How do people get coins out of slabs to resubmit them?

I have coins in NGC & PCGS holders but as far as I’ve seen there is no way to open them safely without risking damage to the coin using brute force to absolutely destroy the holder to get it out.

However by doing that I imagine there would be sharp pieces of plastic everywhere that would scrape up the coin.

Is there a safer way to open a TPG holder to get the coin out for resubmission?

 

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Wrap the coin tightly in a small towel and smack it with a hammer. I cracked 5 coins today, and there was almost no chance of damaging the coins.

 

Fire might work and give you some attractive toning based on what I've seen on another thread

 

Ah ok thanks! I appreciate the info

 

Um NO!!

Fire & collectible coins shouldn’t be anywhere near each other.

Especially rare collectible coins with hefty price tags.

 

One of these days I am going to figure out how to link @lordmarcovan short video for cracking coins. He simply placed them between the gaps on his deck and stepped on the slab and it cracked open pretty as you please.

 

Oh wow for real?

They can’t be put together again once they’re opened right?

If so I can imagine people opening cases, taking the coins out, and putting fakes in and closing them back up.

 

The best way to break out depends on the slab company, what TPG are you trying to crack?

There are some really helpful videos on YouTube, just look up "How to crack [TPG Name] slabs"

 

If you crack out a coin take care not to damage the coin but no matter how you free that coin the slab is destroyed.

Edited to correct spelling

 

PCGS & NGC are the only TPG coins I buy.

I just wanted to know how to break coins out of both of them.

Right now I have an NGC coin I want to send in for re-grading.

 

Yeah for sure!

I would probably practice with some cheaper coins just to get the hang of it before trying it with a $1,500 coin.

Like I have some graded (I didn’t send them in) Indian Head cents & Buffalo Nickels that are only worth about $10-$30.

 

If you have access to a small band saw, I've heard they work well, just trim a bit off all four edges.
But I've just used the hammer method like @ksparrow, never had a problem. Stand them on edge on a solid surface and tap away.

 

Oh no.... Those slabs are hermetically sealed. Only way to access the coin inside is to destroy the slab.

 

Ah ok thanks I’ll try that!

I’ll probably do a few test runs on some cheaper graded coins before I try it on $1K+ coins. Then if I screw up it won’t damage a rare & valuable coin.

 

They are sonically sealed, not hermetically sealed.

 

I've seen a lot of attractive AU coins sold on eBay as raw "Gems". I've always suspected they were crack-outs. Caveat emptor.

 

Why would anyone crack a coin out just to sell it as raw?

I would pay more for a graded MS64 coin than a raw coin that looks like MS64.

 

Yes, but would you pay MS-64 prices for a AU-58 "graded" coin? You might for a raw coin that "looks" MS-64.

I got fooled once. I bought a raw 1921 Peace Dollar that I was convinced was MS-66 all day long. I sent it in and it came back "MS Details".

I would have felt a little better had they at least labelled it "MS-66 Details".

 

What I use sometimes

 

Then again sometimes they are easy to open