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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;qwasty, post: 989988, member: 27130&quot;]Not at all. You ancients guys are &quot;old school&quot; to the extreme. The ancient coins are probably the most fascinating coins to collect of them all, but the ancient coin market has languished far behind modern coins solely for the reasons that the current surviving generation of ancient collectors has vehemently blocked modernization with a zeal that can&#039;t be described in kind terms.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>For example, I made a post on the largest ancient coin forum about why I thought acceptance of third party authentication and grading would be good for the ancient coin market - collectors, dealers, investors, etc. My one post received a slew of very rude remarks, and without further ado, my post and my account were deleted. </p><p><br /></p><p>With that kind of arrogance, it&#039;s literally repulsive to newcomers, and destined to be defeated by a younger crop of collectors that see the value in not only collecting coins, but preserving them for future generations to come. The old-fashioned ancient coin collectors have succeeded in destroying anything that wasn&#039;t buried under earth or water. The best way to preserve great coins is by using third party authentication, grading, and conservation to ensure that the current batch of ancient coins in greasy collector hands will remain with us without being gradually destroyed like all the other lost treasures of antiquity.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t know why it is, but ancient coin collectors seem proud to describe themselves as jerks. They proudly destroy the coins through abrasive handling, and they proudly flaunt their abrasive personalities. I don&#039;t see any good in that. Hopefully it will change, and I&#039;m counting on third party grading to be the spearhead force to achieve that, primarily by attaching an attribution to the coin. The source of ancient coin collectors&#039; arrogance is their sense of elitism due to the inaccessibility of information that they have accumulated over decades. Once that information is no longer hoarded in musty old, expensive, and often rare books, then there won&#039;t be anything so trivial as knowledge for the unremarkable old timers to make them feel like they&#039;re better than everyone else.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once a coin has been documented by the third party companies, that information becomes available to everyone. Coins will gain and lose value based on the census information they publish, and generally, the market will become more efficient and accurate. People will be financially rewarded for NOT damaging their coins through centuries of incessant and (soon to be) unnecessary handling. Before the 3rd party services, the handling was necessary with each change of hands simply to identify the coin, then to authenticate it. Ancients collectors aren&#039;t free from that necessity yet, because the third party grading services don&#039;t cater to all coins yet. Eventually, they will though.</p><p><br /></p><p>Granted, most ancients collectors have coins that are expendable in the sense that there&#039;s more of them available than there are collectors interested in them. I suspect that companies like NGC will change that though, by decreasing the barriers to entry, and increasing the number of collectors. Every collector has a few basic questions about a coin: &quot;What is it? What is it worth?&quot;. Third party companies make great strides in handing the answers to those questions to you on a silver platter. Without them, it could literally take years of research to answer just one of those questions.</p><p><br /></p><p>And of course, back to the original topic, the slab they put the coins in allows you to show your precious coin to anyone, even small children, without fear that the coin will be damaged. The slab protects the coin not only for archival purposes, but also for presentation purposes. Before the &quot;coin holder era&quot;, coins were best viewed behind the glass of a display case. Now, you can hold any coin in your hand, no matter how rare or valuable, with virtually no risk of damaging it, even if it is dropped. So, if your concern is, in essence, how close you can get to your coins, then in the grand scheme of things, slabbing will allow people to come closer to ancient coins than they&#039;ve ever come before. </p><p><br /></p><p>When I take as step back and compare a modern coin worth $50000 with hundreds or thousands of known specimens in an obviously pristine state of preservation after only a few decades, versus an ancient coin that is worth $10, is the sole surviving specimen, and possibly the only thing that remains of the people from which it came, I see a problem. How can the modern coin be worth so much more than the ancient coin? It&#039;s simply a matter of accessibility. Before something can become accessible, it must become known. Above all, the attribution linked to a slabbed ancient coin will do wonders for the ancient coin market. </p><p><br /></p><p>Those values are not merely shallow commodity dollars changing hands - they are literally &quot;values&quot; in the sense of &quot;how much do we care about this coin?&quot;. A coin that nobody cares about is worth perhaps $10. A coin people care about might be worth a thousand times as much, or more. The poor valuation of ancient coins is often the first fact that is most interesting to new collectors. They wonder with amazement how something so rare, and so old, can be worth less than a burger and fries! </p><p><br /></p><p>I think that many ancient coins should be worth much more than they are, and few ancient coin collectors would feel the need to disagree with that. But, the fundamental questions must be answered instantly before ancient coins will be able to achieve their &quot;true&quot; maximum value. &quot;What is it?&quot; and &quot;What is it worth?&quot; should not be left vague or mysterious. The mysticism and the resulting elitism of the ancient coin market must be eliminated before ancient coins will be respected in dollar terms.</p><p><br /></p><p>The really sad thing is that many ancient coin collectors are breaking ancient coins out of their slabs, without reporting it. They are inadvertently making it appear that there are more of those coins in existence than there actually are, and driving the perceived rarity, and thus value of the coin down. Arrogance is probably the most destructive mindset a person can have, both to others and themselves. As soon as it ends, the ancient coins market will become a healthy area for education, collecting, and investment.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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