 Hello, so welcome to this special webinar which forms part of the Festival of Stamps virtual event which is currently running on the allaboutcoins.co.uk website. I'm Matthew Hill, I'm the editor of the website and of CoinCollector magazine and I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We're delighted to be hosting two webinars from our festival partners NGC and there's a second session taking place tomorrow at the same time. So a quick piece of housekeeping before we begin. If you'd like to ask a question during the presentation use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and following the presentation we'll be putting these questions to Colin. So do send us those questions in. To start off I'd like to welcome Colin Blyth, senior numismatist at PMG. Colin has a master's of business administration from Queen's University in Canada and he's been a paper money collector for more than 20 years. As you would be able to tell from my accent I'm based in the UK. Colin is speaking today from PMG's World Headquarters in Sarasota in Florida where I presume the weather is a little bit warmer than it is here. So I'm a little jealous but without further ado Colin over to you to discuss third party certification for your collectible notes. Thanks very much Andrew and good morning or good afternoon everyone depending on what part of the world you're listening in from. And I'd like to start by thanking the Festival of Coins organizers and Matthew for inviting me to speak today and to give you an introduction on third party certification of notes and how it works. And a little bit of a background about myself. I've been a dedicated collector of paper money for the last 25 years and lately I've been very focused and specialized on paper money at South and Central America and the private issue. Thanks and I think I'm you know I've got a dream job right now. I get to grade notes. I get to talk to my client liaison with our auction houses and our dealer clients and I also negotiate large volume bulk deals and I also get to research and write articles on paper money for PMG's website. So it's so fortunate. I was just talking to Matthew before before this started that you know that I'm working when you work at a job that you really love it doesn't seem like work. So I'm fortunate to be able to do that. So while I come from a collector background with my current job I've got a very good introduction and understanding of the commercial aspect of the hobby and so the auctions houses and the dealers that provided much needed liquidity into the market. So as collectors we need a good healthy commercial side to the business. So I get to see both sides to it. And I hope that by the end of the talk that you have a better understanding of the benefits of third-party certification and then also a better understanding of PMG as a company. And as Matthew said at the end of the presentation there will be time for some questions and answers. So I'm going to split my talk into two main parts. The first part is why use third-party certification for your collectible notes. And I think maybe bluntly we could say why should you part with your hard earned money to let someone else evaluate and give you an opinion on the condition of your note. So I want to go through that and specifically how do you benefit from that. And then the second part after you see a benefit in third-party certification you're thinking about maybe this is for me or I want to try it out. I'll then talk a little bit about PMG and why we should have consideration as your third-party certification company of choice. So let's go to the first part of the presentation which is why use third-party certification for your notes and I'm going to there's really five key benefits that I'm going to to discuss here and those are in the bullet points below. So the first benefit the first bullet point is I think the most important and that's why it's bullet point number one is authenticity. And I think sometimes this may seem obvious or simple to people is this note genuine and that really should be the first question anybody asks when you're buying any collectible is this real is it genuine? And as I said it may seem simple or obvious yes of course it looks real but unfortunately this is not always the case and I can tell you I've seen a lot of altered and counterfeit notes out there and I really there's no point in in being able to be an expert grader and putting a grade to something if if in first place you can't tell if the items genuine or authentic. So that's that's the the first thing that we look at when a note comes in here is it genuine and really a collector for example I've used you can see the the solid eight serial number note the standard charter note on this screen and a collector can pay thousands of dollars premium for the the lucky eight serial number in China and you know if you're going to put up that kind of money for this note you want to know that the those are really solid eight serial numbers and not threes a couple of threes and they're turned into eights and the same same exact type of example for Confederate notes there's a lot of contemporary counterfeits out there as a buyer of a Confederate note or any note is this is this a genuine note or is it a contemporary counterfeit and the second key benefit of course which most people are very aware of with third-party certification is is the great aspect of it and I think the grade is really one of the emotional most emotional and hotly contested parts of our hobby if you could show a note to 10 different collectors standing in a circle I'm quite sure you get multiple opinions on what the grade of that note is so the the intention of third-party grading is to provide the certification service will provide consistency that if they grade a note a certain grade this week it should be that great if they graded it five weeks from now so just just a little bit of background of what what the generation of third-party grading and how it all all came about the collectible paper money market like like coins or other their collectible markets or were and and are under threat from counterfeit and altered notes but also significantly from notes that are that have been processed and treated to give the appearance of a higher note so example they've been pressed or they've been repaired and so someone's trying to pass off an extremely fine note by pressing out some some folds to make it look almost uncirculated or uncirculated and and that that kind of dissection was was what drove a lot of people away from the hobby and and had fear about buying the notes so the the whole concept of third-party grading was to provide an opinion on the note that was was not an opinion coming from the seller of that note because let's face it a seller that owns a note is in a position of conflict of interest they because they own that note there's financial motivation for for the seller to to stress as much positive about the note as they can when they're selling it and