WEB SITE REVIEW: PCGS COINFACTS.COM

Here are some comments on the new PCGS CoinFacts web site. There is an 'Introductory Offer' price of $95.40 for one year, a bit less expensive than the monthly rate. I don't know if this will be a standard annual rate or if it truly is a short-term offer. I subscribed at the annual rate.

There is a lot of information on the new site, though accessing all of it requires the user to pay attention to the embedded links on each page. Using the 'Mercury' dime as an example, the link on the Home page takes you to a page with general information and obverse/ reverse photos of the type. Also here are three additional tabs, Date Only; Date and Mint Mark; and Date, MM, and Major Variety.

Each tab displays a list of year dates of the type (or dates, mintmarks, and varieties, depending on which tab is clicked- Date and Mint Mark appears to be the default). The listed dates are also links; click on one of these and a new page opens, presenting brief historical data, related coins and varieties, rarity and survival tables, additional links to the PCGS price information and population reports (the same format as before), condition census information, and public auction information: lots of good stuff, but on several pages.

I haven't used the new site enough to completely appreciate the usefulness of those three tabs, though each apparently provides a different means of data aggregation. I am puzzled by a few things. For example, the 1942/1-D and 1942-D/D dime varieties don't show up in the Date, MM, and Major Variety tab list, but are accessible under the Related Coins and Varieties link of both tabs that show date and mintmark. Perhaps more experience will bring greater clarity.

One information set that I have not yet found, available on the 'old' site, is a composite list of mintage information. Mintage data is there, but to find the mintage numbers from all mints for one year requires back-and-forth clicking. If your interest is a year-by-year comparison of mintage data, the old site displays that more directly.

My biggest surprise, actually a disappointment, was that even though I was/ am already a paid user of the PCGS Population Report, the new CoinFacts site would not accept that login information to allow access. So I have now paid twice to access certain PCGS data, and will have overlapping subscriptions for awhile. Whether this is a user error, early adopter glitch, "not a bug but a feature", or whatever, I cannot tell; but I'm effectively being double-billed for the same services.

Overall though, looks to be a good data source, with a couple of caveats.To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: PCGS LAUNCHES NEW VERSION OF COINFACTS.COM (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v12n31a14.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web