Ok I see a lot of people paying crazy prices for coins slabbed by NGC or PCGS with a copy of John Mercanti's signature. I mean crazy high prices, as much as 299.00 for a signature photo copyed label. I get it if the signature was real, I mean the 12th chief engraver of the us mint who designed the reverse. But a photo copied label? Now I saw a auction on ebay with John Mercanti's real label on the box of a 20th Anniversary box. I understand that. But what do fellow collectors feel about the value of a coin with the grading companies special labels?
Witness all the folks bidding against each other to pay hundreds or thousands of times face value for simple old dollar coins -- even ones clearly made from well-known defective dies, and tarnished!
I am not an autograph collector. Even if I were, I am not sure a US mint employee would crack my top 100 autographs I would want unless its John Riech or Longacre. So, therefor, such an autograph adds zero to me. Be careful mixing collectibles. Autograph collectors would not care about the coin and vice versa for the vast majority.
What medoraman said. Someone into autographs probably wouldn't care. Someone into coins will probably not care. What is happening here is someone hoping to cash in from these different hobbies.
Personally I'm not a fan but I have also seen people pay big premiums for these labels. If someone likes collecting it, then they are welcome to do so.
I don't care for special labels, for the most part, unless they're individually signed and numbered. The one exception is the PCGS flag labels for state quarters, which I am collecting in MS66-67. I like the Mercanti autograph, but I probably wouldn't have paid much more for it than a set in OGP.
