“Details” Grade Question

Agreed whole heartedly. I am not in this hobby personally for the glory of the top grade examples. I am in it entirely for the love of the history in my coins. So when I grabbed the damaged slabbed seated half above for twenty-five bucks, it suited me just fine. I certainly didn’t drop the cash to have it slabbed..... It floors me to see all manner of low value coinage slabbed. I have to wonder what folks were thinking when they went to that expense.... In fifty years of collecting I have gone to the expense of slabbing five coins. And that was only so my family could easily liquidate them once I leave this party.

 

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Authentication. "Damaged" does not mean "valueless", at least to a significant subset of collectors, and a damaged rare coin is more valuable than a fake rare coin.

 

But the coins are just slabbed, not graded. Does the plastic casing prove it’s authentic? Again, how do they determine which damaged coins are worth the slab? I don't think their rules states that only "rare" damaged coins can be slabbed.

 

Yes. They won't slab coins that aren't authentic. In the rare cases where they themselves are fooled, they back up their position with a guarantee that compensates the buyer who detects the fake.

That's right. The grading companies are perfectly happy to take their fees and slab coins, even if the coin is worth less than the slabbing fee.

 

One positive side to slabbing details, or problem coins, is if they are kept in their slab and offered for resale, the buyer will be fully aware of what they are buying. An unslabbed problem coin can be offered and described as problem free, and there are many buyers that will believe the seller.

 

If someone has the intention to sell a damaged coin as problem free, they won't get it slabbed and just sell it on eBay, or etsy or ecrater, etc. If a newbie gets their coin back in a slab stating it's damaged, they would most likely rip that casing off if they want to con someone into buying their coin. I don't think slabbing a damaged coin prevents it from being sold. I personally don't want to see my coin in a slab that says it's damaged, I'd rather they tell me in a "body bag" and give my money back.

I think it's time that an overwatch group is created, pick 20 of the TOP numismatists in the country/world and make them the authority on what should be graded and not. It will probably help in minimizing all the ever growing minute DDOs/DDRs/varieties that requires a microscope to find. Otherwise, TPGs can pretty much make up anything, eventually they can create a grading system for the ugliest coin in the world, or the most damaged coin in existence. People go to TPGs because there are no other way. That's my rant for the day lol. Apologies to @Randy Abercrombie, didn't mean to hijack your thread with my questions.

 

Not at all. Fifty years of collecting and this whole religion that exists around the TPG’s is still a bit of smoke and mirrors to me. I appreciate the input.

 

They sell them at coin shows and in coin shops as raw coins. Plenty of them break out problem coins to sell that way.

You don’t get your money back because you can’t grade. There is an option where they don’t encapsulate details coins but you’re still going to pay because they took the time to grade it

 

My first thought after reading this paragraph is no, no, no, no. In my mind, there are so many reasons not to do it.

There have always been criminals and there will always be criminals. No matter what laws, oversights, etc. you put into place, you can't safe guard/insulate people from unscrupulous people. Never going to happen.

The only way to protect yourself in this hobby is to educate yourself. I would say this is also true for life in general, but I digress.

You also can't protect people from themselves. Go read the "what's it worth" threads. There are so many people that only are concerned with getting rich. You cannot protect them. They're looking to "strike gold". They take no time to learn, they just want to flip some supposed rare find and collect their supposed riches. There "blinded" and easily swayed.

Once a business loses their customers trust, it's over. The top TPG's are very aware of this and while you might not like the fact they holder problem coins or market labels/signatures on bullion coins, in general, they provide a valuable service to the hobby.

Why do you want to create a "star chamber" of experts who get to decide "all"? This can only lead to corruption. Plus, who's going to pay them? Once they have the power, than what will you have to pay to get their blessing?

Free markets even the playing field. I have many more thoughts on this, but I don't want to write more of a novel than I already have so far.

 

I can think of at least one series where one of the "star experts" has on more than one occasion publicly trashed a coin they were actively bidding on to try and suppress the price.

 

Is that what CAC does?

 

The difference is TPGs priority is making money for their business. Numismatists at least care about the coins itself, and they most likely know more about the coins than graders. TPGs care about the looks, not the history of it. I think...in my opinion at least.

Their grading scales are based on their own opinion, not a collaboration of coin experts. Do they even review their grading rules to keep up with the changes to the coins?

 

That's pretty evident here, it's like TPGs are coin gods.

 

I'm sure there are but I doubt that every one is. I think when it comes to coin expertise, experience is a huge criteria. There will be new hires to keep up with the submissions and the quality of the hires often suffers when there's a need to fill a spot specially when it affects their numbers.

I totally agree with the rest of your post.

 

The graders and finalizes all are.

 

Coins are never looked at by only one person.

 

Well, I guess I'll chime in here...

I don't believe that back in the day someone said "Hey, let's figure out a way to remove money from people's pockets & put it in our pockets & have them do it willingly....& you know what, coin collectors are ripe for the pickings! Let's start a grading & slabbing system to make them think were adding value to their coins."

No, I believe the idea had a noble beginning. And authentication is certainly a nice feature regardless of the condition of the coin.

But there are problems that arise:

There are at least 50 thousand ways to collect, whether it's complete series, or only Morgan's, or type sets, or only commemoratives, or only moderns, or only ancients and some of those in severely narrow bands (not being critical here), or (apparently) only cents (OK, pennies) since 1992 ,.....you get the idea.

Anyone who has been following CT threads can readily see that it's very rare to have a consensus on many of the things that come up for opinion...but it is great to share ideas, dialog, and different opinions because we are indeed humanity, & we love to learn & teach. But this idea about the value & integrity of "grading & TPG's" has about the widest range of opinions as any.

So, given this, the TPG's are between a rock & a hard place. And I think part of the problem is that it is too inexpensive (read: they don't charge enough) to grade. If slabbing started at something like $50 or $60 per coin you wouldn't have every Tom, Dick & Harry (well, I'm sure other would do it too, but these guys are always the instigators) slabbing tons of coins. The way it is going, it seems the TPG's are being inundated with submissions, and of course they make mistakes. And they have to add qualified graders & good luck with that, as evidenced by the wide variances in opinions here when asked to grade a coin (OK, I realize you don't have it in hand, but still...)

And have you read the discussions (read: complaints) about whether bullion coins are 69's or 70's!!! Sheesh!!!

So they get more submissions, we require (read: want) them to get cheaper & faster, yet we complain about pricing, accuracy, & nit pick grading, but have no regard for the difficulty in learning to grade, the time/experience factor. I dare say that there are few of us here who are really qualified or experienced enough to really do it.

No, aside from authentication, the main thing that slabbing attempts to accomplish is to level the playing field....that (thanks to the internet) someone on one side of the globe can buy a slab from someone on the other side of the globe & have a certain degree of comfort in the subjective "grade". Unfortunately, this doesn't work because it is all SUBJECTIVE.

So while collectors now have the advantage of reaching virtually every other collector on the planet....we cannot agree on grades or the virtues of TPG's. I find it difficult to pin this problem mostly on TPG's, which again I believe to be a noble but flawed exercise.

And for the record, of the couple of thousand coins in my possession, I only have about 35 slabs.

OK, people, we're done here, move along.....