What Are Your Thoughts on Graded Ancient Coins?

Those of you that "free" all of these coins......... Do you keep the labels?

 

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Of course. I even keep the remains of the slab.

 

Yes, there were about 2 or three I threw away since they were the old labels with little info on them. But the current style ones I do.

 

Yes, because it's part of a coin's provenance.

 

If you keep the labels, then you must see some value in them, right? Whether it's to enhance resale value, for the information on the label, for the provenance, or to prop-up claims of authenticity, there must be something that makes them worth keeping.

Whatever that value is (along with the upsides of the case), it scales differently with different people. Hence, those that find slabs worthwhile and those that don't.

 

It's just up to each person. Aside from the person that cracked them out keeping them as a reminder or for records they really have no value outside of that. Anyone can put any label and say it came from there

 

Cannae Yes…

 

Some find them valuable, therefore it makes sense to keep them. (This would be true even if they had no value objectively.)

 

Ι think not. The label, at least on NGC labels, contains a number that is unique to that coin. And if you go to their web site, you can enter the number and a picture of that very coin shows up. Any fraudulent label and number are quickly discovered.

 

True. But, this is true of everything aside from air, food, water, and shelter.

Gold has little inherent value, but I wouldn't even think about throwing some in the garbage!

 

All of them have unique numbers to the coin. As soon as you take the coin out of the slab though anything can be done to the coin. Once its out the label becomes worthless (if its some special hand signed label not entirely) as there's no assurance the coin is in the same state as when it was graded

It's not an issue of a fraudulent label, rather whether or not the coin is the same state as when they graded it. It's probably a little harder for ancients, but the pictures aren't good enough generally where it would be out of the question to find something close enough and say thats the coin the label belonged too

 

It would be a lot harder for ancients unless you found a double die match with an identically-shaped flan. In other words, almost impossible for most ancient coins.

 

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(accidental post, sorry)

 

This is an interesting topic to me. A topic which gets close to the heart of why people collect ancients, in my opinion.
I have bought several ancient coins, which were in NGC Ancients slabs. I broke all of the coins out of the slabs. I like to touch the coins. I like to look at the edges of the coins. I like to be able to put lots of coins in a single tray, so I can view them all at the same time.
However, NGC Ancients slabs have value to me, for authentication, attribution, and identifying things like tooling and smoothing.
I disregard the grade information (overall grade, strike grade, and surface grade) on the NGC Ancients slab.
The ancients experts at NGC Ancients seem to be very expert at authenticating ancient coins. Therefore, I highly value their opinions about the authenticity of ancient coins, as well as their opinions about tooling, smoothing, etc.
I don't know anything, about the expertise of other ancient coin slab companies (ANACS, etc).
For the rest of my post, when I say "slab", I mean "NGC Ancients slab".
However, I wish that NGC Ancients also sold certificates of authenticity (COAs), in which each COA had photos of the coin, as well as a lookup number, so that anyone could lookup high resolution photos of the coin on the NGC Ancients web site. For me, that would be better, than a slab.
I know that NGC Ancients issues COAs for coins that cannot be slabbed (if the coins are too large, or too irregular in shape, etc). But I wish NGC Ancients offered COAs for all ancient coins.
Each ancient coin looks different, because of the style, the flan, the strike, and the wear. Therefore, a COA would be better than a slab, for me, because I could lookup the photos of the coin on the NGC web site, to verify the authenticity of the coin. And if someone altered the coin, then I think it would be obvious, by comparing the coin, versus the photos on the NGC web site.
Before I break an ancient coin out of a slab, I take photos of both sides of the slab, so that I have the lookup number.
I have only been collecting ancients for 3 years. And I'm sort of a generalist. I collect many areas of ancients. Therefore, I'm sort of a jack of all trades, master of none, when it comes to ancients.
Therefore, usually, I don't trust myself, to be able to authenticate an ancient coin, from seller photos alone. I think I can weed out bad fakes. But I don't think I can weed out good fakes.
If the coin is inexpensive, then I don't mind taking a chance on a coin, based on seller photos alone, even on Ebay or Heritage Auctions.
But if the coin is expensive, then I prefer to do one of the following :
1. Buy from a seller who has a good reputation as an expert in authenticating ancient coins.
2. Buy a coin, which has a provenance, in which I can find photos of the coin on sites such as ACsearch, which has a record that the coin was sold by a seller who has a good reputation as an expert in authenticating ancient coins.
3. Buy a coin in an NGC Ancients slab.
For example, I would buy an expensive coin from Heritage Auctions, but only if the coin were in a slab.
However, CNG Auctions has a good reputation as a seller who is expert in authenticating ancient coins, therefore I would buy an expensive unslabbed ancient coin from CNG.

