Anyone Seen An Old Accugrade Holder Like This Before?

I posted this coin/holder on the CU forum and the thread got shut down because of all the "bad blood" between many forum members and ACG (due to past lawsuits filed by ACG against certain people and organizations for defamation, ACG lost and went bankrupt, pretty much end of story). A few of the members couldn't stay on topic and wanted to rehash old arguments and began doing some ACG bashing and making personal attacks.

In any event, in spite of the nastiness, I did receive some interesting information on the history of this holder:

This was a late 80s generation of their slab. They tried inventing a new grading scale with more dimensions than the prevailing one. They weren't taken seriously for reasons that are beyond the scope of a response to your question. PCI had competing slabs with photos in them at the same time. This may have actually been a response to that, as I believe Accugrade had slabs without photos that predate this one. The coin as holdered is only of interest to collectors of TPGania (or is it TPGilia?). and:

ACG has made at least 26 versions of their slab, but the image you shared is of their first version. They opened for business in 1984 and by 1985 this slab style had been changed. PCGS paid ACG a licensing fee starting in 1989 that directly led to the halt of business at ACG. The fees were paid until late 1997 and, when they ended, ACG came back into business with their small slab style.

So, without getting into anything negative about ACG, I'm just wondering if any of you have any thoughts on this old holder? It's not mine, it belongs to a friend of mine who just wanted some more information on it before he decided whether to sell it. Thanks!

 

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Interesting - the two I had did not look anything like that. And doesn't someone on here have a website for the various holders and years. Will try to search for it.

 

Found it - http://www.sampleslabs.com/ see if this helps.

 

mark
Thanks for the link, interesting.

 

Well well well, I thought I was going to be able to tell you just which generation of ACG holder you had and surprise! I have never seen this one before. It IS a very early one but not the first one. It does look very similar to the ACG1 variety listed in the slabbook, but there is a variety even earlier than that one which wasn't discovered until after the book was published. The one shown here appears to be transitional between those two varieties. That would make this the second earliest known ACG variety and would date it to probably sometime in 1984.

PCI did have competing photoslabs but they did not begin operations until 1986 and they licensed the slab shell from ACG. ACG did have smaller non-photo slabs but they came later. ACG also hade photocertificates without slabs in 1986 and very briefly brought back the photoslabs in the early 2000's (I also have one photoslab which claims to be a joint venture between ACG and ICCS from around 2006 but I suspect it to be an altered piece.)

As to the PCGS license with ACG, Accugrade says PCGS did license material from them PCGS says they did not. I haven't asked Allan to see a copy of the license agreement but I do know that for several years after PCGS began ACG was not slabbing and then they suddenly statert up again. Allan says this was because there was a none competition clause in the contract and the ACG began again when PCGS stopped paying their fees. No guarantee, just hearsay until I can see the contract. (Accugrade did slab very briefly duing that period under the name ASA but stopped because it was thought to be a violation of the contract, but when they resumed slabbing post 1997 it was under the name ASA-Accurgrade. This is per Allen Hagar.)

If and when your friend decides to sell it keep me in mind. I would be interested because I don't have this slab in my reference collection. In the meantime may I use these images, and would it be possible to get better ones?

 

Conder, I was told by pm on the PCGS board that you were THE GUY to contact regarding these slabs, so I had hoped to hear from you, and you are in deed a wealth of slab information! Thank you. I talked to my customer last night about selling this coin, so I'll pm you. I had heard the story about the PCGS/ACG connection from another PCGS forum member, as well as PCI using a very similar slab (boy, you certainly do learn a lot by posting one of these old slabs!). Thanks a whole bunch for this info, sincerely!

 

And I believe the website is conders - so thanks to conder. And it is one of the bookmarks on my home PC. Darn work laptop.

 

If you are talking about http://www.sampleslabs.com/, conder does not own it. An old time member here owns it. He has not posted in years and he was YN of the year several years ago. BUT, I don't remember his name. I will post it if I find/remember it.

 

Found it. Cameron Kiefer AKA kieferscoins

 

Maybe it was just conder that posted it originally. I did not know that - I thought it was someone active on the forum. Thanks for the info and my apologies to the correct owner.

 

RLM, you are truly amazing - a regular CoinTalk encyclopedia! Thanks!

 

I have no connection with the Sample Slabs web site other than the fact that I was the person who got cameron interested in sample slabs, and he had an blurb on his site about my book.

 

Just one comment on the ANACS 1-9 slabs in the website. I'm a very big fan of these original small ANACS slabs.
They went "disco" after these. For me ANACS 1-9 are the best slab format of all the TPGs.

 

Kidkayt, if you ever get a chance to examine a Compugrade slab in hand, you might change your opinion. Personally I think the Compugrade slab was the best slab format ever produced. They were small amost the same size as the old small size ANACS slabs, so they saved room. They were made of a higher density plastic so they felt heavy and solid in your hand, not flimsy. The plastic was very clear and the insert was more transparent that those used by the other services. You could actually see about 90% of the edge of the coin. This predated the NGC edge view and other services attempts to make the edge viewable by about 10 to 16 years. They had a top viewable label so you didn't have to pull the slab out of a box to know what was in it. A feature that predated SEGS top viewable label by seven years and ANACS by sixteen years. The slabs wre slightly thicker than the ANACS slabs with smooth flat sides. Not only would they interlock and stack well, but the slabs would even stand on end or on their side without falling over. If you had a stack of them you could set them down on a table on any face and they would sit there like a solid block of plastic without falling over. Their downside was that being smaller they didn't fit will in a PCGS or NGC box, just like the small ANACS slabs, but since they were slightly thicker they wouldn't fit in the ANACS boxes either.