NGC is not going to charge $5 extra to put SH#’s on their slabs
Jeff Shevlin · October 28, 2021
Twice in 2021 I received emails from NGC stating they were going to start charging $5 to put SH#’s on their slabs. After a few email exchanges with NGC President Rick Montgomery it was clarified that the charge will only apply if the SH# (or HK#, or any other attribution #) is not provided on the submittal.
That is indeed good news for collectors that plan to send their So-Called Dollars to NGC for grading. In fact Rick said that NGC from this date forward is going to be putting the entire SH# on the holder. Previously they were omitting the last component of the number that indicates the metal composition.
So-Called Dollars used to be cataloged by Kenny numbers, based on Kenny’s landmark article published in the 1950’s. H&K numbers were popularized by the 1963 book by Hibler & Kappen and the 2008 re-print. Now we are in a transition to SH #’s for So-Called Dollars, for Shevlin & Hyder. All of the major grading firms, NGC, PCGS, ANACS and ICG have started to use SH #’s.
See the NGC slab to the left. NGC previously had been omitting the final letter of the SH# which is the metal composition component. In the future the metal composition will be on NGC slabs.
See the PCGS slab to the right. The SH 25-2 is followed by the composition, in this case Gilt Bronze.