this is an embarrassment

Hold up... If I'm reading this correctly, the complaint was filed sometime in 1990 (maybe 1989 - the article is unclear) and settled on or around September of 1990. Yet, 5 years later, you still were slabbing coins thinking that the plastic was a magic shield against market forces?...

 

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Sorry but that slab generation didn't start until 2002 so the time period he's talking about is more than a decade later

Which by the way even at that time 69s were a $20 coin. It appears he hoped for a 70 and didn't get it and now wants to bring up something from more than a decade prior to place blame on PCGS

 

For what its worth I have a 1933 Japan 50 sen XF45 graded by NGC. Got it off Ebay.

 

As long as you don't soil yourself, you'll never be truly embarrassed.......

 

I have a number of high grade slabbed coins, MS-67 or higher thst I purchased for a dollar. I have even more of them under $10 dollars. I buy them at my LCS.

 

The FTC arguments were very mild and even PCGS admitted they were "reasonable."

This is not unlike SIPC being created in 1970 to take the risk out of brokerage firms going under with client monies....which is NOT to say that SIPC and federal regulation/guarantees eliminate the risks of investing in the stock market.

Similarly, PCGS's services eliminated alot of risks and fraud...but do NOT eliminate the risks of "investing" in coins.

Anybody saying or thinking otherwise is either an idiot or more likely angling for a lawsuit to make up for their stupidity.

 

Slabbing WAS intended to standardize grading, and the thought was to make coins a safer investment by making them fungible and allow for the establishment of a sight unseen market. It failed on all three counts. Grading didn't standardize, we have four services each using their own standards which may or may not match marketplace standards, coins never became fungible (fungible meaning in this case interchangeable, ANY MS-65 was the same as ANY OTHER MS-65) and the lack of fungibility lead to the rapid downfall of the sight unseen market. Many people think a sight unseen market means that you order a coin without having seen it, and if you don't like it send it back. NO!. A sight unseen market meant you order a MS-65 and as long as the slab says MS-65 you own it NO RETURN PRIVILEGES. Remember, they are supposed to be interchangeable. Well since you could be sent any ugly coin, grading error etc, and as long as the slab label grade matched you had to keep it. The bid levels on the sight unseen market dropped to 25% or less of greysheet bid levels (Which at the time were for sight seen RAW coins.) It had been hoped that by making them fungible, coins would bee seen as an investment vehicle for Wall Street. And for a little while it worked and several coin investment funds were set up. Almost all of them lost their shirt.

 

Respectfully disagree, C101.

I do believe coins are a "safer" investment thanks to the TPGs. Not SAFE -- but safer.

BIG difference !!!

We basically have a duopoly with PCGS and NGC; the market share for ANACS and ICG must be <5% of new submittances, if that.

That was NEVER going to happen. Each coin is UNIQUE....coins are not stocks or bonds that are identical.

Even I, a rookie/novice at the time, realized that. Eventually, my Wall Street compatriots probably realized it, too.

Well, if you deal with someone and have a coin that you are convinced has been misgraded you may (or may not) have return privileges.

But again....nobody could - or SHOULD -- possibly think that coins could be exchanged interchangeably. Stocks and bonds are 100% liquid and interchangeable. A share of Microsoft traded on NASDAQ is the same as one traded between 2 institutions or on an exchange.

No 2 numismatic dated coins are EXACTLY the same. They may have the SAME EXACT GRADE -- but they are NOT exactly the same.

For practical purposes, you can say that today's MS and PF coins are identical or nearly identical because the minting and striking process has improved by light-years from the 1950's and 1920's and before. But that's not what was at state 30 years ago with the TPGs and older coins.

(1) The market dropped to 25% of initial quotes because there was a bubble in PRICING. This isn't a reflection of the merits of the TPGs.

(2) Again, coins were more "fungible" but not perfectly interchangeable and marketable like stocks or bonds. So nobody on Wall Street had any illuisons, and nobody who was a professional coin collector/numismatist (who SHOULD have known better than the Wall Street guys) should have had any illusions either.

(3) The investment funds were never set up as far as I know. Both Merrill Lynch and Kidder Peabody were merely exploring the possibility. They probably realized (a) there wasn't enough demand (b) there weren't enough coins to justify funds of sufficient size and (c) they realized that even with TPGs that coins weren't interchangeable enough such that MS-65's themselves differed greatly to a professional.

TPGs closed "the gap" for the average coin collector or the rookie or novice. But not enough to justify Wall Street $$$$...or win-over every long-time veteran coin collector/numismatist.

 

I agree with a lot of the points you made, but he was right for the sight unseen market. It's literally you send the money based off of reading the price and what it is and then it's yours. As long as they send what they said they were sending it's a done deal.

It's why sight unseen prices are always lower as you know that it will almost certainly be a lower end coin as the better coins get sold in auctions/ways were the buyer gets to see the quality of it.

 

But that was an overselling of the TPG market. You had the electronic marketplace just beginning at the time -- the one that Doug talks about -- but unless you were ordering 20 or 50 coins where you know 90% will be solid 65's, if you bought 1 or 2 or 3, you might be getting "C" coins or worse.

