Buy the coin not the slab

I don't buy slabbed ancients as a rule and have broken almost all of them free. The one I didn't break out I sold. Slabs aren't for me.

I do look at some for sale now and again and find it amazing that so many errors occur.

The wrong emperor seems to be just lazy.

 

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Terrible.
What's ch vf ? Choice very fine?
Doesn't look too choice to me, the reverse is quite awful.

 

But it's from the Colosseum Hoard!

 

When even is this "Colosseum Hoard"??? A quick google only comes up with more coins in NGC slabs.

 

I was being sarcastic, I should have used an emoticon.

 

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Wow. This is so bad in so many ways.

 

Unfortunately labeling mistakes are an area that could use a little more attention by the TPGs. The vast majority are correct, but it's not unheard of when the guy slabbing the coin types in the label wrong.

Yea Choice Very Fine. Their ancient scale can be found here

https://www.ngccoin.com/specialty-services/ancient-coins/grading.aspx

Generally it's just the name of a collection someone bulk submitted, sometimes it is named after where it was found or something like that. A pedigree of a collection basically

 

I'm guessing Martin's biggest complaint would be that it's actually a denarius of Septimius Severus.

 

Yes, he has enough of those. We all make mistakes but most of our errors are not eternally encased in plastic with approvals from ANA and PNG. Has the Queen yet designated her preferred slabber?

 

An occasional labeling error is to be expected...but I bought a lot of 8 ancients in slabs a few years ago and 6 were labeled incorrectly...75% error is a bit much! I don't usually buy slabs, but the lot was inexpensive, so I decided to buy and just broke them out of the slabs.

 

While I understand that an occasional typo will slip into even the most diligent efforts, it's inexcusable to cite the wrong emperor in a permanently slabbed coin. That's not a typo or even laziness -- it's rank incompetence. For this reason alone slabbing services for ancients should be avoided.

 

Unless the cost is high, I think the "slabing error" is worth having as a show piece. Only one or two would be plenty for tho.

 

There is slab collectors out there that collect that sort of thing. Seen it on the PCGS boards.

For what it costs to slab a coin, I would expect better.

 

They fix it for free if you contact them about it

 

I love "cracking them out"!

 

Me too, just as long as I'm not paying for the slab.

 

Still got to pay for shipping to/from.

 

Certainly the coin is worth more in an error NGC slab than it is out. I have one error slab just to show people who think plastic is perfect but mine is not the great NGC. Certainly they would fix it for free. They should be willing to buy it for $1000 because it shows that their entire operation is not as professional as they want you to believe. The coin in that slab is not anything a Septimius specialist would collect.

Maybe not. A local dealer showed me a pile of coins NGC had returned to him for failing their standards. They included fakes, unable to determine and bronze disease coins. I asked him why he would send some of the garbage I saw to be slabbed and he replied that his price was nowhere near their advertised retail. I take that to mean that someone sent them 10,000 junk coins and they threw them into generic slabs as fast as their fingers could fly. I would like to think that David Vagi could tell a Septimius from a Caracalla at twenty paces and that he would hire people with similar skills for the real work but this coin is a demonstration of the need to buy the coin and protect yourselves from accidental or intentional incompetance.

That is a fact. When you set up a business and hire employees to work in your name you are saying that have taken steps to insure those employees are working to a standard acceptable to you. It does not matter whether the job is flipping burgers or authenticating coins. The incompetence does not belong to the new hire but the manager/owner who did not care enough to guard against stupidity perpetrated in the name of the business. We regularly see some person of 'fame' held accountable for tweets Twittered by their 'Twiddle-Dumb'. I can not imagine staking my reputation on the activities of people I did not and could not trust to represent me properly. Are there few enough people out there looking for a job (at minimum wage?) separating the Caracalla from the Septimius that we have to hire those incapable of the task? Are we asking them to process a thousand coins in the time more appropriate for ten so we can grow our business by offering super discounts to bulk customers? I apologize to any of you that I have led astray by giving incorrect information on a coin. I offered no warranty and you got what you paid for. If you really wanted a high value answer, you could have sent the coin off to the slabbers, whether you are a $40 or a $.40 customer, and got a professional opinion. Right?

 

You pay initially to send it but they send a check reimbursing you for that cost and ship it back for free. The process is annoying to have to go through and takes a few days but it doesn't end up costing you anything other than a few minutes to package it up and ship it back