How long are the classic and older coins grading delayed, due to the grading of millions and millions of bullion pieces??? It must be very important to both the submitters, and the services. Also not much if any at all market grading is incorporated into the grades. The classic coins are so unevenly graded it's not funny.
The thought that ten million of the things have been slabbed by a single company made me go to their website to see what this is all about. As of this writing, NGC has, indeed, slabbed 10,062,007 Silver Eagles (1986-date). I would think that nobody would slab a piece of silver bullion unless he thought it was perfect, and, indeed, the median and modal grade for every pre-2001 “business strike” is MS-69. For the special strikes, and for business strikes of the last 5 years, it’s MS-70. As I write this, silver spot is $19.46. Even at $8 per coin plus postage for those who send in thousands, the break-even grade is MS-68. For you and me, the break-even grade is MS-69. You might as well melt any SE with even minute flaws. The only way to make significant money on these is to have one that you got from the Mint in 2001 or earlier that slabs MS-70. This, of course, assumes that the reason for having them slabbed is to make money. Earnest collectors might just want to have a large collection of slabs with relatively cheap pieces of metal in them taking up lots of space in their homes and safe deposit boxes. And don’t forget that essentially none of those special labels add any value on the secondary market. In short, I had a great laugh over this.
TPGs receive palettes of monster boxes of ASEs for grading at a time. While I've never toured a TPG, I will bet you a dollar to a donut that these end up on an entirely different assembly line so that they can be pumped out quickly and not interfere with grading other coins.
Stack ASEs, ungraded and in flips. Dollar cost average your purchases and build great, big piles of them for savings, gifts, and possibly to barter with at some point. That is all.
Face it. A great portion of the graded bullion coin nonsense lands in the laps of HSN and other coin peddlers. It gave them something to sell besides gold-plated state quarters.
Yeah, I chuckled too. Yet, when owners and heirs take in these coins to sell and find out they will get nothing more than spot, a whole bunch of people will look at collecting as one big ripoff. Add to that the other overpriced coins sold by TV peddlers at near-criminal prices. Makes one wonder if the TPGs are digging a big grave for all of us to fall into.
That's got to be from 1/5 to 1/4 of their slab total. Wow. Good little idea someone came up with - especially with the special labels.
This "milestone" figure just goes to show that the silver eagle is way overpriced when it comes to PR70 and MS70. Hopefully, no one is collecting them as an investment, rather just to preserve history. You certainly don't need the overpriced MS70's and the PR70's.
Anybody who buys eagle proofs as a gold or silver investment is brain dead. Those are collector coins for a specific market.