I think just on the flip side the buyer tends to do the same they'll tend to look at every tiny flaw and try to try to say that means the notes actually in in worse condition so I think I think for example if you went out to the floor I've got got the normal us dollar here but when you when you see when you go out and you're buying this from a dealer first of all you're in a situation where the maybe you're on the floor of a show and the lighting is just horrible you have these over overhead lights you're under a little bit of pressure to make a decision on what what grade this is so you're looking at it saying well I think this is probably about a 30 it looks okay um but you're not not 100 percent sure and and then versus having a note that's third party graded that tells you exactly what what they think the the grade is it takes that uncertainty out of the decision making process so so again it's the it's this independent third party grade assessment is really I think the great terminology it's really a neutral arbitrator between the buyer and the seller and they're giving an independent opinion that we don't have any any financial skin in the game on that note beyond the grading fee that we we achieved for that note so whether it was a mint state uncirculated note or whether it was a low grade note that that's our opinion on the grade and the financial we don't benefit one way or the other on the financial side of it so we're focused strictly on providing an opinion on the grade and quality of that note so that's that really comes a situation where you're then dealing I want to buy this note um you take you remove that argument of is this an EF it's a is it a BF that argument is is pushed off the side because uh you have that grade on the note and now the the buyer and seller can just discuss for that grade what is a fairer market price and so certified notes have made the paper market safer and more transparent in other words you're getting what you you pay for and I'd like to just take a side here because there's there's people that don't use third-party grading services and we throw around the term uncirculated or extremely fine or very fine but I wanted to just make sure everyone's clear here that certification services will typically use a 70 point numerical grade scale and that's uh derived from the Sheldon uh coin grade scale so we're stealing things from the from the coin side but this this 70 point scale is a very detailed scale and you can see uh I've broken it down all these numbers of the right this is how PMG uses the 70 point grade scale but from 60 to 70 that's an uncirculated then you have 50 to 58 is almost about uncirculated and then a 40 to 45 is extremely fine 20 to 35 is very fine 12 to 15 is fine and 4 to 10 is good but what I want to point out is because we're using a numeric scale it's very different from the non-numeric scales that that are out there so people that are not familiar with the numeric scales a dangerous situation happens if they try to compare that to uh on a one-to-one basis against the non-numeric scares like the uh ibn s scale international banknote society and they have a descriptor scale so there's no no numeric numbers so they'll have uncirculated or very fine and and I wanted to you know a good highlight example is the ibn s uncirculated grade is a binary grade it's either uncirculated or it's not there's no degrees of uncirculation on on that whereas if you look at the 70 point miracle scale we have grades ranging from 60 to 70 in an uncirculated grade and this is this is coming from if you if you're out on the floor you know inherently in your mind that not all uncirculated notes are equal um some are just have blazing color they're perfectly centered you know that's that's the uncirculated you know you're going to pick over one that's not very well centered maybe has has a little bit of teller handling on it whereas the another no doesn't that's that's what the 70 point grade scale is is doing is trying to tell you which ones are truly superb jam uncirculated which ones are lower uncirculated but you get into a problem in that if you try to say um oh PMG's uncirculated or third party uncirculated doesn't seem to match my idea of uncirculated for an ibn s um you'll you'll be in trouble so just make sure you understand these are two different grade scales our grade scale is available to the view on our website and pmgnotes.com and you'll see all the uh the definitions there so in addition to um numeric grade scale there's also qualifiers that are used and so these are non-numeric qualifiers and this tries to recognize that grading is not just a scientific thing where we we put it into machine and measure the folds of the centering and out pops an answer there's there's the technical side to grading where we are looking at folds but there's also the art of grading where we're looking at the the appearance of the note the embossing how how how well centered it looks and all all these things come into it and probably probably the three most important descriptors i'd like to point out are or descriptor that talks about original or exceptional paper quality and uh pmg uses a epq designation and that's uh that's a designation to to tell the collector that this is a completely original note it hasn't been physically chemically or materially processed and read into that you know washed pressed um to give the appearance of a higher note so you will see in the market that an epq exceptional paper quality designation will achieve significantly higher prices over a non-epq because of that originality of the paper and there's also another nice designation which is the star designation and that's uh that's really an i appeal designation i love this one because uh excuse me that's that's a word to note that first of all it must be an epq note exceptional paper quality note and it has to exhibit for that note um very very strong plates uh or over print and or over print embossing really vibrant ink pristine paper quality and and i i can always tell something's a star note when i pick it up and i go wow um that's a good sign this is this is an above average note for that for that grade and type note type so i like to call out a wow note on the flip side uh a negative uh designation is what we refer to as net and when you see net beside our grade this means there's there's other problems on the note that are more severe that can be reflected in the numeric grade itself and so for example if a note was torn in half it was then uh rejoined together that would that would be a note that would get a net designation to have a numerical grade but it would have net and on the back you'd have a the holder you'd have a comet like severed and reattached so another good benefit the third one i've got here is the description of the note and the the description of the note or what we commonly call the verification process PMG is is what goes on the label of the holder and that's exactly what exactly is this note and again that might