"Jeff Garrett's article about the transition to digital photography in numismatics overlooked an important milestone. NGC was likely the first company to employ this technology when it launched Photo Proof late in 1994. The official announcement was published in Coin World and Numismatic News on the covers of their first issues dated 1995.

"I'm intimately familiar with this development, as I was hired by NGC the year before specifically to write the text for Photo Proof. Even today it remains a small part of my overall workload, though at that time it was anticipated I'd be occupied with this one service all day, every day. Indeed, the first couple years were extremely busy ones, both in terms of writing and in the promotional efforts. At the 1995 FUN Show and that same year's ANA Convention in Anaheim I actually manned a separate Photo Proof booth, and the "proof" of this is attached.

"These days nearly everyone can perform their own digital photography with varying degrees of prowess, so the demand for Photo Proof has diminished. Still, NGC has expanded its line of photographic services to fill other needs of dealers and collectors, and the quality of these images is superb. Over the past quarter century NGC has produced many thousands of Photo Proofs, but how many still exist is unknown---yet another collectible to seek."