NGC has now published its HARD TIME TOKENS Census.... http://www.ngccoin.com/poplookup/poplookup-reportlarge.asp?PopSubCatID=90&Designation=MS
This will be interesting to see develop, as more and more of these are graded. The great majority of Hard Times Tokens are not graded.
I use the PCGS pop report as paper filler in boxes when I send out items from eBay. THAT even might be more than it's worth.
I'll go out on a limb and say that this is going to be very detrimental to collecting tokens as it is bound to drive up the price. Exonumia was sort of the last unslabbed corner of the hobby, and I kind of enjoyed buying them because the price spread between grades was relatively small. Now, with the "precision" of having a grade printed on a slab, prices will probably go up as people overconfidently buy them relying on the label.
My sentiments exactly Cloudsweeper. That very thing has been occuring with Civil War tokens for some time now regarding escalating prices. The sad part is that IMO they are doing a very poor job of it on top of it all. I won't even comment on their grading as they are entitled to their OWN opinion, but NGC either does not know how, or simply refuses to correctly use the Fuld id system, which is essentially THE id system. There are certain dies that they have incorrectly identified EVERY time (that I have thus far seen) they have displayed that die number on a label! I have not seen even a single cwt correctly labeled in an NGC slab. I have also seen confusion in labeling patriotic cwts with a storecard id and vice versa, not to mention the difficulty in copying the merchant's name from the token to the slab label. I bought a few of their screw-ups just to have some examples on hand. It seems the only thing the cwt slabs are doing really well, and probably most important to those doing the submitting, is bringing in multiples (often 4 or 5 times) of the catalog values. I suppose if I were a seller I would not be complaining, but since I am only a collector (and NOT of plastic), I do not view tremendously inflated prices as a good thing. Other than keeping some examples of their mistakes, all other slabbed tokens I purchase get set free. I greatly fear the same fate will spread throughout exonumia over time. Nice to see you posting here Billy, and please accept my belated welcome to the board!
