So I have my first two coins...you can see them on another post. I currently have them in Mylar flips. Is this the best way to keep them? I'm interested in feedback considering my coins are over $100 purchases and most of my future prospect purchases are going to be more of the same price range. And when I do purchase a Athens tetradrachm, should I store it the same or send it for grading and slabbing considering it's going to be a $500+ purchase?
flips are fine and they will protect your coins. As for slabbed coins it depends whether or not you want to collect coins in slabs. it does not preserve the coin anymore than a flip and it does not add any large premium to the value of a coin. Do as you please with your coins but as your collection grows you should put your coins in safes and then hide the safes. You never know who might come by and swipe that $2500 you got laying on your desk at a house party.
Thanks for the advice. Im not a big fan of slabbing cuz I like to hold history in my fingertips. I went to a coin show here in evansville indiana and many expensive ancients were slabbed so I did not know if that was a good standard or not. I think I will continue using mylar flips for now. They look good and are cheap.
I usually only buy slabbed coins if they are a rarity. From a collector's point of view this is not neccesary if you learn how to spot counterfeits. From a dealers point of view a coin slabbed by PCGS generally speaking instills more confidence in the potential buyer because he/she knows the coin is authentic and is roughly around the grade on the sticker. Bottom line: if you are selling maybe get them slabbed first. If not keep them in flips and learn everything about the coins you collect. You could also put your coins and perhaps a few pictures together and before you know it you will have a nice coin exhibit throughout your house.
As I understand it from a previous thread here, the slabbing does not guarantee authenticity as its too risky for the grading companies to do so. I suppose you could infer it. My own view, just keep those damn awful slabs away from ancients....not needed. Handle them with gloves if you must or store them in capsules you can open if you think its necessary, but dont lock them up, they havent done anything wrong!!! Who knows what the long term effects of slabbing are anyway? its not a god given that the coins wont rot away in there?. Will they be any more valuable to you slabbed? well I would never buy a slabbed coin out of principle and because I cannot get the feel for a coin which is important to me, so theres one buyer you will have lost already and I imagine many buyers would want to handle and inspect the coin too. So, if it cannot be authenticated by a slab, the only purpose one has is for grading (ie. this coin in this tomb is this grade in the opinion of the grader) and to protect the coin from damage. Damage can be prevented by correct storage and handling as already said and grading is a difficult one with ancients anyway and in my opinion varies depending on who you ask, which makes it pointless. There are many members here, myself included, who own some right pigs ........ Really, who cares about the grade of an ancient in letters and numbers.....it is what it is and if you like it buy it, if you dont .......dont.
You mentioned gloves...is it not ok to handle an ancient coin with your bare hands? I know its a definite no-no for other coins.
Here is a link to a similar thread ... there are actually a few of these types of threads if you do a search ... http://www.cointalk.com/threads/coin-storage-used.224409/#post-1663425 good luck, new coin-brother
I was suggesting it if you/others are afraid of handling ancients as an alternative to entombing them......I personally slaver all over mine and have several next to the bed in case i wake up and feel lonely.....never can have enough ancient coin fondling....thats why I have a few Chinese cash coins too, but you need a square............
I suspect that eventually your collection will grow to the point where you have several raw coins & several slabbed coins. Therefore, it might behoove you to assemble a collecting method that will accept both slabbed & raw coins. I'm currently using eagle 3-ring pages for slabs & 20-pocket 3-ring pages for raw coins. Both types of pages can be housed in 3-ring binders. (I use 1/2" wide 3-ring binders). Make sure that you are using hard (brittle) flips. If the 2x2 flips are soft to the touch & smell like a new shower curtain, then they may be harmful to your coins under long term archival storage. The soft flip material includes plasticizers that outgas & can contaminate your coins (PVC residue). Really thick & hard archival flips can be purchased from Forum. Those are the only flips that I use in my ancient collection. I've only been collecting ancient coins for a year or two. It has been said several times here at CT. With a small ancient coin collection, there is no bad way to house the coins. When you have a large ancient collection, there is no good way to house all the coins.
