The latest LESSON LEARNED: Forget the NGC multi-coin slabs. Good News: They look nice in hand. Bad News: Storage is a minor problem. Bad News: The slab has been wiped (not by me) so much that there's hairlines all over the place. Example: All the lines are on the slab, not the coin. Experience is a great teacher, but she shows no mercy in the first lesson.
Good information, duly noted. Anyone know of a plastic polish type process to minimize those scratches?
Goodman's book says change the lighting angle. That's fine except I've got the light coming in from the angles I want on the coin. If I change the angle on the slab, then the angle on the coin changes. I'll have to do some testing.
I use Meguiar's (sp??) Plastix auto plastic polish that I got at the local auto supply store which was recommended by Mark Goodman. It's a product made for polishing scratches and haziness from headlights mostly. Works great in removing light scratches and you can even remove deep ones if you work at it enough. Just takes quite a bit of elbow grease, but a bottle of this stuff is much cheaper than a reholder fee and it'll polish hundreds of slabs.
Kanga....another lesson is that the mulit-holders have less value then if they were in individual slabs. I had a few sets multi-holder but I will never do it again. I had to send them in to get put into individual slabs so I could get what money I had into them back out of them.
I had my two oldest proof sets put into the multi-holders ('52 and '53). I just wanted to see how they would turn out. Considering I bought the sets back in the 70's and even with the slabbing fees (5x the fee for a single coin) I think I did okay. The two Franklins made it worthwhile. The '52 graded PF-66; the '53 graded PF-65 Cameo. But I think you're correct about having to crack them out to get your best money.
Kanga....I store my multi-holders in the NGC storage box and I keep them in the plastic like when you get them from NGC. I think the multi-holders scratch a lot easier than the individual slabs.
I handle them maybe twice a year. If I were the cause of the hairlines I would expect them to be randomly oriented. But since they are parallel I put the blame on NGC. I may try one (or more) of the products mentioned. As long as it doesn't affect the coins I can't do any real harm (I think).
just don't use too much of whatever product you try as remember, the slabs are not air/water tight... don't want the polish to get into the edge seam of the slab and cause damage long term.
Brasso is also ok for polishing slabs, smear on a thin layer, let it dry, and polish with a soft cotton cloth. Towards the end, make the polishing strokes parallel to the direction of your lighting (when you photograph the coins) which makes the very faint hairlines invisible.
im no expert in coins but i do alot of polishing out of scratches on my motorbikes, (metal and plastic components) and surely those hairlines should polish out easy enough. get your elbow working man
