3rd party grading

I was wondering what people's views were on the subject.....

 

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Here is a good start to an answer. Ben has posted a link to another thread within this link. Enjoy the read.

Coin Grading Standards by TPG

 

Nice...thank you USS

 

You are welcome.

I think your poll is missing a few options, your answers are too black and white in a world of grey. If you are collecting coins never to sell them, then I see no reason to have them slabbed/graded if they are not graded already. If you want to sell a coin and you think that it will grade high, or that by having been graded, it will affect the value - then yes, have the coin graded. If you want to buy a coin sight unseen, then there is value to the buyer and seller to have it graded professionally.

It's not so simple as should a coin be graded or not. I now have one coin that was graded by pcgs. I was confident about what I would get when I bought it on eBay but soon I will break it out of the slab and put it into an air-tite with the rest of the coins for this specific collection.


Questions I would ask are;

1. As a collector - do you have your coins slabbed by a TPG if you have no intention of selling it?
2. As an investor - do you have your coins slabbed?
3. As a buyer - do you prefer to buy graded/slabbed coins? If sometimes, when?
4. As a seller - is there adequate profits realized from selling graded/slabbed vs ungraded coins? If sometimes, when?

My answers are;
No
Yes
Sometimes - Age/Value/Market Type
My guess is Sometimes - I've never sold a coin so I have no idea but my opinion is that if there was no money in it for the sellers, the TPG's would not exist.

 

Well you didn't put the choice that I wanted.....yes there are times when coins should be slabbed....and then there are times when they shouldn't.....I have slabbed coins that have little or no value....and I slab coins that aren't suspected forgeries.
In most cases this is the rule I go by:
Any coin worth over $100 can be a good one to be slabbed.
Any RED Cent
Any Proof Franklin
ANY Key date

Also if I have a coin that I think is undergraded then I more than likley will send it in.

I have some coins at NGC right now---a 1942/1 Dime and a 1926-S Buff Nickel.
The Buff should come back as VF+....the dime is a hard one to guess as it has been cleaned but has also re-toned....it will be a 50/50 chance weather they slab it or not. The reason I sent the coin in is because I got it for a good price and if it comes back BB'ed then I can still sell it and break even or if it comes back slabbed I have a much more $$$ coin.

Speedy

 

Slabbed only by the top 4, and only when the value of the coin warrants certification costs.

 

I believe a coin should be slabbed if its very rare and for authentication purposes only. Would you rather lose $1200 dollars finding out that your raw 1909-s vdb Lincoln was a counterfiet or spend the same amount of money on one thats been certified by a top TPG company. I think its a big risk spending large amounts of money on raw coins that are known to be counterfieted. The 16-d Merc is one of the most popular coins most likely to be faked. Although I have spent alot of money on raw coins, I like to think I know a little bit about detecting certain counterfiets. Its all about educating yourself. This is only my opinion. I could be wrong, I was wrong once before.

 

Absolutely. There are many reasons to slab... and many reasons to NOT slab.

Ya know, I feel like this ongoing debate about slabs is kinda like arguing "Which is better... the color green or the color blue ?"

It's not that one way is better - "I'm right and you're wrong"... it's largely personal preference AND what kind of collector you are.

If you're searching rolls hoping to find a wheat cent, slabbing is a non-issue; there's no way you slab. Same is true if you're buying inexpensive material. It's all good.

But it's very reasonable for those who buy better pieces to buy slabbed coins.

 

slabbed or not to be slabbed

This is tough question for the options listed,i believe yes coins should be slabbed as long as they have signifecent value in the collecting hobby and also in history of the coin being slabbed as slabbing protects the coin in many ways,like forgery and value

 

You see, I think that is a major flaw with the slabbing system, that, no matter how attractive, they just don't grade coins which have been slightly damaged by cleaning..... Why? 100 years ago collectors would not even notice a coin which nowdays would be said to be " Light cleaning, possibly once dipped"......It's just ridiculous...

 

I agree that not all of the bases were covered. In general, for exonumia, I feel that there is extremely little need for slabbing, and IMO the tpgs are doing a rather poor job with exonumia. Sure, grading is an opinion, but even their identification skills are lacking. When slabs first appeared with Civil War tokens (mostly NGC), I would estimate that about 25% were incorrectly identified. They have improved, but they still make many errors. I would only submit a token for authentication, and even then I would probably use the Civil War Token Society's services. A grade on a tpg slab holds absolutely no value for me.