[QUOTE="josh's coins, post: 1907929, member: 51487" From a dealers point of view a coin slabbed by PCGS generally speaking instills more confidence in the potential buyer because he/she knows the coin is authentic and is roughly around the grade on the sticker. [/QUOTE] Please post photos of PCGS slabbed ancients. I've never seen one. I own zero slabs and most serious collectors of ancients avoid them or break them open when they do get a slabbed coin. Slabbed ancients are made to appeal to general collectors who want some ancients but don't want to learn much about them. The only slab company I have any respect for is NGC but I will not pay one cent extra for a coin in their slab either. There are slab look holders containing coins that have not been seen by anyone who knows anything about ancients so don't buy plastic; buy coins. If the hobby gets to the point that we have trouble finding Raw ancients to collect, I may have to retire but at my age I probably should stop buying so many anyway. For most of my collecting life I preferred to keep coins in open trays but when my collection got to about 3000 pieces I realized that these were wasting space and I started putting more coins into paper envelopes which fit in the safe deposit box more easily. If I only had a few hundred coins, I still would use trays where I could handle them easily.
Wow => apparently that kid already has Doug's attitude (God help us!!) "Ummm stevex6, I think that coin has been smoothed and tooled!!"
Please post photos of PCGS slabbed ancients. I've never seen one. I own zero slabs and most serious collectors of ancients avoid them or break them open when they do get a slabbed coin. Slabbed ancients are made to appeal to general collectors who want some ancients but don't want to learn much about them. The only slab company I have any respect for is NGC but I will not pay one cent extra for a coin in their slab either. There are slab look holders containing coins that have not been seen by anyone who knows anything about ancients so don't buy plastic; buy coins. If the hobby gets to the point that we have trouble finding Raw ancients to collect, I may have to retire but at my age I probably should stop buying so many anyway. For most of my collecting life I preferred to keep coins in open trays but when my collection got to about 3000 pieces I realized that these were wasting space and I started putting more coins into paper envelopes which fit in the safe deposit box more easily. If I only had a few hundred coins, I still would use trays where I could handle them easily. [/QUOTE] Doug, that tray looks FULL of big nice coins.........I would seriously like just a peek into the mind of the (much admired) collector and coin expert (without doubt, although I know you are a modest gentleman and wouldnt claim it yourself ). Is the tray themed? is there a combination of silver and bronze? what are they all......please?? looks like a beautiful bunch...........what makes a tray a tray? is there a correlation between each adjacent coin and can you remember the circumstances of each coin purchase? My guess is yes, you can.......your posts have told me a lot about you, (I think) and I hope you dont mind the assumption, but to be honest, I am a bit of a Doug smith fan..............and I am sure I am not alone on this forum
The trays I have came in three sizes - 77, 40 & 24 coins. The photo shows a 40. It contains coins too big to fit in a 77; coins too large to fit it go in a 24; I don't own any coins larger than a 24 would hold but my AE46 Ptolemy is getting close. The coins are in order by Sear number within their size range. That is one of the things that I really did not like about trays since it would be nice to have everything in one sequence like you can in flips but a 24 tray full of hemiobols is absurd. The first coin (bottom edge) is an AE27 of Gades and the opposite corner is a tetradrachm of Ptolemy X. At the time this was taken, there were a couple empty slots in this tray but when I bought a few more fat coins, I had a problem. That is the problem with trays but you just end up with a lot of blanks for a while and then have to buy more to fill the spaces. Smaller coins follow a similar order but some of them fudged the order a bit so all the coins of one ruler could fit in one or two trays. For Septimius, there was a tray for Alexandria, several for Emesa and several for Rome but they all got put in envelopes now (as have the Greeks). Trays were a lot of fun when I had enough to hold everything in a reasonable order but I decided not to buy more and go to envelopes since I have photos (all in proper order) on computer and the Nook I carry with me to shows. I will try to inspect every coin at least once a year but will probably lose some to bronze disease and laziness since envelopes are harder to scan for green than trays were. I have records of each purchase (from whom, when and how much) but not circumstances. You can see obvious groups like shows where I see my favorite dealer will have his name 20 times in a row and big sales like the Bickford-Smith collection have way too many CNG entries all together. Without these notes, I doubt I could recall as many as half of the coins but there are some from the 80's that remain clear. I probably have 1000 coins that I would not buy again if given the chance but none of you would (or should) buy them for what I paid and I don't see any reason to sell them for nothing. If we took all our coins from the regular posters here and mixed them in a bucket, I really believe that I would be able to sort out most of mine without references. Could you?
Thanks Doug, theres my goal right there..........order in my life and in my coin collection. My life may be slightly trickier than my coins.... I do have one theme which has started, a collection of as many Chersonesos hemidrachm as I can get with different reverse types. the criteria, the best quality of each type as I can afford. I have 4 and counting.