 

I understand the utility of slabs to preserve truly high-end ancient coins (say, five figures and up) and make sure they aren't damaged. (And perhaps to make sure the tiniest of coins aren't lost!) And I also understand that if I ever had to sell my collection -- or my heirs did -- the benefit from having them slabbed first might outweigh the cost.

I find the grades pretty useless on slabs, and for ancient coins in general -- they often have nothing whatsoever to do with how visually appealing a coin is -- and pay little or no attention to them in buying coins. They should be irrelevant as long as there's a decent photo available. Which, ironically enough, encasing a coin in a slab makes it almost impossible to accomplish. Not only can't a slabbed coin be photographed as well as a raw one, I've found the few I've held in hand much more difficult to see. It's not so much that I have a need to handle my coins very much, but I do like to be able to see and examine them closely.

I posted the following here early last year, and haven't really changed my opinion:

"To me, from an aesthetic viewpoint (wholly apart from the investment motives), slabbing ancient coins is pernicious. Once a coin is slabbed, in my opinion, it's no longer an actual coin. It's become a commodity. Like pork belly futures. Frankly, there might as well be a hologram inside the slab instead of a coin. Because all you're really seeing when you look at a slab is the image of a coin, mediated through plastic -- not terribly well, I think -- rather than the coin itself, which was intended to be seen directly, and to be experienced through the sense of touch as well as sight.

I expect that one of these days people will be slabbing rare first editions of books, making them impossible to read. (I've already seen that done with old magazines.) Or valuable paintings -- should all the Vermeers and Van Goghs and Rembrandts be graded by TPG's and encased in plastic slabs? Anyone who's ever been in a museum knows the vast difference between the experience of seeing a painting with and without glass in the frame -- the latter is incomparably superior, given that it allows the viewer to see the texture of the paint in all its three-dimensionality, an effect that's nearly destroyed when it's behind glass. Plastic is far worse than glass in detracting from the viewer's experience. Never mind that slabbing makes it physically impossible to display coins together in an appealing manner, as I have tried to do with my collection in its trays, as shown in some of the photos I've posted here."

Finally, I think the slabbing of low-to-medium-value ancient coins by dealers who market them on Ebay is often a scam intended to permit them to ask 5-10x those coins' fair market value, in the hope of deceiving some poor, gullible sucker into paying that much. It's a disgrace.

 

Very well put!

 

I'm not a fan of slabbed coins, but you can display them in trays like below--

 

This looks nice. But I like the fact, that I can keep all of my ancient Greek coins, and all of my ancient Roman coins, in a single tray. That's approximately 50 coins in a single velvet tray. That's just my personal preference.

 

And I like being able to display all 66 of my Roman Republican coins in a single tray, with room for 14 more!

 

I have some of both raw and slabs. I see pros and cons to both and some days flip flop between the two. I must say I do enjoy the raw ones the most, and it is super fun to take photos of a grouping for a striking photo. Here is an older photo I took one day while "playing" with some of the coins.


I think the value add I see to slabs is when I show them to non-collectors (which I do often). These folks seem to have a tendency to drop coins, and it gives them something larger to hold onto and protects the coin some. I learned this the first 3 times I let non-collectors handle my larger 33mm Lysimachos tetradrachm- Which was thankfully over carpet when dropped. The other possible value added is if I randomly get hit by a meteorite my wife may have an easier time selling them? But that remains to be seen, and is just theoretic. It seems coins that get a star designation bring rediculous money and that may help maximize some value for her.