Agree completely. But with the ability today to send Hi-Def pics in seconds, I think we ARE CLOSER to that "sight unseen" -- or should I call it SIGHT SEEN - with coins.

You just can't oversell the whole damn thing.

 

Conder101 said: ↑
"Slabbing WAS intended to standardize grading, and the thought was to make coins a safer investment by making them fungible and allow for the establishment of a sight unseen market. It failed on all three counts." which was Mr. Hall and his friends reason for creating PCGS in 1983 was to protect not just their own rare coins but the pubic collections as well. And between them, Ngc and Ebay the stabbers I was referring to were on the next train. For fellow collectors younger than 70, this may be the only time you may ever here about the way collecting was for decades before the TPG bees came to town. Slabbers were basically not crooked but that was business as usual back then in their little niche collecting market worlds. Every coin shop, vest pocket seller etc. bought some type of holder, flip or lucite case to encase coins with their own grades on the holders. They would buy mint proof sets (normal folks didn't have the money to spend on those type of things) and grade them in house, type up a label and sell them to their customers. When Ebay started these sort of coins were there by the 1000's. They actually issued a warning giving graders 120 days to meet certain requirements or their coins could not be sold on Ebay with any pictures of mention of a grade. Only Ngc and PCGS were able to meet the requirements, such as a public price guide" and were the ONLY graded coins available on Ebay for quite some time. We all know of the the "times 2" differences in the ngc and PCGS guide pricing. Enter ICG who had a plan to standardize not just the grading but the actual values of grades amoungst the different TPG's. ICG was by then out-moneyed and eventually sold the company lock stock and barrel. Their grader employees came from the same bolt of cloth that every other coin grader for all companies came from and have their experience and knowledge from on the job training of seeing 100's of new and/or rare coins day in and day out. The problem arose when all of these private slabs were gone and TPG's realized how much money was then left on the table greed, and 1990's business practices led to taking a simple hobby up a notch to an "industry" hence their 1990 FTC complaint. There were still years of unusual tactics going on the "industry" no worse than Bernie Madoffs pyramid scheme and many, many peoples life savings were spent on coin grading to come to now a fake supply and demand issue created by TPG lawyers and directors to have the bottom drop out of the value of a coin graded and, for many years, guaranteed by them. So I am one of those VOGC's(Veteran of Graded Coins) that lost my life savings on this fiasco. David Hall and the originators are long gone from PCGS decision making and replaced by young gung-ho directors hell bent on profit and could give a crap about a hobby or collectors. And @frankjg that's what I'm embarrassed of having been associated with such people and so should you. I feel @Conder101 and @GDJMSP know about this, have since recovered and have mastered the new way coins are collected and for what reasons. Had I sold my hoard even 5-10 years ago I would have done OK. But mark my word, 60-80's coins will be the next wheat penny craze in 5 or 10 more years. Graded shields will all be jet black in their little plastic rv's and be deemed worthless and the penny itself has very few years left before being obsoleted as a viable coin for the mint to produce. Here are examples of 80's-2000's slabber coins

 

@lowle harrison some of the coins you have in off label TPG plastic may bring an extra premium than if they had been graded by PCGS, NGC, ANACS or ICG. There is some interest in older grading companies slabs.

 

I would like to hear your explanation of "market forces" and what makes that a factor in a hobby? I collect butterflies and the only "market forces" are the net makers upping their prices every 10 to 20 years...

 

I don’t have time to teach you basic economics. Supply and Demand, Google it.

 

I don’t collect things encased in plastic. I think it’s generally stupid and this hobby did fine for millennia without it.

My primary collecting focus is ancients anyway. Slabs are usually frowned upon.

 

I think you're mixing up two different things here. The sight unseen Condor was referring too which is the true sight unseen is essentially dealer to dealer and mainly wholesale. The general market which involves collectors has certainly become overwhelmingly pictures for sales.

1985

They were always there by the 10s of thousands, people just got to finally see how common many things are when the internet starting showing inventory from all over the country and not just their local shop.

You keep going back to the 90s like you fell for something yet your eBay slab was from 2002 or later. The slabs in your for sale ad are the same time frame.....

Modern PF 69 proofs will never take off in price in anyones lifetime alive today.

The only thing truthful you posted here is that Hall is no longer in charge. Brett has done a fantastic job since taking over and you are 100 percent wrong again.

Which makes sense. Ancients don't lend themselves well to grading besides general grading. The only thing it would really add is authenticity guarantees but since NGC doesn't even guarantee authenticity for ancients it's hard to get a lot of people to really buy into that.

 

Before you sent it to be graded, it was was a proof 1985-S cent worth about $1. Since you got $3 for it, it would appear that the value was more than maintained, and that your intent by sending it for grading was to have its value increased.

 

What's the cheapest it can cost to get something slabbed if you send them in HUGE bulk.....$5 per coin ?

For most of us, it costs about $10-$12 to get something slabbed I think (as you can tell, I've never submitted). These new special slabs for 5 ounce coins I were told can cost $20-$50 each, depending on volume.