Last night was the "make up date" for the Red Rose Coin Club of Lancaster, PA Annual Awards Banquet. I was a single, so I grabbed a seat at a table with a single open seat. Our original date was wiped out by a freakish November 15 snowstorm, so of course it snowed again last night, but we soldiered on. I was seated next to the club's Treasurer whom I had known casually for a few years, but I never knew what he collected. In conversation, he brought up his recent experience "crossing" various slabbed MS67RD Lincoln Cents to PCGS. He had gathered up 15 and taken them to the most recent Baltimore Whitman show and dropped them off at PCGS. He asked me to guess how many of the 15 crossed. I assumed he was talking all NGC coins, but I was wrong. I guessed 5 crossed. He was amazed. I got it right - 5 of 15 crossed. Here's what got my attention - "most" of his MS67RD crossing candidates were in PCI holders!!! In fact, 9 were. All 9 failed to cross. 2 coins were NGC and they both DID cross to PCGS. The other 4 were miscellaneous "junk slabs" and 3 of the 4 DID CROSS!!! This about blew my head apart. Was PCI always that "out to lunch" (I've never owned one) or did their inserts/slabs actually damage the coins? Whatchathink! This guy is ALSO emblematic of an attitude that has too much traction in the central PA coin community - that all slabs are equal. I know tons of guys here who believe that, and they SHOWER the lesser companies with coins. All to save a buck up front, without realizing this dog bites at the BACK end!
In my early twenties, I started buying slabbed coins. One of the first I purchased I think was by SEGS. It wasn't too long and I decided to sell that coin. That was my first learning experience with slabbed coins and who was who in the market place. I did my homework and soon was buying only NGC and PCGS, with an occasional ANACS. I too have seen other people that sink big money into coins that are in inferior TPG holders only to find out later that they would have been money ahead had they went with the more known companies. I only ever had luck crossing coins from ANACS holders.
A question...Are you truely "money ahead" by buying only PCGS or NGC? Example: You buy that SEGS coin in a MS-64 holder. You pay $100 with the knowledge that the same coin would have only graded MS-63 at PCGS and based on current sales would cost $100. 10 years down the road you decide to sell that coin. You sell it for $125.00. You check out other current sales and find out that wonder of wonders that coin would have sold for about $125 in the PCGS 63 holder. Want to talk same label grades rather than same coin? OK, you buy an ANACS 65 coin for $200. At the same time you find that a PCGS 65 example would have cost you $250 from the same dealer. This time you pick the wrong time to resell it and only get $175 for it...a loss of 12.5 percent. You check out recent sales and find that if you had originally bought the PCGS coin you could have sold it for $200...a loss of 20 percent. Bottom line...it's the coin not the brand of plastic on the coin that matters.
I had a beautiful 1913 type I Buffalo nickel I sent to PCI to grade because it only cost $8. It came back AU55. I bought it for under 63 money. Really nice. A few years later I cracked it out and sent it to PCGS. It came back MS64. There was a time when PCI was very conservative, but like a new Chinese buffet, it didn't last long.
You've asked the wrong question, I think. What about SUBMITTING, rather than buying already slabbed? And this guy, trust me, ONLY looked at the number, not the slab brand. That's just off da hook!
Certainly, it's the coin that matters in the end. But this thread is dealing more with the plastic around that coin and whether or not they cross into a reputable holder. Hypothetically, I would bid on a coin in a NGC or PCGS holder sight unseen versus any other company just because of their reputations.
I couldn't imagine buying a coin just because the slab said it was a certain grade. Certainly opinions do matter, but I put zero weight into any TPG's opinion. This morning I was looking through some modern FS nickels in 66 and 66 plus. PCGS got the highest price for all of the coins I saw, when at auction. Yet none were actually FS. Sometimes buying the name is worthless. Especially the way they grade today.
And again, it makes very little difference. You submit to SLABS-R-US and get a MS-66 grade. Since most collectors heavily discount SLABS-R-US coins you get a buy offer of 100 bucks. Since you trust the SLABS-R-US grade you turn down the sale and you then turn around and submit to PCGS and it comes back as AU details--cleaned and sells for (wait for it) about 100 bucks. Once again, the coin matters--not the plastic surrounding it.
Nice theory with sound reasoning, but I don't see it working that way in practice. At auction I frequently see "junk" slabs selling for LESS than the same coin raw.
And at auctions I have sometimes bid less for a NGC/PCGS coin than I ended up paying for a subsequent raw example in the auction which I personally liked better. Of course, I'm admittedly the exception to the rule since had I bought the certified coin it would have magically turned raw as soon as I got it home, anyway.
While the coin does drive the slab, the slab does matter. The market has been moving away from off brand slabs for a while and really even away from PCGS/NGC ones in a lot of areas. If you're buying a common date/grade Morgan it really doesn't make a difference, but in a lot of areas it makes a huge difference. The theory of I will buy it at x discount and sell it again x discount sounds good, but there are a lot of things to consider with that. The major one is the direction of the market, x maybe 30% today but if the market keeps going in the direction it has been (nothing really shows that it won't) by the time you go to sell x could easily be 50%. The next would be liquidity and where exactly are you going to sell it. Many dealers don't want to touch anything but PCGS/NGC slabs unless you make them take the others in a substantial consignment. The same is true for auction houses and for the ones that will take other slabs you will lose all leverage in negotiations. A PCGS/NGC $500 coin will sell a lot quicker than other slabs. This basically leaves you with eBay or collector to collector. Most collector to collector in person options are very limited. That will leave most people trying to sell them online where they will be penalized the most and very likely could take a while to sell. Of course if the coin is all there you can cross it over but that has a cost and depending on the price of the coin could end up being a significant percentage of the coins value.
PCI did have solid grading early on. Even later they occasionally got it right, apparently by mistake. The same coin in two different slabs will often bring vastly different prices. PCGS coins generally bring more than NGC, NGC generally brings more than ANACS, etc. THe only time I would use ANACS is for a problem coin when I just need authentication. I do not use the other services. Too much of a price discount.
