Can someone tell me what a "Compugrade" slab is and why they're worth so much more than the coin?

Just curious about something I saw. These Morgans are worth much less than they sold/are selling for? Is this the one where the founder of PCGS had his own grading company at one point?

https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/312495317595?item=312495317595&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565

https://www.ebay.com/itm/273884383258?_trksid=p2471758.m4703

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1884-cc-mo...m43663.l44720&nordt=true&rt=nc&orig_cvip=true

 

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Compugrade was formed in 1991. They planned to grade coins by computer but quickly went under within a few months. Some submissions were put through the service before they closed their doors and surprisingly Compugrade even made a small batch of samples to distribute. Their slab featured a label on the top of the slab and used a very thick plastic which made them very hard to crack. Their normal production slabs are scarce, but the samples are downright rare.

 

Who said Compugrade slabs are worth anything special? They were a short-lived basement quality third party grader. Some people collect the slabs, for alleged scarcity, but really??? Folks will collect anything nowadays.

 

That is a Google quote.

 

...which answers the OP’s question

 

I suppose the 2 people who were willing to pay $230 or more for a $25 coin? I had the same thoughts as you, which I guess is why I asked this question. We can all learn something today.

 

Why is the first production Mustang worth 350K? It's just a car...


https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...ustang-discovers-car-worth-350-000/983144002/

 

Copied verbatim without attribution from the late Cameron Kiefer's website, if I'm not mistaken? I see the first bit of that text here too; I suspect they copied it as well, but I haven't gone digging in archive.org to find out who was there first.

 

Interesting that somebody is trying to flip it in 3 months time.

FWIW, most of the Compugrade slabs I've ever seen have cert#s in the 19### range (19485, 19710, 19822) or 20### range (my sample is 20753).

Even in that narrow range, there are a couple of different styles of the label, with and without decimal grades at the top and I have one that says "MORGAN" under the grade.

 

You are mistaken. SampleSlabs.com is not Conder101's site. It was developed by the late Cameron Kiefer and is preserved in his memory. There was an advert for Conder's book because the two worked together closely on sample slabs.

This has been posted SEVERAL times with Conder himself making the correction.

 

Thanks for the correction. I've edited my post for accuracy. I'll let the rest of the post stand, though; it still bugs me to see people copying text verbatim without attribution.

 

Compugrade slabs have had a premium for a while now (at least the last 5-7 years that I have been following slabs).

Slab collectors are willing to pay a premium price based on their scarcity, so the market price is what it is.

I will note that there have been some outlier sales (including some very low buy-it-nows from those that didn’t know what they had and a few auctions that went for quite a bit more than I’d expect based on prior sales).

 

Would you consider editing your original post to give credit to the website you copied it from?

 

100% agree... for people who don't track copyright law, anything you reduce to expression (write down) is automatically copyright for your life + 70 years. You might want to register the copyright if you want to sue for infringement, but you don't have to.

Also, review the agreement here at CoinTalk - they have rights to use your expression here, but that doesn't mean you give up ownership (there are sleazy sites that make you give up all rights!)


Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it public domain.

 

Coins beyond Morgan/Peace dollars have a premium too, because, at the time, only idiots slabbed cheap coins... many of the samples were Kennedy halves...

In 2014, 2015, I paid as low as $35.13 including shipping.

 

That’s a great price (my best was $65 and highest was ~$100).

I’ll add that even Peace Dollars are scarce and have a premium quite a bit above Morgans.


And I’ve only seen Morgans, Peace Dollars, sample Kennedy halves, a raw token, and an ad with Gold St. Gaudens $20s.
Have you seen anything else?

 

No... I've only ever seen those three coins.

Here's the "MORGAN"


Looking deeper, I wonder if the 19nnn or 20nnn numbers are the coin number? Which would make this the cert# or the whole thing like NGC uses invoice-line??

 

@Burton Strauss III I recall looking at that before and I believe we concluded they weren’t cert numbers (maybe it was because two of them had the same number).

Edit: my mistake, the above comment was in reference to the number on the front of the slab. The number on the reverse may very well be a cert number.

 

And if you look at this grouping, it does make for a compelling case that it was a cert number (or invoice number),

https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1014764/someone-got-a-really-good-deal-on-ebay