My biggest complaint is that slabs seemed to be used primarily as a selling tool, something to try to obtain more dollars from me with no value added features. As I have posted in the past, the "benefits" of slabbing really have little/no value with exonumia. On ebay for instance, a majority of the cwt slabs are for common tokens, and not necessarily even for uncirculated ones.

 

Sorry for not including more bases!

 

Count me in with the "maybes"...

Assuming I had something worth slabbing, I would consider it.

Were I in the target demographic, I'd feel a bit skittish about buying a high value coin that wasn't slabbed. I would be concerned about fakes, overgrading et al. With respect to the reputable slabbers, there seems to be a general acceptance of the grade assigned among most of the market.

Where we are right now, there's no need to slab what we are buying and I'd prefer that it stay that way. I doubt that I would buy any common coin less than 50 years old in a slab. Modern gold bullion might be a different story since it's a nice holder to keep it in.

 

Lets use my example. You have two 1979S Halves posted on ebay that look the same based on the photos. Shipping costs are the same. Both reputable sellers with no-negs. One coin in slabbed by pcgs and graded PF-69 DCAM and the other is in a 2x2 cardboard holder and appears to be in the same condition. You want one, and both are sitting below your maximum amount.

Which would you buy if you could get either at the same price? Silly question in my mind.

How much more would you be willing to pay for the graded coin over the ungraded coin? For me the answer would be a couple dollars at the most.

If the same scenario played out at a coin shop or show the answer is nothing more for the slabbed coin.

 

I like to see rare coins slabbed to veritfy the fact that they are not fakies.

 

You know, I'll agree with that. Strange as it may seem, LOL... On the other hand, one thing I can't stand to see are common date circulation coins in plastic, like "Look at this stunning 1979 MS-63 Washington Quarter" or "Hurry while it's still available, a 1981-P Nickel in MS-64." To me it's just 30 cents...

 

One of the favorite topics on this board is "E-Bay scams", from which we derive much humor and derision.

But in a larger sense, it's a real shame. In many cases, someone is getting hosed.

And there has been a great deal of that in the coin business over the years.

Sadly, it has given a tarnished image to a field which is mostly ethical, honest people. One bad apple DOES spoil the whole bunch in some people's eyes. They get burned once, and they're out of the hobby for good.

Like it or not, hate it or not, SLABS HAVE BROUGHT A GREAT DEAL OF LEGITIMACY to the hobby.

 

No, the internet has destroyed a great deal of the legitimacy of the hobby, and slabs have partially healed it.
Before the internet it was just coin dealers, and most of them would give you your money back if they accidently (as they once did to me) sold you a forgery.

It is better to prevent than to cure...

 

I strongly disagree with this statement. Third-party graders were a response to the numismatic market of the 60's and 70's, not the internet (the first third party authenticator/grader appeared in 1972, twenty years before the internet became available to the general public). Problem coins, forgeries, etc. traded for the same prices as original pieces and many dealers often sold junk at inflated prices to unknowledgeable collectors and investors without any return policy. Later, many people, seeing how prices had risen, went to collect their (expected) gains and learned they had bought junk. What would they do? Take the loss, and quit collecting permanently.

In my opinion, the internet has opened up many doors for today's collectors that would otherwise be unavailable. For example, on this internet forum, I am able to share pictures and stories and converse with thousands of other collectors, something I can't do in person even today. Hundreds of thousands of pages of numismatic information are available (at no cost) to me, with topics ranging from general collecting to specialized studies. Say I would like to see what So-Called Dollars were produced in 1886. I type in my question, and bam, what do you know? So-CalledDollars.com has the information I am looking for. Without the internet, I would need a copy of the So-Called Dollar book, which currently sells for about $100, if a copy comes to the market.

Stepping off my soapbox now.

 

I've noticed that the poll results don't add up to 100%.

That's because it's taking each individual category and dividing by the number of VOTERS and not the total number of VOTES (which I thought were supposed to be the same, since you're not supposed to be able to vote more than once).

As of this posting (19:39 CDT), there are 19 voters, but 24 votes. The four categories add up to ~126%.