A small mystery ... EPN Slab Morgan

Hello all,

Many of us have heard of Eric P Newman and may have seen his pedigree attached to NGC certified coins.
Now has anyone seen a slab like this?
For reference, I have pictured it next to an ACG holder since the two are the same type of slab. Was this potentially someone licensing the ACG holder to sell Newman coins before the NGC sale?
@Conder101 @Burton Strauss III

 

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Wow!!!!

ACG had two kinds of licensees - for one fee you could send coins and labels to ACG to be sealed, for a larger fee ($25k plus materials) you could buy a turnkey setup. There we also unlicensed users of the ACG slabs.

I would suggest an inquiry to the foundation might give you an answer.

 

Yep I remember Conder saying it before:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/national-grading-service-slab-acg-type-holder-any-info.269336/

That was my assumption as well that someone used the 25k service.
I'll try to send an email and see if the foundation has any info.

 

I sent an email inquiry to
curator@newmannumismaticportal.org

Is that the place to ask @Burton Strauss III or should I contact someone else?

 

Sounds right.

I don't believe EPN's papers are all imaged or indexed, there should be some correspondence regarding the slabbing of these coins, which will be of interest - at least to me.

Also interestingly, "Numismatic Education Center of Birmingham" doesn't generate any hits either in Google or the portal...

 

I've never seen anything like that, and I would strongly suspect it has nothing to do with the EPN foundation which is in St Louis and always has been.

 

Wow. You stumped conder! Nice get.

 

How old is that logo? Heritage and NGC used it in the auction a couple years ago, but I assume the Eric P. Newman Numismatic Educational Society (whose logo it is) predates that. That would be a clue as to when this slab was put together, and someone at the NNP should be able to help there. The label looks crude enough to be early 1990s.

 

So far I'm somewhat stuck. The seller did not have any historical information and the foundation (in St. Louis) says only NGC and PCGS were authorized to use the Newman name.

@messydesk that is a good idea and it'll be my next question for the foundation.

 

Sources I found say the foundation dates from 1959.

 

Then this is simply a home-made slab. I have seen dozens of different examples as they are very easy to produce and can fool many collectors. Some of them were made by gluing a cut-from-an-logo to a typewritten label! I've even seen one of these "items" with a cut out CAC bean posted on the front.

 

"The logo coincided with the NGC certification prior to the first Newman sale (April 2013). The certification would have occurred in late 2012 or early 2013."

-Leonard Augsburger from wustl

So maybe someone created an ACG type slab around the 2013 Newman auction?
Although that doesn't seem too likely given the reputation of ACG and why would they use Birmingham as the location?

My only guess would be that Newman or someone from the foundation hosted an event in Birmingham (in the 90s?) and made a slabs to commemorate it?

@Insider might have a good explanation too but this would be such a weird thing to copy...the fake CAC would be more likely used by someone looking to deceive or be funny.

 

Someone that would make a bogus slab with the EPN logo on it is probably not too concerned with things like good reputations. The other clue that it is recent is the "MS64+" grade.

 

Good points, but I would disagree on the 64+. All sorts of dealers and companies used unusual grading for their times (and PCGS/NGC usually weren't the first to do things like a plus grade). For instance, Compugrade and Accugrade used decimal grades going back to the late 80s/early 90s (i.e. the 63.5 ACG holder pictured in this thread).

 

I wondered about that same thing. Wasn't sure if the + was being used by offshoots then or was it even a thing at all yet in the 90s though

 

People used + all the time on 2x2s or as stickers they'd put on slabs to try and exaggerate a grade, but they didn't become legitimized inside slabs, and thus ripe for imitation, until PCGS and NGC started using them. The "extended precision" grades (note that precision does not mean accuracy) are a different story.

 

If I had to guess I'd say it is probably a recent put together job like Insider suggested. Notice the logo doesn't say Eric P Newman Education society, or Foundation etc, it says Eric P Newman COLLECTION and that was the logo they used when they were selling his collection, so it is recent. And ACG has not been doing any slabbing recently that I know of.

 

The real mystery is what happened to the ACG equipment? It's certainly likely that a batch of shells and an sonic sealing machine was floating around...

The company registration lapsed in 2008 for failure to file the annual report with the state of Florida:

http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/Co...dd6a&searchTerm=asa&listNameOrder=ASA 1976600

Also for giggles, check the 2001 annual report and note the change in who was running the place...

FYI the address is The UPS Store West Melbourne.

 

Wow, man, that is one of those rare Alfred E. Neuman coins from his hoard!