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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 2448103, member: 39084&quot;]I&#039;ll leave it to the lawyers to argue whether an NGC slab is an implied guarantee of authenticity (I highly doubt it, though), but having written about this topic in other threads, I&#039;ll point out what I consider the difficulties and subtleties of providing a guarantee, and why I agree that NGC should not do this.</p><p><br /></p><p>The most important question is: What exactly is meant (functionally) by &quot;guarantee of authenticity?&quot;&nbsp; Exactly how would such a guarantee work?</p><p><br /></p><p>Consider this situation: A novice collector buys a slabbed ancient from an individual collector for $2000.&nbsp; A week later, it&#039;s conclusively determined that the coin is a modern fake.&nbsp; The novice collector contacts the grading service, who tells the collector that they don&#039;t guarantee authenticity, and in addition, similar coins in similar grades typically sell for $200 unslabbed.&nbsp; But since ancient coins are pretty much unique, the novice owner thinks it&#039;s worth $2000 because he claims it&#039;s a better coin than the comparable ones cited by the grading service.</p><p><br /></p><p>The original owner who sold the coin is genuinely surprised but also asserts that he didn&#039;t guarantee authenticity.&nbsp; In addition, the original owner has no recourse against the person who originally sold him the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>A third party insurer (Lloyd&#039;s of London?) is willing to pay off on a guarantee but agrees with the grading service that the coin is worth at most $200.&nbsp; Alternatively, Lloyd&#039;s offers to replace it &quot;with one of equal quality&quot; instead of paying the novice collector $200.&nbsp; The novice collector isn&#039;t happy with this alternative.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as I can figure, there&#039;s no really good resolution here.&nbsp; Everyone acted in good faith; the collectors were simply duped.&nbsp; No third party -- the slabbing service or Lloyd&#039;s -- wants to be liable for the full price paid by a novice collector who overpaid for a slabbed coin.&nbsp; The second party -- the seller -- is blameless in this situation since he, too, was duped and in good faith represented that the coin was authentic.</p><p><br /></p><p>From my perspective, the only way to offer a <i>functionally</i> useful &quot;guarantee of authenticity&quot; is for the dealer or auction house to offer its customers a perpetual money-back offer for any coins sold by the dealer or auction house that are provably fakes.&nbsp; This is what auction houses on Sixbid offer.&nbsp; They have (or should have) the expertise to evaluate every coin offered in their auctions, and have (or should have) the financial wherewithal to back up that guarantee.&nbsp; Personally, I wouldn&#039;t want a third-party guarantee on the coins that I purchase, since I wouldn&#039;t want to risk getting into the scenario that I describe above.</p><p><br /></p><p>And I&#039;ll finish with a somewhat heretical statement on this topic: If I were a novice collector purchasing coins in a price range where I couldn&#039;t afford my dealer&#039;s involvement on every coin, and I wanted to buy a coin that simply wasn&#039;t available from a dealer who offered a guarantee, I&#039;d most likely buy a slabbed coin vs. a similar unslabbed coin.&nbsp; My thinking would be that the risk of a counterfeit was lower buying a coin slabbed by a reputable service.&nbsp; I&#039;m not advocating for or against slabbing ancient coins, I&#039;m simply putting myself in the shoes of a novice collector and acknowledging the difficulties they face.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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