Ok, so I know PCGS and NGC were founded in the late 80s.... But, when did they (any grading company) 1st start slabbing coins? I know the type of holder they used has been around since the late 60s, because the US Mint used something similar on there proof sets.
I believe that ANACS was the "first" grading company, but from my knowledge, they didn't issue them the way they are now (encased)
I believe ANACS was the first professional grading company (formed in 1972?), but they issued photo-certificates until around 1989. PCGS started slabbing coins in 1986, so I think they were the first professional company to slab coins. Hopefully Conder will come along soon, he'll definitely know the answer.
The first company to slab a coin was ACG. http://sampleslabs.com/acg.html ANACS wound up buying the rights to the ACG slab.
I guess it depends on how you define a slab. And how you define grading. It could be argued that the GSA was the first grading company to actually put a graded coin in a sealed slab. They started doing that in Dec. of 1971. Of course the grades assigned were either Uncirculated or Circulated, but the coins were put in sealed, hard plastic holders. Then there was the Redfield holder in 1976, quickly followed by the Paramount holder in the same year. Accugrade and all of the others came after these guys.
The first certification service was ANACS founded in 1970 and opened for business in April 1972. I did list the GSA and Paramount/Redfield slabs in the book. The GSA in 1972 did separate the coins by "grade" but only as circulated and uncirculated. Then came the Paramount/Redfields in 1974 did have a finer breakdown in grades (circulated, MS-60, MS-65, MS-65+ and later MS-63 and MS-67) but they did not accept outside submissions and there were no official definitions of what those grades meant. The first companies to accept outside submissions and do grading were INS and ANACS in 1979. They used the grading standards from the Oficial ANAGrading Guide published in 1978. There were only three grades of MS 60, 65, and 70. These were not slabs though, they were Photocertificates. The first US company to put it all together was Accugrade in 1984. Outside submissions, authentication and grading, and the coins were sealed in a hard tamper resistant plastic holder, the slab. These early slabs were photoslabs that contained both the coin and an enlarged photograph of the coin. PCGS came along in Feb 1986 as somewhere around the eighth grading service and the third or fourth company to use slabs. NGC began in Sept of 1987, and ANACS the first certification service and one of the two first grading services did not switch over to slabs until around November of 1989. Who knows, if they had switched to slabs back in 1984 after Accugrade introduced them they might have remained the top Third Party Grading service. The other two major services, ICG and SEGS did not come into existence until 1998. Now all of these relate to US companies. For the most part they were all beat out by a company from South Africa. South African Gold Coin Exchange was grading and slabbing, in hard plastic holders, their own and outside submitters coins in 1975. The slabs were serial numbered and the coins were graded on believe it or not a 105 point grading scale. The only thing this company graded were proof Kruggerands. (As fas I can tell the company started in 1972 but their first holder was a carboard holder with the coin in an attached sealed vinyl pouch.)
A certificate issued by a TPG guaranteeing authenticity and/or grading that includes a photo of the actual coin so that the certificate and the coin can be matched up. This was supposed to keep a certificate from being used to sell a different coin. Unfortunately people get lazy and didn't bother checking. Back in the early 80's there was a big market in ANACS photocertificates being bought and sold so sellers could pair up a cleaned or questionable piece with a good certificate and sell it for a premium as "certified". Still happens to a small extent today. At the Michigan State show I had a dealer show me an SVDB that he had with an ANACS certificate. He was real proud of the coin until I pointed out that it didn't match the coin on the cetificate. Many companies used photocertificates at first. The TPG didn't completely switch to slabs until late 1989. The only company that has used a photocertificate since then has been NGC, and that was a special case. Here are examples of the first and last certificate types used by ANACS And this is the NGC Photocertificate. These were only used on the 700+ foreign gold coins from the Eliasberg collection. Most of these no longer exist because NGC gave the buyers the option to send the coin and certificate back in for encapsulation and most buyers took them up on it. You will also note that NGC limited their liability on these to a maximum of $100.
