Ancient coins and implied guarantees

The problem is this: most collectors won't carefully read the terms of service. In particular, collectors coming to ancient coins after collecting US coins will assume--quite understandably--that NGC offers the same guarantee for ancients as they do for US. Even generally careful and astute collectors will jump to that conclusion; it does after all say "Guarantee" right there in the firm's name.

NGC certainly knows this; by allowing this wrong assumption of a guarantee for ancients to take root they are implicitly approving it. The "no guarantee" disclaimer should be clearly indicated on every NGC holder containing an ancient coin; anything short of that may be technically "legal" but stretches the boundaries of ethics well past any line of credibility.

 

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I see what you're saying, and thinking there is a guarantee may make someone pay more than they would otherwise if they thought there was not one. They are still authenticating the coin to the best of their ability, regardless. What do you propose they do though, print "Not guaranteed to be genuine" on their slabs?

 

Exactly.

 

I believe what you are asking here is cigarette style packaging which read on the pack "These things will kill you and it won't be an easy death."

I would think you are altogether wrong were it not for the two points you make here. The slabs are directed at kids --- I mean new collectors, who look at slabs like kids look at cartoon animals like Joe Camel as cool guys. If slabs were new to the hobby or directed at old time collectors or marked in large letters on the slab "Authenticity not Guaranteed", you would have no point. As it is, maybe. If the name of the company were completely different from their US branch (a bad business decision if I ever heard one) or if the original company name had been something like PCGS where G is grading, you would have no point on that part either. I don't think these two situations were part of a grand scheme in the first part but they add up to make it look bad.

 

Yes, pretty much. They don't have to phrase it that starkly--they can sugar-coat it with wording like "Authenticated to the best of our ability, but..." But yes, I think they should have a disclaimer on the slab. The biggest market for encapsulated ancient coins is precisely collectors of US coins, most of whom are quite familiar with the long-standing and heretofore consistent policies of NGC. Why would anyone assume those policies now vary depending on the coin, when they never had in the past?

If a collector of encapsulated pennies and dimes decides to branch out into quarters, they won't read the fine print of the contract to determine whether the familiar NGC guarantee still holds. Of course they'll assume it does.

 

Oh, I don't think it's a plot Doug, or even a conscious marketing decision at the beginning. I don't doubt that the present situation evolved organically. But the powers-that-be at NGC must know what the situation is now; by letting it continue, they are in effect approving of it.

 

This is the most compelling logic describing the assumptions likely to be made by novice collectors of ancients who buy slabbed ancient coins. Since I don't collect U.S. coins, I had been unaware (until this thread started) that NGC does actually guarantee authenticity for U.S. coins that they grade and slab. So if I were a novice collector of ancients who had any familiarity with NGC slabs, I would naturally assume that there was a similar guarantee and would be unlikely to read the fine print regarding their non-guarantee of authenticity.

I love this point -- the analogy is dead perfect and it made me laugh aloud. But just as the cigarette manufacturers continue, to this day, to fight explicit warnings on cigarettes, I would assume that NGC would fight similarly explicit disclaimers on their ancient coin slabs.

I continue to believe, however, that although I don't like slabs and I would not purchase a slabbed coin, NGC has every right to grade and slab ancient coins without guaranteeing authenticity -- as long as that lack of guarantee is made as explicit as possible.

 

I just did the math, and if I were to send my small ancient coin collection to be slabbed, I would have to pay NGC over $600.00. Some of you with collections of 500 or more coins would go broke paying to have all your coins slabbed.

Dealers pass the slabbing fee to consumers, which is why a $10 slabbed LRB now costs $40 or $50. If slabbed were the norm, some of you with 500 coins in your collection might only have 200 or 300 coins, as the slabbing fees would have eaten the money you used to buy the other half of collection.

Not to mention that once you get to slabs, you start talking commodity and investment. Just Google all the disturbing articles and websites urging people to invest in slabbed ancients, in much the same way US coin collecting has become primarily an investment club, and collectors are relegated to secondary status. How many threads have you seen about CAC stickers being worth more, or a coin being junk because it's came back MS-64 instead of MS-64+ or higher, which hurt the owners' potential for profit, etc. Some of the people in the US forums to me sound more like investors trading and speculating on valuable commodities, and not people engaging in a hobby out of love for what they are doing.

 

Took this in an airport in Fiji last week.

 

And yet people still choose to smoke. Even with warnings to collectors, they will still choose to buy slabbed ancients.

 

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