Raw vs. Slabbed

I buy either as available but I swear that every time I buy a raw coin I get riped off.

Ruben

 

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whichever is available for me... especially when i travel

 

obvios, if your looking for a coin for your own collection, it doesnt matter if its raw or slabbed

 

I am personally moving away from slabbed coins. When the TPGs started, slabbing coins made more sense to me, but as a larger and larger number of coins went into slabs, I started watching a little "hidden game" play out amongst quite a few dealers.

These dealers would look for coins that would upgrade a point from one slab to another. Now, at first blush this looks innocent enough, but in practice what it did was it started pushing the number of overgraded coins in slabs up. These dealers wouldn't take the TPGs word for it on a grade. They chose coins that they were sure that, if submitted enough, eventually would get the higher grade.

As the years went by, more and more coins started to reside in these "inflated" slabs. Many more years have now passed and the percentage of coins in inflated slabs is now much higher with respect to the actual number of those coins known to exist. This has skewed population reports for grades and has created a market for an entirely new service. There is now a service where a grader will tell you if your slabbed coin is graded properly.

During these years I have learned that a solid knowledge of grading will help me more than the opinion of some third party. That is not to say that I am always right, but I do believe that people don't learn to grade for themselves much anymore, because there are experts at arm's reach to tell them what a coin grades. It's easier to have someone else do the work. The same is true for many people with calculators and math, people no longer learn to do the work because technology has made it easier to do it another way.

Many of the people that buy and sell slabbed coins have more of an interest in what grade the coin will be in the marketplace because they buy and sell their coins with profit and profit potential in mind. The dictionary would place them among the investors of our hobby. I have no intentions of selling ANY of my coins in my collection. They are MINE until you take them from me in my estate. Therefore, I consider myself a coin collector and I am proud of the distinction between us. I prefer to learn about coins and enjoy the hobby of coin collecting. I am not concerned with what my collection is worth or whose is nicer.

 

^^ I agree completely....

There are no coin types I would search out for slabbed...I have never thought 'I should get a slabbed example of this because people fake this type'.

I buy mostly raw coins bacause most coins I buy are ancients and world and there arent that many ancients out there that I see for sale in slabs and there are plenty of raw world coins out there to choose from. I have a few slabbed coins, I bought them because the coin in the slab was outstanding, the slab did not factor into why I bought them at all.

I will NOT pay more for a coin because it is slabbed, I will NOT pay more for a coin if it has some MS-whatever number (scam so people can bump prices)...I will only pay what I think is a fair price...Slabbing and some expanded grading system means so little to me...and I just cant stand having to look at my coins locked away behind a cheap plastic sheen...There is no such thing as MS-63, 64, 65 whatever money...unless you have allowed yourself to be duped that way, or are playing the eek a bit more money out of flipping, lets raise the price of coins game. It just Uncirculated or it isnt...its just FDC, almost FDC or it isnt. If someone showed me two coins, one that is graded 63 and one that is graded 65...I wouldnt pay any more for one or less for the other and if the person thinks I should, I move right on along Think its just how things are in the hobby? Think again...plenty of people could not care less if you want extra money because you locked a coin away in plastic with a MS-grade...the more people who do not bite, the less that tactic will work...

 

I couldn't agree more, mike.