So I know it costs about $30.00 a coin or something to get them graded I may be high or low. So I have a few coins I am considering getting graded, but I am waiting because they're stored so there is no rush (I think). BUT How is it I can buy a PCGS MS66 graded coin for like $5.00 if thats less than it even costs to get graded? Am I missing something? Thanks
I have seen this also and I think the cheap slabs are the common coins that did not get the high (expensive) grade the submitter expected. High grade (MS68 and up) coins for common dates can bring unbelievable prices (at least to me). Registry sets are a part of this reason. I can see submitters gambling and sending in a group of their highest grade coins from BU rolls hoping to get one jackpot coin. The rest are sold cheap (but usually still higher than raw) just to get some of their initial money back. It's just another part of the slab game. Still remember, buy the coin and not the slab.
On modern coins think of the grading fee's as money you will never recoup. If the coins is valued at $10.00 and the grading fee's are $30.00 you aren't goint to be able to sell the coin for $40.00. Now an MS 70 grade for a modern coin is a different story. With older coins, especially Key dates, the coin will sell for much more if certified. The grading fee's are usually recouped from key dates. Along with the grading fee's you are responsible for return postage and insurance.
Ohhh kk thanks that does make sense I was worried that these cheap slabs im picking up now were Fake, but that makes me feel beter Anyway why would someone fake slab a coin to make $5.00 lol
Unless someone is a master grader, they may have trouble telling a one or 2 point difference on the grade of a raw coin, so if they have a monster box of ASE, it is no use for them to go through and separate out what they think are 68,69,or 70,so they send the whole box in. A TPG will make a bulk deal with high number of same coin submissions, I have seen on the forms for some $10 for 100 same coins, and have heard big dealers say less than $5 for 1000 or more. The plan is to make big bucks on the 70s, medium bucks on the 69, and pay for coin cost and slabbing with the 68s, and minimize the loss with the ones below, just getting the cost of the coin and maybe a few bucks. If you find the right threads with the search, there are some who have described how they have done this. Jim
Well a lot of coins, might just be throw ins... Like if you join PCGS at Platinum level, you have 8 free submissions, and all of them have to be used at the same time. So lets say the guy had got 7 coins graded, but needed an 8th, and just threw in a random coin, and it got graded that way OR Somebody used their BULK package, and got coins graded at a discount, and might have got hundreds of the same coin graded OR Somebody though it was a MS68, worth more of course, and it came back a 66, so they were disappointed, didn't want to keep the coin and sold it There are lots of possibilities as to why coins that are graded can sell less than grading fees
For the casual collector to submit a few coins a year it's not cost effective. PCGS' bread and butter is the professional dealer who sends thousands of dollars of business their way every year. For those dealers it's just another cost of doing business. If they wind up with a couple of clunkers it's no big deal since the cost is spread out over all the coins they submit, and the increased value of only a few coins is more than enough to cover the ones that don't pan out.
Current value of PCGS slabbed coins: To see recent prices and charts showing actual PCGS sales, swing on over to shoeboxcoins.com - they have hundreds of thousands of actual PCGS sales categorized by coin, mint mark and grade, so you can easily see what coins have sold for and how their prices are trending. I would personally not bid on anything over $10 until I saw one of these reports that shows what the coins are really selling for these days.
I suspect the $5 slabs are someone's "mistakes". Someone, likely a bulk submitter, going for a money coin (i.e. 67 higher depending on the coin/date) and the cheap 66's are their mistakes.
I send coins to NGC about every month. For modern coins 1955 to present it cost $12.50 per coin. If you add shipping both ways you are up to $14.00 per coin. To me sending coins to get graded is like playing the lottery, sometimes you win and well sometimes you lose. Here is an example. I bought a roll of both the 2009 P & D Sacagawea's. I searched through both rolls and found 8 P's that I thought were at least MS66 and I only found 3 D's that I thought were MS66. So I sent in 11 coins total and it cost $15.55 per coin or $171.05. Well I ended up with 2 P's MS67's. These are the top pops and sell for big bucks. So I got two coins that will foot the whole bill. So the rest I will sell and some will sell below the $15.55 but I made money after everything is done. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260425468779
I see examples of this all the time at coin shows. Lately about 50% of all coins at these shows are slabbed. Usually when I find a normal, not rare, coin in a slab that interest me, I tell the dealer I'm not about to spend money on that coin just because someone slabbed it. They usually go down substantially in price. True I've seen many coins for far less than the slab fees alone. One reason I feel is the many people that actually collect coins in slabs. I've talked to people at coin shows that tell me they have hundreds and hundreds of slabbed coins and even the very latest ones. The ones that really get me are the latest coins worth less than a dollar in a slab. I guess that in about a few hundred years those too would be worth something. As for me I have no slabbed coins. When I do buy them, I open them and put the coin in an Album.
Some people just prefer the comfort of a slab. I feel my local dealer appropriately (or tries to) price on coin based of the coin and not the slab. I know they had some problem free ANAC's graded large cents - that just did not match the grade and with 0 eye appeal. They sold them cheap. Also remember that some of those moderns need to be slabbed just so people can complete their registry sets. That is a big deal for some people.
Check out the service's web site. Different fees for different coins; grading fees are much less than $30 in many cases. Moderns + bulk submissions result in fees closer to $10-$12 / coin - a little less in some cases. www.pcgs.com www.ngccoin.com
Notice Schatzy is treating this as a game of skill, not just a game of chance. He looked at lots of coins and used skill to determine which ones had a better chance of getting higher grades. If you just shotgun, pot-luck submit lots of coins as a game of chance you'll wind up a big, big loser. Schatzy... may I ask which service you used ?
With ASEs, 98% will be 69s and 70s, so there is little loss with the lower coins. The market knows this, and often 69s are money losers as well. Thus, the 70s have to carry the entire profit load - they have to carry the 69s are the fees for everybody. Clearly, it all comes down to this - what percentage 70s did you get, and is that enough to stay ahead of market pricing on slabbed 69s and 70s ?