seem obvious well don't you know what can't you tell when you pick up the note what it is not always um it could be in a foreign language it could be there's no date visible on it um you don't know it could be from a private bank issue that you're not really sure of so the holder will will specify uh what the year is what the series what variety what there's a catalog reference number and that goes on the label so i've got uh for example here's here's a a note in a PMG holder and if i look at the the top the label this this is the description the verification information we were just discussing so on this you probably can't see it very well but i'll i'll read it to you but the top tells you the country so we can see this notes from Hong Kong and the next line here shows what bank it's from and this is from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation which you can read in the top line here and the second line on our holder will show the the catalog reference number that this is under and that's the the pick number 178 f is the standard catalog of world paper money that's the what we collectors refer to as is the pick number because albert pick was the original editor of standard catalogs we just have always kept the word pick number but that's that's really just the standard catalog reference number there's also a k and boom number which uh for for this type of theories that a lot of collectors in the world also use k and b numbers so we also have that beside the pick number you can see the year the denomination here we even will have the serial number of course because that's a that is a unique identifier to this note and we talk about the watermark has a warrior's head and a number 100 on it so what i really like about this is once you have that in the holder all the information of what that note is goes with with the note and it stays with that note you don't have to have a little separate sticky notes or or understanding what it is it's all it's all there for you so i i just mentioned the word variety when i showed you that that holder in the third party grading services are notorious for throwing around the words variety and pedigree without really telling people what they are and so i thought i'd just take a minute here and and talk about varieties and pedigrees so that when you hear me talk about them you'll you'll at least understand what i'm talking about but a variety is used to describe all notes so it's a group of notes that share a distinctive subset of characteristics found within a larger population group of notes and that's a mouthful and it's a bit mind-numbing but let me use an example um so we i've got an example here of a 1937 nicaragua 10 centavos note which is which is referenced pick 85 and that has two distinct varieties and one is 85 which we call 85 a and the other is 85 b and the only difference that is exactly the same look the plate the only difference doing those two notes is uh is the signature title at the bottom and one is director herrante and the second variety has the signature title herrante and a row and the but there is a price difference between those two and collectors want to have both varieties so we do we do list this as long as they're in the this what collectors accept as standard reference catalogs um we will attribute that on our holder there's no charge that that goes that goes normally on the holder we also do if there's any fancy type serial numbers like a descending ladder or a radar serial number that will get attributed on the holder as well and but what about varieties that are not listed in these in these standard catalogs and so when i made a standard catalog i'm talking about the free bird catalog or or charlton in canada or the the standard catalog for most uh paper money collectors but there is an increasing number of very very specialized catalog that as as collectors drill deeper and deeper into their hobby you know there's a there's collectors and catalogers that are providing more and more information certain to specific countries and to note types and i give the example there's a there's a specialized catalog called the paper money of argentina and we would actually on request and for a fee we will go and research that catalog and put that um that that reference that catalog and their reference number on it we also have situations uh for example in china there's a what we call fluorescent attributions and these are a uv reactive security features on notes and so for a fee there's there's collectors that want to have the three or four different types of security features that are found in these notes that are not listed in standard catalogs we we will do that so we will take ultraviolet light and look at those features and classify that according to the fluorescent attribution should a customer wish to have that on their their holder and we can also have situations where if you look at this the standard catalog they might have a note a pick number a note with the date range if the customer wants to collect every single date and i want that specifically mentioned on the holder we can do that as well as well as the different signature combinations that are not necessarily uh referenced or given a specialized uh variety number pedigree so i'm like variety pedigree is an attribute that pertains specifically to an individual note so it's unique to that note and commonly i think when we hear the word pedigree we'll immediately go these are these are famous collectors of the past that own this this note and that's what the pedigree means and yes it does it does mean that in some cases but you can also put your own name as the current owner on that note and you can and there's an example showing here where we've got the a collector is requested their their collection name on the back of the holder we will do that we can also do fun things like uh um recognizing that it's a plate note status that this note was actually in in the book and there's a lot of people that are very interested in buying notes that are that are plate notes and i think that's a great pedigree to put on a holder and it does uh more often than not a achieve good value for a customer to indicate that as well but on the fun side you can also recognize a a birthday or anniversary date using that note so i would call this more of an individualized way of of attributing your your collection so PMG maybe we have a little bit more flexibility than say the coin side of the ngc side because we have a lot of real estate on that label to be able to do things like that so that's that's kind of a fun a fun thing you can you can consider as you start building your collection uh the the fourth benefit for you of why using third party certification is the preservation and encapsulation of your note and i think sometimes i'm even guilty of this but a lot of collectors out we're we're throwing this in plastic and i cringe a little bit when people say the word plastic because i have this connotation of plastic it's kind of this soft