into NGC registry sets, but all coins already in sets would be “grandfathered in” and allowed to stay in the sets they were in.
In the wake of the rules changes, Choya and I have periodically discussed submitting this coin for cross-over grading. It hasn’t happened yet and it isn’t an especially high priority for us right now. We’ll see if it happens at some point.