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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Nathan B., post: 4575074, member: 112852&quot;]Hi Spaniard!&nbsp; To be honest, my coin was already slabbed when I bought it, but I am glad it was.&nbsp; In my case, I just feel very protective of my coin, which is not only the only ancient I have, but my most expensive coin by far, too.&nbsp; It&#039;s also in a high grade.</p><p><br /></p><p>I am very proud to own this coin.&nbsp; Even in a holder, it transports me to the world of ancient Athens and beyond, and my imagination and memory can go among the many books (not nearly enough, but much more than most) that I have read from classical Greece.&nbsp; A 3-D photo would absolutely not do that at all for me, not least because the physical object would not be owned by me and held in my hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is what I mean by each person having their own preference.&nbsp; For you, you need to touch your coin, and that is ok.&nbsp; For me, it&#039;s not necessary, and in the case of an expensive (for me!) high grade coin would actually impair my enjoyment due to worry.&nbsp; I actually think NGC has a nice balance with the use of their prongs in their ancients holders; this allows me to see most of the rim of the coin.&nbsp; I think it&#039;s the best balance of visibility and protection.</p><p><br /></p><p>In a way, we are all curators and collections managers of our own collections. I actually once took a distance ed course in collections management many years ago.&nbsp; It was quite interesting.&nbsp; I also had the boyhood experience of going to my local coin shop and buying cheap silver 50 cent pieces (my favourite denomination of Canadian coins) with my allowance and paper route money.&nbsp; I promptly put them into soft plastic blue-cover albums.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can guess what came next: after a decade or so of ownership, my coins were covered in green goo due to PVC contamination.&nbsp; When I emerged from adolescence, when I did not pay much attention to my coins, I was quite disappointed.&nbsp; But since I had bought them for bullion only as a kid (when silver was about $6 an ounce or so--I might not be quite right there), and since I sold them as a very young adult when silver was about $20 an ounce (I wish I had waited a few more years!), I was happy to realize a profit.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I vowed never to let anything like that happen again.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I have also seen the damage that light can do to coins.&nbsp; A certain person I know used to work in a coin shop for several years.&nbsp; This coin shop had proof silver coins on display right under spotlights that were turned on for nine hours a day.&nbsp; Over a very long period of time, the display proof coins turned the colour of gold.</p><p><br /></p><p>I also have a silver maple leaf coin that I keep almost as a pocket piece.&nbsp; I used to rub it a lot between my forefinger and thumb, and rub the sharp, serrated rim under my fingernails, for some unknown reason.&nbsp; Since this is a bullion coin, and a common one, I didn&#039;t mind doing this.&nbsp; Eventually, I did wear down the very highest points of the coin, and I certainly smoothed out some of the sharpness of the edges.&nbsp; It was sort of fun.&nbsp; But I would never do this with any other coin--one is enough!</p><p><br /></p><p>in short, light, moisture, oils, acids, and so on are enemies of coins.&nbsp; The effects of handling a coin not by its edges will eventually cause some change to the coin&#039;s surface.&nbsp; Of course, with Ancients, there have already been many changes to a coin&#039;s surface before it even reaches us collectors: at the very least cleaning, perhaps harsh, and possibly also stripping, repatination, and even retooling, which is nowadays considered unethical and undesirable.&nbsp; But still: why make even more changes that will degrade the surface, if not now, then perhaps a decade or even a half century later when it is so easy to hold the coin by its edges?&nbsp; And if the coin is an expensive one in a higher grade, I personally prefer to protect it in a slab.&nbsp; This also has the virtue of taking some of the subjectivity out of the reselling experience later (though I do not ever intend to sell my owl.&nbsp; I have sold other graded and ungraded Canadian coins in the past).</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, thanks for not attacking me! All the best to you. ;-)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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