uh that is a lot of uh plastic softeners in it the polyvinyl chlorides that could leach out and react and we've seen some notes that have come in here that have been stored improperly that that have been contaminated badly by improper storage but so so we don't use the word plastic this this is a very very high quality museum quality inert material so it's not chemically reactive it's acid free this this is made for long-term storage of your notes and museums like the smithsonian use this type of material when they're storing material the note is uh the the holder itself is heavy gauge material so if i go back to this this note i was showing you typically you might see collectors having something like this a little a little flip that they'll put in and as long as it's high quality mylar that that's fine but you can see the gauge of this it's very light gauge and thin you can bend this quite easily it's also open at the top and you can slide the note into the holder and take it out fairly easy but note that it is open at the top so it's exposed so um environment environmental contamination you know air can flow in and out uh and bad things can flow in and out so with with the third party holder and looking at ours specifically that note is sealed on all four sides here so the label is sealed up at the top in its own pouch and the note itself is sealed so this is this is free from contamination and um certainly this this type of holder is is fine but i'll give you the example i mean i've talked to the collectors here you have this sitting on your desk and they're they had a tin of coke and the tin knocked over and the coke flowed over the note you think oh that's great it's in plastic except the capillary action how that always sucked all the the coca-cola into the and the whole note was immediately drenched with sugary drink um so that that's obviously a disaster if you spilled your your soft drink on on this you're not going to have a problem except having to wipe it off so um just just to recognize this is uh also much much heavier gauge so you looked at the other one this holder which is just very very thin and much easier to bend you you would have to really be making an effort to to bend this over and increase it this can take a lot of a lot of handling but it's also the right now it's easily transferable for collectors and dealers to store it's not so thick that's a you know we've got a three-quarter inch holder or something that weighs 15 pounds so this is a this is an excellent long-term storage it's also tamper evident we we have it sealed you can see the other pattern maybe you can't but there's a there's a pattern on the ceiling around the outside we also have a hologram images on the back and there's there's a barcode and certification number on the back so you'd be able to check that um there's also uh so while there's overt security features there's also covert security features that that only PMG knows about um I I I guess just finally on this um I've showed you some standard size holders but we also can hold hold a very large note so we go up to uh 400 by 477 millimeters but we can go up to uh for certain things we could even push up to 755 millimeters but it's on we have to look at it and make sure it's suitable to go up that size and and lastly on third party certification is uh insurance claims and what do I mean about about this well um if you have um like a lot of people market value-based insurance if if your collection is stolen and for example you you have this note it's a it's a vf you have it in raw though as a what you feel is a vf 35 raw uh a bank of national 1899 50 pesos note that's that's over printed on a bank of MRPs note um you you lose that and you tell the insurance company while I lost uh it's been stolen it was a vf 25 and the next question is going to be well how much did you pay for it well I paid a thousand that's really worth five thousand now well according to who what how do I know what that grade was you're you're saying it's vf but how do I know that if you had it certified by a third party grader there'd be a record of it you'd have a specific grade there and a lot of auction market information to be able to be able to verify a note in that specific grade sold at x it's much easier to attach a value onto something that's been independently graded than something out of your own collection that you're just having to basically say here's what I think the grade was and that uh that's serial number on the back of the note that it shows this is the back of the holder at the at the top right there's a there's a certification number here and a serial number and that's unique to this note and we had that in our system you also can look that up online just as an insurance company can and it's great because it can track ownership of that note who actually got it certified so you'd be able to prove that that yes I was the one that submitted that so if that showed up in other dealers showcase that he he purchased a stolen note you'd be able to have some pretty strong evidence that that was your note that that is being sold so to move into the next part of the presentation why choose PMG to certify your notes I I think that you know what once you've decided that yes there's a benefit to having your notes certified I want to talk a little bit about if you've decided that why you why I feel that PMG deserves your consideration as a third party certification company of choice so let me walk through that let me tell you first who is PMG so PMG is the world's largest third party authentication and encapsulation service for paper money we've created over five and a half million notes since 2005 and we're headquartered in Sarasota Florida and this is in a large that's where I'm sitting right now this facility is a large 60 000 square foot facility there's two very large walk-in vaults there's a staff of armed guards and more than 150 security cameras in the building and the reason why I'm telling you this is to give you comfort that when your note comes here it's going to be safe here and and treated in the right conditions if this is not a mom and pop one bedroom organization where we're grading your notes this is a this is a professional large well very very secure facility and we also have offices internationally in addition to our Florida headquarters so we have offices in London Munich Hong Kong and Shanghai so it's truly a global footprint and we work we're continually expanding so it's it's very exciting and there should be an office somewhere that's relatively close to you to be able to submit your notes to that office you don't have to submit them into the United States and so PMG or paper money guarantee is part part of that under an umbrella of the certified collectibles group which is which is a very large group of collectible certification services so in addition to the paper money there's the coin divisions ngc and ncs which probably most of the listeners are well aware of there's also the comic book division the