Sometimes NGC Just P.........Me Off!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, but I have to disagree with your assessment that the scratch is not visible with the naked eye - without magnification in other words. I say that because professional graders do not use a loupe or magnifying glass to grade coins, they do it with their eyes only. So rather obviously the scratch is visible to the naked eye.

Collectors should do the same thing, that is the standard grading procedure. You are not supposed to grade coins with a loupe. The only time you should use a loupe is if you see something that makes you think the coin might be a fake, and you need a closer look to make sure. Or, when you think the coin might be worthy of a 69 or 70 grade. Only those two grades require that no hairlines be visible at 5x magnification.

The only other time a loupe of any kind should be used is when trying to identify a particular variety or error. But that is not grading, that is attribution and attribution has nothing to do with grading.

The only other thing I would say to you keemao is what I said before. These practices and standards about what constitutes damage and what does not constitute damage were established by the numismatic community before most of us were ever born.

Bag marks, reed marks, and the like are not now nor have they ever been considered damage. That is largely because two coins banging together can only cause a mark of very limited severity. Simply put that is all that is possible. And severity is one of the issues.

Damage on the other hand has no limitation, a gouge, a scratch, a rim dent, harsh cleaning, over-dipping, corrosion - none of these things have any limitation on severity. And all of them are caused by something besides normal use and handling of the coins - the other issue. Coins cannot get scratched, gouged, or dented, by other coins in a bag, it cannot happen. This damage can only be caused by outside forces.

Those are the two things that define damage.

 

I agree with you, they never should have started putting problem coins in slabs. And until recent years, they never would.

But since 80% or more of all unslabbed coins are problem coins, and since they were running out of coins to slab (other than modern coins), they saw the potential of slabbing problem coins as a means of keeping them in business. It opened up a whole new niche of the marketplace for them. And, it is what their customers, at least most of them, wanted. So after 20 years of not slabbing problem coins, they changed their company policies.

Good for them, bad for the hobby.

 

To the best of my knowledge, they are all slabbed already. But since I do understand what you mean and to answer your question - no, I would not. You see, I have never sent any coin, not 1, in to a TPG to be slabbed. I never needed to get one slabbed.

 

Just curious, do you BUY slabbed coins and keep them as-is, or break them out? Or do you not purchase TPG coins at all?

 

LOL ! I really did laugh out loud when I read this thread this morning.

It's all been said a hundred times before, and most has been said again already right here in this thread. But to answer questions I'll respond with the short version.

No, I do not own or collect coins anymore. But I spent most of my life collecting and studying coins, and I still study coins every single day. And xGAJx, if you'd like to see some of the coins I used to collect, at least those I collected most recently, just click on my name, go to my Profile page, and look at albums I have listed there.

As for slabbed coins, yes, I have bought thousands of them. And no, I never cracked any out. But over the course of my life I also bought thousands of raw coins, some of them rather expensive by most standards.

I was able to do this, without risk, because of two things. 1 - my knowledge of coins, and 2 - because of 1 very simple rule that I always followed. It's actually the same rule that everyone should follow but few do. That is to only buy coins from people who know coins and who you know and trust. If you do that, you'll never have to worry if the coin is slabbed or raw.

Why will you never have to worry ? It's easy, because if, on the rare occasion, there ever is a problem you can return the coin and get your money back. Follow that 1 simple rule and you'll never have to worry if a coin is slabbed or raw either.

And make no mistake, if you don't know coins yourself, you have to worry just as much about the slabbed coins as you have to worry about the raw coins. That rule applies to all coins.