Freed some Friends! (1) EMPIRE

Some people believe that slabs don't raise prices on coins but that is not what I have observed in the time I've been collecting.

 

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I crack every slabbed ancient coin I acquire. A while ago I was in a friends shop when he mentioned he had picked up a couple of slabbed ancients in a collection he had recently purchased. He knew I liked ancients and he offered them to me at a fair price. After I gave him the money for the coins I proceeded to crack them open right there and then in his shop using a bolt cutter I keep in my truck.

I offered a similar testament, ( as stated above), that the coins have been in circulation for eons and slabbing them made absolutely no sense. Nothing was mint state, and actually handling them would cause them no harm. As mentioned most ancients were found in the ground, and not a mint bag or bank vault.

He still seemed perplexed, but he now knows where I am coming from.

 

There is a difference between raising the price and raising the value. The only slabber whose opinion is worth anything is NGC and I am not interested in their opinions compared to David Sear's which come without plastic. If you pay extra for plastic, you will sell only to someone who believes in plastic. If you pay extra for plastic and consider the difference unrecoverable education, you can sell the coin to someone who wants the coin but will break it out. No one among the slab only crowd wants my coins because they are raw. I'm OK with that. Will the time come when only slabbed coins are salable? Possibly.

 

I don't mind plastic cases for coins as a method of storage... if the slabs can be opened, like these. If your collection isn't huge, this could be an attractive way to protect and display the coins, still allowing for unfettered photography and handling.

If I buy a coin which has been slabbed, I am biased towards removing the coin from the slab. Others may not be; to each his own-- just don't put all your faith in the TPG's opinion of grade. Do you own homework. Search for comparisons; see what is available now, what has been available in the past, and come to your own conclusions about grade, quality, strike, appeal, etc.

Here are a few examples of NGC-slabbed coins which I feel are overgraded (and which were likely overpriced):



NOT MS, not star-worthy, not 5/5 strike. This doesn't mean it is a bad coin. It just means that the price should be commensurate with a lesser grade than is on the label.


Strike 5/5? Look at that reverse! What a mess. Here's what it is supposed to look like:





Am I simply wrong in my grading? Is NGC becoming lax? Is NGC purposefully relaxing grading standards in an attempt to entice modern collectors who only buy "MS"-graded slabbed coins?

 

Thanks TIF! I agree, and that is why I removed mine from their slabs... You brought up some great points... I felt the same about the grading on mine. In one one of my slabs, I felt I received a better strike 5/5 than I was expecting, but a much lower surface 3/5 than I felt it deserved. I am definitely a novice and I am not an expert by any means, however I was expecting to LEARN from an "expert" who graded my coin... Nope, I learned exactly what you said above "Do you own homework. Search for comparisons; see what is available now, what has been available in the past, and come to your own conclusions about grade, quality, strike, appeal, etc." That is a dead-on statement!

 

I really don't mind the slabs, but when showing off coins to people its great to drop one in there hands and tell them the story behind the coin and think how many people touched it.
To open the cases i say what ever works for you. just put a towel over your hands and the pieces won't fly across the room.

 

When I was freeing my slabs (about 6 at one time), I kept hearing FREEeeedddommm as they popped open...