I had a copper-nickel piece from Mauritius that I dumped awhile back, maybe a $4 coin. Was in an ANACS slab (LWH) as MS64. The reason I ask...,, I have this funny feeling the "slab anything and you're sure to make money" approach to coins is about to become a thing of the past. Especially with the boost in NGC fees for economy submissions. If you have any doubt about that, go to eBay, search in Russia on "NGC" -and then display closed auctions, displayed with lowest price realized to highest price realized. The first 200 or so coins you will see all sold for a loss when grading and auction fees are included. I don't think that sort of thing can go on forever. I expect the same thing will eventually happen to many common PF70 and MS70 modern issues, they will be selling for a fraction above melt within the next 10 years. Meanwhile, my reigning champion... champion...
I don't think it's as "dramatic" as you suggest. Firstly, the majority of those coins in the first 200 are from a handful of large volume sellers. They don't pay the same price you and I do for certification of coins -- they get discounts for large submissions and they ship many (sometimes hundreds of) coins in some submissions such that shipping / insurance almost become negligible on a per coin basis. Remember, these high volume sellers on eBay also aren't paying 10% eBay fees per transaction -- most are paying I think 6% if they have an eBay store. Secondly, many of the coins being slabbed and sold that are selling at these low prices are themselves very inexpensive (as you already noted). If you take a look at the sellers, they often have 2 or more of the same coin graded -- and the ones with higher grades do sell for higher prices -- so someone is paying attention to the TPG holders (even if you and I both don't really care about the difference between a PF68UC and a PF66UC modern Russian clad proof). Lastly, again because most of these coins are sold by high volume sellers, they can afford to sell many coins for less than their investment in them so long as their overall sell-through is above and beyond their costs. The higher price tag items likely more than make up for the few items they sell at a loss. As a buyer, I'm actually loving these kinds of sellers. I can sometimes find an example of an obscure modern coin slabbed and pay less than a raw example in original packaging. To include items like this in my custom NGC registry set (which requires that coins be certified by NGC or PCGS), these sellers save me the cost of having to submit these items to NGC for certifications myself. Here's a nice recent coin I picked up for $27. I have dozens of coins in the range of what certification would cost alone.
They probably sent in a bunch of the same exact coin in a bulk submission hoping for high MS/PF grades. The ones that don't grade super high still have to be sold. Even if they lose $ on a handful of coins, overall they still profit.
Well that certainly is a nice coin, and in MS69 which means you didn't get gouged too bad on it. I would say your coin rises above the type of coins I am talking about because it has such a terrific design. I was referring more specifically to coins like 1961 Russian Roubles and circulation struck junk that was never (and never will be) rare. I am not privy to the negotiated prices that submitters get at NGC, but aside from the TV shows that are sending in literally hundreds of thousands of coins to be graded, I would be very surprised if NGC gave much (if any) kind of break on submissions just because someone has 500 coins that are all common 20th century stuff. Plus, I'm not certain these sellers on eBay are even the ones who sent them in, but rather they are the 3rd or 4th guy to own them in many instances. If you look at flacoin (feedback of 48431) most of the coins the guy sells are raw, many of them nicer than the stuff in slabs he sometimes offers. I still think someone is getting killed sending these in, but I may be wrong on that.
I have a 1999 Delaware Quarter in an ICG MS-65 slab which I got as promotional item. Value is less than $10. I also have a 1967 10 Lirot Israeli Victory Coin in MS-67 which I paid to have conserved by NCS due to PVC from the originally issued holder. All told, I'm over $35 into a coin that's worth little more than melt. However, it's the last coin my grandfather gave me.
