Real coin, fake NGC slab.

This 1884-O Morgan dollar is real. The NGC holder is not.

This shows not only do scammers try to sell fakes in fake holders, but they also put GENUINE coins in fake holders. Why? To fraudulently push up grades.

This Morgan is likely around an MS-63. No way is it an MS-66+

I picked this up for $50 to use as a neat but scary educational piece on why you should "buy the coin, and carefully inspect the holder" as well as the coin.

~Joe Cronin

 

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Ah, got a link or a pic?

Thanks.

 

I just posted it. That is mine. My photos, too

 

The hobby always says buy the coin not the slab, but how many really do? How many people even know how to properly grade anymore?

That is the saddest part.

Thank you for a wonderful if scary post though OP.

 

Thanks for a very educational post.

 

I just wanted to point out the logic fallacy in asking an unanswerable question and then pretending to have said answer. Furthermore, it's a bit melodramatic to treat it as "the saddest part" of whatever it is you are talking about. Anyway, sorry for interjecting on this thread, but I tire of the chicken little approach to numismatics, and this elitist assumption that only a select few people on CT are capable of doing things like grading a coin (or that somehow less people are capable of grading than before).

 

How is my comment an "elitist assumption"? I was asking an honest question. How many people do you think honestly study a coin and agree with the grade versus buy and sell based upon what is on the slab? I do not believe it is 100% on either side. I learned the hobby before slabbing, so would postulate that many more of us truly learned to grade than today, (at least true, third party reference grading and not "gee, I wonder what the TPG might grade this this year").

I truly have no idea where the seeming hate of your post is coming from.

Take a new collector. Does it make you feel better to preach "buy the coin not the slab" and then sleep better at night when he gets suckered into buying an overgraded POS, or buying a fake slab? How many new collectors will be turned off by such things before you may wish to acknowledge it might be of the HOBBY'S CONCERN and we SHOULDN'T just "elitistly" say, "we told you to buy the coin and not the slab".

 

Geez! Even the prongs are wrong. ~ Chris

 

NGC's response when this was discussed in another forum:





It is helpful when there is an image to compare when you do an on-line cert lookup.

 

NGCs verification picture even if not the best is definitely a great thing, allows you to compare the coin vs the online pics.

 

Gee, where is the elitism...?

Not only is this a straw man, but also nonsensical. Preaching buy the coin not the slab should alleviate this problem to begin with. My point was calling you out for thinking that the only people who know how to "properly grade" learned before TPGs came out, and so few collectors who started after TPGs are capable of doing so. Generational elitism. If you can't see it after this post, you likely never will.

 

Seattlejerk is on my "ignore" list, & it works quite well. You may wish to do the same.

 

Thanks for the education post, Joe. Reminds us the need to check NGC website for comparison purpose. I also noticed the NGC label insert looks different from the authentic one.

 

Thanks, Joe. That should be required viewing.

 

Bless your heart.

 

Out of curiosity, is the fake holder sonically welded or is it and after market snap closure?

 

Notice how your two sentences contradict each other? It doesn't take going through philosophy class to see when someone's statements don't add up.

The very fact that this fake slab exists is proof positive that we still need to know how to grade to be in this hobby. Nothing has changed, we are just entering a new phase of punctuated equilibrium (that term would make my military history instructor proud).

(Some) dealers have fraudulently listed details coins as problem-free, and over graded others in order to sell them at a higher price. This practice was prevalent before slabs, and remains today. No self-respecting dealer is going to be fooled by this fake slab, nor are they going to sell fake slabbed coins. There will always be charlatans on the internet, no amount of ranting or changes will stop that. New collectors will always get burned until they learn to grade. Again, zero change between generations, just different environments.

I wholeheartedly agree that slabs have added to a sense of security, but I do not believe this single, fake slab somehow represents the demise of numismatics. You are right to be concerned about them, I am as well.

But your generalizations and assumptions about how you "truly learned to grade" because your generation "was required to learn" and cintrast that by lamenting that so few people today can grade are flawed and fall victim to the same self-aggrandizement you attempted to accuse me of.

In the future, you might do well to leave your unfounded, negative generalizations about others, as well as your self-promotion, out of your comments (edit: this is called virtue signaling, but seems you took philosophy class once too). They detract from your otherwise reasonable concern that fake slabs are bad for the hobby.

And thank you for changing your comment to bless me. we all know what ad hominem attacks demonstrate in an argument.

 

Never a dull moment in this hobby.

 

This back and forth is very distracting and really doesn't add anything positive to the OP.

 

And "Bless Your Heart" is a southern way of telling you off without using inappropriate language.