cgc and the conservation side to the comic books but there's also part of cgc brand new is our the trading card division where we do magic and pokemon cards and i've just been blown away this has just started several months ago and the guys are struggling to keep up with the submissions there is so much interest in this it's it's really is incredible to see there's a stamp division there's a collectibles authentication guarantee which is really our special collectible services division and if you saw the meal arm strong Apollo 11 auctions on heritage that was this division that that certified these that these items came from the alarm strong's collection and really excited to say that there's a new division starting up as well our certified sports guarantee csg and that's that's starting up right now and we expect that to be under full steam in the in the coming months so again this is a large financially secure family with all with very deep pockets and why choose a pmg to certify your notes i think the the number one reason really is trust and without really simply put without trust pmg wouldn't exist that's the value of what you're offering the customers products that we certify the the buyers and sellers and auction houses out there have confidence that what we say this this note is in the holder is and collectors around the world feel comfortable based on this trust buying the notes online and sight unseen and in the covid pandemic these days we're seeing that being even more important online buying has really become a key way of collectors to be able to buy with shows out of commission right now and third party certification allows those buyers to have the confidence that what they're buying is is uh what they think they're buying um and that trust comes from impartiality as well so pmg graders do not buy and sell commercially while they may be collectors like myself we we are not allowed to to buy notes have them graded here and then commercially sell them it would be a very big conflict of interest grading your own notes in fact the the graders here are do not even know who is submitting these notes so that when they come into the very obviously when it's received we know who's submitting them the and the the verification team will know who's submitting them but then that information is taken off when it goes into the next gradient step so we're we're not getting influenced by who's submitting them or knowing that we're looking strictly at the note and it's because of this trust if i go into uh really key for most most collectors selling is is a huge part of this is that ultimately we all have to sell our notes so whether whether it's us that's going to sell them or whether it's our heirs that are going to sell them ultimately they're going to be sold we're just we're just short term holders of these notes so it's very very important and and the the trust factor that goes in this allows these notes to be sold much more easily they're they're very very liquid they're people trust them so for example that that thousand rupee indian note there it's a vf 35 it's a vf 35 in the holder and it's a vf 35 raw out of the holder why does it bring so much more in that holder and it does and and the reason is that a buyer will can trust that yes this is really a vf 35 it's not bob smith telling me it's vf 35 it's it's expert independent graders with their opinion saying it's it's vf 35 and what tends to happen when it's raw is people will downgrade you think that there could be a problem i can't see there may be some issue and they they won't tend to stretch so they'll say i'm going to factor that into my purchase price and you will see this time time again when you look at a raw note and you look at a certified note the certified note will will regularly and continually bring more money than that equal raw note and that and that reason is really coming down to trust and the the trust especially for if i look at pmg side is comes with our people and it's the expertise and we have more than 20 full-time graders here as well as numerous outside consultants that we that we talk to and i can tell you when i first joined pmg i thought i knew how to grade i know i'm pretty good no i was i was truly humbled when i when i came here to see the the expertise and i i realized how much more i needed to to learn and and our senior graders have more than a decade of experience they're grading eight hours a day five days a week they've seen all kinds of note types they really know their stuff and so you know perhaps i shouldn't have been surprised when i came here and said oh i have a lot to learn um you're just not putting in that kind of time and to become an expert of graders so while i think everyone should know how to grade also recognize there's a lot of stuff that's very difficult to see in a note if it's been expertly altered or processed the average grader might not be able to pick that up as much as a professional would and i'd also point out that the because grading is an opinion we we have a team effort here there's multiple graders that look at a note and give an opinion and then the final the the head grader will give the final opinion based on the feedback from the other the the grades received from the other graders what the final grade should be on that that note and and what i love about the the international focus that we have is that um there's there's expertise all over the world so if i got a test note in for example i could i could call our knee at a office and talk to one of the graders there is a world expert in and test notes if i get a colonial note which i'm i'm not as strong in i can go and talk to one of the guys in our us office here that can recite backwards and forwards everything you want to know about colonial notes so really what i'm saying is we're all learning from each other and there's experts it specialized experts in all part of this company and and we uh we pick up the information from each other and we all we all become better so we're continually learning i think also to point out on our expertise is that we have very very expensive high tech equipment that the average collector couldn't or just realistically wouldn't ever be able to have access to and for example x-ray fluorescent analyzer you might hear x-r-f that looks at non-organic elemental elemental properties of notes and for example the main notes we we know what the the characteristics are of the inks so we look at copper zinc lead other other things we can we will be able to tell is that is that indicative of the time period if not it could be an alert that uh that something strange is going on with this note we can also look at the note in different light sources ultraviolet infrared led it's very very uh useful and helpful for picking up alterations and you can see that image at the the bottom right you can see the the six has been altered in that serial number and we also have an extensive database that we keep of genuine and counterfeit notes really importantly