Unslabbed Early US Gold

i have an affinity for early US gold and am routinely picking up quarter and half Eagles. It just occurred to me that I seldom see these entombed in a slab. I have a handful of double eagles and they are slabbed. I don’t think I have ever seen bullion Gold at market that wasn’t slabbed....... The current mindset in our hobby has folks slabbing even the most common pieces. Why then are the 19th-20th century quarter & half eagles not receiving the same love? Or am I just doing my business at the wrong places?

 

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It can be good to buy slabbed pieces as a way to protect against fakes.

 

I don’t disagree. So why then am I not seeing quarter and half eagles in slabs on my dealers shelves? The Gold I see slabbed are bullion Gold and double eagles.

 

I don’t buy slabbed early gold
I buy from apmex . Provident and a few other specific vendors.

 

Indian head quarter eagles are especially vulnerable to fakery.

 

Well I learned my lesson early
with the first unslabbed gold coin I bought. It was a 2 1/2 Indian dated 1925. I got the coin at a jewelry shop.
Got it home and looked it up.
Guess what, there were no Philly 1925 quarter eagles made in 1925, only Denver made the 1925-D.
I took it to 2 different coin shops and both said it was fake. Got my money back.
From that day on I only bought slabbed gold.

 

Because they’re cleaned or damaged and won’t receive a numerical grade?

 

+1
Most of our early coinage has been cleaned.
A ton of our early gold coinage has been jewelry mounted, then removed

 

If you look at Apmex I’m sure they don’t make much on nonslabbed gold. More profit for them with slabs. They also give grades to their gold as BU, AU XF, cleaned etc so you cAn pick your price point.

I assume dealers prefer slabbed for the profit margin over nonslabbed. Think of all the places you can buy cheap from and they try to move you up to slabbed over ththe phone.

If you’ve e read Apmex posts here on Ct they certify their coins as real so that goes a long way for me.

The one dealer in my area with a large selection of raw and slabbed old gold also are at the very top end of price points.

 

"Early gold" to me means Capped Bust era. But I assume you are talking about Liberties and Indians vs modern bullion and commemoratives.

There are two reasons for dealers to keep US coins raw: 1. It's not worth it to slab, or 2. It would (or has before) Details grade.

Slabbing most coins costs $30-60 ea. depending on how many you are shipping. Many generic gold coins are selling for less than that premium above melt, so the slab isn't worth it. The rest fit into category 2.

 

I'd rather buy it slabbed then crack it, at this point US gold is one of the most counterfeited numismatic currency. Then again I like having my coins breathe.

 

I buy into this. I think you are exactly right.

 

I can count the number of places I would trust raw classic gold from on one hand. To many fakes and to many have been worked on, it's just playing with fire at this point.

 

Me too. My main dealer who I have implicit trust in and Apmex. Also have bought a couple here on CT that I have been quite pleased with. I used to believe I could sniff out a fake a mile away. But some of the fakes that have been showing up here lately are pretty darned sophisticated. I am not so confident in my fake sniffing abilities anymore.

 

Speaking of Indian quarter eagles, PCGS says that one time a collector sent a complete set to be slabbed and graded.

Every one of them was a fake.

The story is —at least was — on their web site.

 

Yes I heard that story. I think it was printed in Coin World.

 

I would definitely believe that's happened before, especially since so many of those fakes are actually gold

 

I get my pre-33 "junk gold" bullion coins from places like APMEX. Because of NY state tax regulations, I need to pay less than spot+15% for it. As long as it's real gold, I don't care that much whether of not it's counterfeit.

I do have some US earlier gold with a higher premium, and most of it is slabbed, especially the 1 and 3 dollar coins.

 

What a coincidence I was just talking to a dealer about some gold coins. They basically consider a lot of the coins bullion with a small margin. I just bought a $10 PGC coin for spot + about 15%. He even mentioned until you get to some high MS coins there is not much of margin on them. I can understand that. And all of mine happens to be PCGS graded.

 

I actually went into my LCS http://www.nscoins.com/ the other day to look at $5 Indians. Only 1 was slabbed (no pic). The rest are shown in my (bad) pic. Thinking about taking a closer look at the 1910-S and the 1911 AU58 this coming week.