Perusing an auction site and have my eyes on a 1904-O Morgan MS-63 DMPL by SEGS..... I'm not necessarily a Morgan guy but I do love an attractive coin and this one is certainly attractive. Were it not slabbed I would be cautious that it may be tampered with, but I am not familiar with SEGS and it's hard to identify tampering from photos sometimes. Is SEGS reliable enough to identify a tampered coin?
SEGS is not a reputable company. That being said, I've seen several people crack these coins out and submit them to reputable companies with mixed results, though I've never seen a counterfeit or anything of that nature. Best to treat it raw and do your due diligence.
I have seen some really nice coins in SEGS slabs but most folks don't care for the brand. I understand that the plastic they use is really tough to crack open.
Not too concerned about the brand. Just concerned about their ability to spot a problem..... I think I'll bid on this one as though it were a raw MS coin.... Thanks guys!
SEGS is a very mixed brand. When I was dealer I handled a few SEGS coins which were very nice. I once had an 1848-C quarter eagle on consignment. It was SEGS graded MS-63. The same dealer had another one also graded MS-63 in a PCGS holder. He wanted over $20,000 for the PCGS coin. The SEGS coin was consigned to me at $6,500. I sold the SEGS coin to an extremely well known dealer at a Bay State coin show for a decent profit. I will gurantee you that that coin did not stay in the SEGS holder for very long. Why didn't I buy the SEGS coin and cross it? At the time, money was thin. The net worth of my business was just over $20,000. To tie up that much money in coin with a limited market, at least for me, was too much of a risk. I once had a very nice SEGS graded Shield Nickel which they graded MS-64. It was a great coin except it had a large lamination which still attached to it. The leading services won't touch it. It would have been a great coin for the collector who was interested in the problems the mint had with Shield Nickels. For most collectors, the lamination mint error killed the coin.
If the photos are good enough to tell, trust your own judgement if the price is right. I've gotten some steals out of basement slab holders. I think if it is an old holder it may be spot on, I've read their attributions for VAMS are. If that were a 1904P, I'd be nosing around and cutting your legs out from under you.
Randy before you buy that one, check this one out. Not PL but this one is a REAL beauty! https://www.ebay.com/itm/1373659249...ZaodnhlPD2g==|tkp:Bk9SR6SUj8jSZw&LH_Auction=1
SEGS was originally owned by Larry Briggs. Around 2020/2021 it was sold to someone else. The slabs still look the same so you can't tell the difference unless you know the cutoff of the cert numbers. The new company does not have a good reputation. Regardless of generation, you can find good and not so good coins in the slabs. They should be authentic but something like a frosty DMPL could turn out to have issues (cleaned or artificially frosted) that are not mentioned on the holder. I would not recommend bidding PCGS/NGC MS 63 DMPL money on a SEGS DMPL unless one saw it in hand. Treating it as slightly better than raw is the safe way to go. https://forums.collectors.com/discu...tion-on-segs-grading-looking-for-larry-briggs
My experience with 1904-O dollars is that most of them are flatly struck in the center, especially on the Eagle’s breast feathers. There are fully struck examples. I don’t know about the P-L part, but I would take fully struck examples over P-L pieces, but that’s just me. The ANACS “soap bar” example shown earlier falls in the middle.
There are several iterations of SEGS. GA SOVEREIGN ENTITIES GRADING SERVICE, INC. Date of Formation / Registration Date: 10/31/1997 Last Annual Registration Year: 2008 TN SOUTHERN ENTITIES GRADING SERVICE, LLC Inactive - Dissolved (Administrative) Initial Filing Date: 9/24/2007 9:49:00 AM With those two, they closed INC on Friday and opened LLC on Monday, stating that they no longer guaranteed the grades of "the prior company," which left a bad taste. NJ: Business Name SEGS 2021, INC. City CHERRY HILL Incorporated Date 1/4/2021
I guess the time I ran into Larry with a bunch of SEGS-slabbed coins was before that. Some of the nicest (and rarest) problem coins I've ever seen. I said as much to him, and he really bristled - "what makes you think they're problem coins?" Um, the word DETAILS there on your slab? I didn't take offense. He was dealing with a lot at the time.