here is the i think anyways the pmg guarantee and i'm always surprised when i talk to people on the floor that not a lot of people are really fully aware of the pmg guarantee or what it means and this is uh every note that is in a pmg holder is backed by a comprehensive guarantee which is the strongest in the industry and what the guarantee is is we're guaranteeing the note is genuine and it's not on it's not overgraded and this is there's no preset spending limit on this not capped out it's whatever that note is is worth and you know this is this is something that it's not just the person who submitted the note that has a guarantee that guarantee travels with the notes you could sell that note a hundred times over its lifetime and the hundredth buyer has that guarantee if you own that pmg holder you own the guarantee and anybody if you believe this is counterfeit or overgraded anybody can submit that note back to pmg under an appearance review and and challenge and we will we will review that note and on the customer service side i just want to talk about this this is a i i'm definitely biased here but i i do talk to pmg members out there and i i consistently hear that our customer service is the best in the industry and we have a long-term outlook we want your repeat business we we have a team of experts around the world that can respond in a timely manner to your calls so when you call here you'll actually talk to a human being and that can if they don't have the answer they can get the answer for you and they will and and then finally here on ypmg which i love is is the online resources and and these are available on our website free you can go and become a member at zero cost and have access to all our online resources and the for example the population report so this this shows you all the notes we've graded in what what condition they are so if you look at uh uh you know you're out on the floor and someone offers you a pmg graded 66th note and says you know this is the finest known it's extremely rare you'd be able to independently verify that just get on your phone pop into the site and look at this and if you suddenly see well actually there's there's uh 50 pmg 66th notes graded in there maybe it's not quite as rare as this person was telling me or yes it is quite as rare um there's also we offer a paper money guide and this is really the information that you typically find in the standard catalog of world paper money that shows the notes and gives you an estimated catalog value and i would say like any catalog values they're out of date as soon as you print them so ultimately you should always get uh you know the prices are changing weekly so you should get your information more from more recent things but what i like on this is it gives you a relative value so at least you can flip into here and see is this an expensive note or or a low cost note and on the pmg registry side this is the fun side of the organization really an online community we have both uh two two concepts here one a competitive set and a signature set and competitive sets allow you to build by grade rarity and other factors you can build a set and you compete against other people in that same set category and there's prizes awarded each year or a signature set you can you can build your own specialized customized set so it's really uh really to look you'll if you can share photos you can share how does your set compare against others that are trying to specialize so it's really a really an online community and then of course the there's a pmg lookup certification so that that number that i showed you on the back of the the holder that's the certification number you can go and punch that in to the to the website and it'll verify the information that we have in our system and online um and then and then finally here um the online resources that we have i i really like this it's uh if you go under set website and look at the uh the news side you can see tons of articles and announcements about what's happening in the industry what are some latest auction results what are some new discoveries that have been going on what are new issues and we also do independent research i do some of that as well that uh we'll do some background information on note and hopefully provide information for you that uh that you more to wear and make you a a more educated collector so i i think in if i just to summarize very quickly i won't go through everything but the benefits of third party certification key is this note genuine so they'll confirm that it's authentic then they'll give an independent opinion on the grade and then it gets encapsulated in an archival high quality um safe long-term storage holder and once you've decided that third party certification has some benefit to you then consider pmg as uh has your third party certification of choice and why pmg it's really i think considering we are the largest and we have the most uh consistency and backing in in auctions there's there's a deep trust of pmg and that trust translates into a higher selling price in the market uh we also have a very deep team of uh of graders on around they're coin to paper money everything but the expertise in paper money is is really world-class here and that's all backed up by a pmg guarantee so i hope you've uh learned a little bit more about third party certification and know a bit more about pmg and if you're considering to use a third party certification i welcome you to to log on to uh pmgnotes.com or .uk whatever the case may be and uh get more information about how you can submit notes to us so matt i thank you very much and i'll turn it back over to you okay brilliant thank you so much um i just love the idea of having that kind of seal of approval in your collection so you can kind of have have that um certification you know the way it's presented i think it works really nicely for bank notes um one question i we've we've had a lot of questions um so we'll we'll rattle through them but one question i have five point five million notes have been certified so there must be quite a large team of experts you have there absolutely and i mentioned that we have a 20 full time graders um and that's just the the tip of the iceberg because we also have for each country we had specialists that we can reach out to if there's some very unique note that that we haven't seen but on top of the the graders there's one part of our aspect we also have a team of research and what we call the verification side so when the note comes in they'll they first say here's what the note is before it goes to the gradient team so there's a big team looking at that we also have a receiving a separate receiving group that can expertly handle unpacking the notes and so it's it's really like a production line that each of these divisions has has very specific expertise and and and people that that really know what they're doing so after after grading then it goes to quality control and and slabbing and then another quality control so um yeah it's i would say there's a there's a huge deep team of of graders but we're also surrounded by some excellent support people here so it's a it is a large team yeah fantastic okay um well let's start with the questions and the first one was from uh rachel and she asked should you only use the service service if you want to sell your notes and again i'll be biased i'll say yes but here's the it's not quite that simple i i think for notes that uh you have to look at the value of the note if a note is uh is a worth worth five dollars or five pounds you have to ask yourself is it worth spending twenty dollars to get that graded the honest answer is probably not so there's you have to look at what the actual note is but for there's a lot of people that have an emotional attachment to the hobby they want to have consistency so all their notes yeah are graded for example in that case yes you certainly do it but but any note that's worthy of going into an auction at a higher value note i would say you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you don't have third party certification and that's really for the for the sales results and if you look at all the major auction houses in the world so spank for example on your side of the world or you look at heritage auctions or stacks bowers or win night or archives international or all the major auction houses dnw in london yeah um you know they they are they are in our increase in using third party certification and and we we dominate that and they do it for a reason one is they're achieving better results for their their clients and for themselves and they're also not having as many disputes on the grade if they say it's vf the client gets the note and says i don't i don't agree um you know they might have to accept a return here the note's great it's it's a third party neutral opinion if you have a problem with that greater still don't agree you're welcome to submit it to pmg but the the auction house is now uh that that responsibility has been transferred over the grade income it's it's really made their lives easier as well yeah yeah excellent okay and just um following on from that um someone else has asked what difference in revenue does a certified note bring against a similar uncertified note of the same quality so quite a lot yeah i'd love to have a consistent answer to that but um it can be significant and i'm talking about sometimes it's multiple times and where we find the real significant differences are tend to be in the higher uncirculated grades so the people that are looking for absolute perfection as you go from 60 to 70 you can you can see significant differences so if someone offers you here's an uncirculated note i'm selling you it's raw i'm not sure exactly what is i see it on ebay okay it looks okay but i'm not sure versus someone's offering on ebay uh 68 ebq note i guarantee you that that note could go for two thousand dollars versus maybe a couple hundred for that raw note because you just don't know what you have so i'd like to say there's a there's an easy answer um but we've seen it you know certainly you're talking about 20 or 30 more and in many many cases multiple times as you get up into those those uh high uncirculated grades because that a collector those those high uncirculated grades like the 67 68 69 70s are are obviously much more difficult to find a note in that type of christian condition and people will pay for them but they want to make sure it really is that and they'll pay significant more but you'll you'll also see you know just a vf note that's sold in an auction well there's a difference vf can be vf 20 to vf 35 and if someone tells me it's vf i'm going to have to assume it's maybe 20 25 um but if it's in a holder 35 okay this is a note that's that's a darn good note it's really approaching e f i'm going to pay more for that so that's uh i'm sorry i don't have an exact percentage but um there is a reason why auction houses are using third party certification and that's because it achieves more money and i guess the bottom line is it will it will increase the value so we can't say exactly what the percentage is but 99 times out of 100 it will increase that not the value the uh yeah and as i gave the example when we were talking about that um india thousand rupee note it's not that not that putting it in holders made it a better grade it's exactly the same note inside or outside the holder it's that confidence and trust that yes it really is this great it's been independently verified to be that great yeah okay great okay um nicolas asks i have a note i want to get graded what do i need to do okay and and i'll take it from the perspective of i'll tell nicolas he should be using pmg so i'll take it from that yeah that perspective but yeah from from pmg there's there's two ways you can submit your note you can uh become a certified collectible society member and that's a very easy and painless process you can go online and i mentioned uh you can even join for free to get to get our online uh resources but to actually submit notes to pmg um you have to become a paid member um and but that could be as little as 25 dollars i'm gonna take i'll take this from the u.s side because i know those members so the best but for as little as 25 dollar membership you can submit notes but there's also a couple of other membership so you can have like a hundred and fifty dollar membership but that credits you bet you get a hundred and fifty dollars in grading credits so essentially if you're going to submit notes it's free and you can also go up to the a higher level which we call the elite type membership which is uh two hundred and ninety nine u.s dollars but that it gives also gives you a hundred and fifty grading credit but you get 10 off grading so if you have a fair number of notes to do yeah that's uh that that's a real benefit so that's one way go up become a member and submit directly um if you don't want to do that or only have one or two notes and uh you can go through and one of our png authorized dealers and the authorized dealers um have been approved by png so they have to go through a rigorous process where they're vetted first but uh anybody who's a who's a png authorized uh dealer you would be able to submit a note into them and that dealer would then submit the note to us and you can find png authorized dealers around the world um on our website okay perfect okay um how do you proceed with very good counterfeit notes well your dark question there how do we proceed but let's see we um first of all i mentioned authentication is is so important so that is really the first thing when a grader is looking at this note you're going to in your mind is is this genuine before i start analyzing the grade is is this genuine so we have two most important tools that a grader will have and i brought is a magnifying loop and just a handheld ultraviolet light yeah and um so this we can see a lot with this so our own eyes and then these two pieces of equipment um we can usually see pretty quickly um either it's definitely counterfeit or there's something wrong with it if if we're suspicious about something um we can then send it into that specialized high tech equipment i was talking about that will then do some very deep analysis on it allow us to see clearly what's going on here so someone's added a piece and it's been professionally restored it's very unlikely to escape our our attention once a grader is spotted something's going on so if a note has been determined that it is um counterfeit it will not go in our holder and i also put a caveat on that um there sometimes we will put um what we call contemporary counterfeits yeah in holders that are collected so these are vintage collectible notes that where the banks are no longer in existence so i'm not talking about like a uh a modern federal reserve note or a bank of candidate note um that that's an obvious deception to try to uh to try to counterfeit a note and and it's illegal to hold those we would not put those in in holders but uh so just i'll say in general for once we determine that it is counterfeit it does not go in an holder unless in the rare case that there's a collectible value to a vintage note then we but it's clearly labeled on the holder this is a um uh contemporary counterfeit yeah okay and just following on from that you may have partially answered this one are there any notes that you won't grade that you just wouldn't yes and then you're right i partially answered that i think that uh maybe we'd fall into three broad categories of notes we wouldn't grade so first that we discussed is counterfeit we won't grade counterfeit notes um the second is altered notes so it's a genuine note but it's but they've done something to try to change the appearance of that to make it seem like something it's not and you saw the examples of the solid eight serial numbers i've corrected the three you turned that into an eight that's an alternate we will not put that in a holder it's it's meant to deceive collectors we're not going to give it a mileage by putting that into a into a holder and then and then i think the third broad category is what we call questionable authenticity and you have to remember when a note goes in a holder pmg is guaranteeing that this note is genuine so if we look at a note in a greater you it'll take his his loop and he analyzes the note he says something's going on you know they've redrawn some of this design it's uh i'm not quite a hundred percent sure exactly what's going on here and i think it could be and then we'll do some special tests on it if we are not a hundred percent convinced that we can accurately describe this note we will not put it in a holder so if we think something's going on we may use the term questionable authenticity and send it back it doesn't mean the note is generally counterfeit but it also means we don't have the confidence to put it into a holder so and you'll also see some more of the esoteric items come in that maybe we're outside the boundaries of of what we consider a numismatic item so so maybe something like a check that that wouldn't tend to to put that in a holder or maybe some satirical yeah no we wouldn't put it really i mean pmg's been very good over over the years we've been grading more as we get more knowledge more and more things are put into holds there's very few things we won't put in a holder aside from something that's seriously a counterfeit or or altered but again we have to be confident we can accurately describe it because if we can't how can we say something that we don't know exactly what this is is genuine so that's the that's the great area of questionable authenticity yeah makes sense okay um we're nearly out of time i think uh column just one more question um what are your favorite notes and why so how you know how did you start collecting notes at yourself why well the uh i i think uh i think collecting collecting is really a gene you're born with i don't know if everyone would agree with me but you're either a collector or not yeah but i i i i started collecting specifically notes i started with coins and i i lived in the united states at that time then moved to canada when i was young and in canada um they had two dollar bills and they were a different color than they were orange instead greens like i was just blown away i was like this this is really cool and it just i that always stuck with me and um for me my my favorite if you look at a category what's my favorite note it's vintage notes i love vintage notes from the early 1800s to the to the earlier 1900s large beautiful size artwork notes and to me it's the history i mean i this may sound funny but i i know the the royalties of victoria edward the seventh george the fifth george the sixth queen elizabeth when i say that i'm thinking in my mind is flashing images of notes going through that so i actually have learned a lot of my history through notes and i'm able to remember it it's an association for me but it's the love of the artwork and the history that that goes with it and um that that uh really sparked my collector gene that i think that i was born with to focus on on paper money but it was really to the time of year i mean i have my focus currently is as i mentioned south and central american bank notes but i started off because i lived in canada on on canadian notes i'd banked canada then as i actually started working and had a bit more money i could then collect more of the specialized private banks in canada i then moved to singapore for a few years and all of a sudden wow there's a whole world out here of of asian notes and i heavily got into that for many years and then one job took me into south and central america and i really look at the beauty of these notes and i think they're underappreciated and i i just uh i i just fell in love with that side so i've shifted my loyalties a few times but i'm gen generally i'd say it's vintage paper money and i and i just love the calmer ottering the community i've met so many people through the years that i just have a deep love of this hobby you just have a natural connection with them and it's a great diversion from your day-to-day job to be able to go and talk about something that's completely away from your normal job grind and just and just talk to like-minded people yeah yeah absolutely agree with all of that well that's brilliant collin thanks so much for your time today and for sharing your expertise you can see on the screen here we have some contact details there so the website and the email so if anyone else has any questions um any questions come to them after the webinar as i sometimes do um do feel free to email png the festival of coins is running until the 16th of october at allaboutcoins.co.uk so do take a look over there and don't forget we've got another webinar tomorrow when we're discussing the certification of coins tokens and medals so we'll see you there so thank you so much collin have a great day thanks very much ma'am goodbye everybody