Do Ancients Need Grading?

I grade my own ancients using the scale for ancients, not the system used for modern coins. I laugh when I see some saying ancient coins are mint state.

Yep, it looks like the video has been removed. Oh well.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

This is just one of a number of issues I find troublesome when grading services apply modern grading standards and techniques to ancient coins. There is no rational or logical reason to charge a percentage of a coin's value for grading that coin, other than to enrich the grading service itself and extract more money from the collector. If the grading service provided some sort of authenticity guarantee along with the grade, then it would be reasonable to charge a percentage fee, but they specifically disclaim any such guarantee.

Another glaring weakness of applying modern grading standards (e.g., "strike" and "surface") to ancient coins is that they completely ignore a coin's artistic style. While style is, to some extent, subjective, it's not completely so, and some coins clearly exhibit better style than others that might be graded equally by modern standards.

While it might be argued that grading and slabbing an ancient coin provides more security to a novice collector, this is illusory. Without an accompanying guarantee of authenticity, the novice collector has nothing other than the grading service's opinion on two aspects of a coin's overall value and desirability. So what? Other than making it easier to resell the coin to another novice collector, what has been gained?

Finally, slabbing deprives the collector of an opportunity to directly handle a 2,000 year old coin. I find this tactile experience to be essential to the joy of collecting ancient coins. The hobby loses a lot of its excitement and wonder if you can't do this.

 

Video is back up for others who may have missed it while it was down.

 

For the vast majority of ancients, which includes all those I've collected up to now, I totally agree that they should not be slabbed. As others have stated, the tactile part of holding an ancient in one's hand is so much a fun part of collecting ancients for me.

But here's an example of an ancient I'd buy in a slab.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281303768196?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

If I'm going to spend over $2k on a Julius Caesar, why not have the peace of mind that comes from knowing it's been looked at and authenticated, even if not guaranteed by some noted experts in the business?

I can always crack it out after I buy it.

 

So, here's what puzzles me: what does it mean that a grading service has "authenticated" an ancient coin if that service is not willing to issue a guarantee of the coin's authenticity? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the "authentication" is pretty much worthless without a guarantee.

 

I partially disagree with this one. While I have no use for slabbed ancients, I believe the concept would be destroyed it the slabbers had to guarantee every coin. There are just too many ancient coins that are less than 100% absolutely, positively either fake or real. We do the best we can. For example there are some otherwise reasonable people who believe that all EID MAR denarii and (more certainly) aurei are fakes. Recently the find of a second Domitian II changed the status of the first one found from 'probably fake' to 'almost certainly genuine'. To cover themselves against losses from errors, ancient slabbers would have to raise their prices to cover paying off on the one in a ten thousand mistake and the slabbing price quoted at 1% would go up quite a bit. "Authentication" is exactly as good as the expert doing the work. The #1 greatest expert on ancients has personally handled a specimen of 1% of all of the types and bases the opinion on tendencies of similar coins. A very few ancient series have been fully die studied but guarantees on these would be more secure than on something like the million dollar one of a kind rarity. Dealers can offer a guarantee on what they sell and stand to lose their profit assuming they can pass the coin back to their source. Asking a slabber to pay for a small slabbing fee with no recourse is a lot more risk.

Few things in life are guaranteed. Hiring the level of experts who could cover all ancients to a level that it would make sense to offer a cash guarantee for even most coins out of the million variations would simply price the slab out of the market. For most of the customer base, a 99+% non-guaranteed authentication opinion for $50 would be good enough and preferable to a $10000 cash back on the million dollar coin.

I still prefer not to buy coins I can not afford to 'eat' if I am wrong and which I risked purchasing from an 'as is' dealer who knows less than I do or is not 150% honest in every respect. My collection may include 1% worthless fakes so I'm potentially out the same amount as the person who pays a 1% slab fee. I may have made enough mistakes that my number is over 1% but that is the price I pay for not having to fondle my coins through plastic. I may have made fewer errors in which case it is all profit.

 

You raise some valid points. I have to agree that it would be unreasonable to ask a grading service to financially guarantee a coin's authenticity at a certain level of value (e.g., say $2,000 for a Julius Caesar portrait denarius) mainly due to the cost impact of such guarantees.

However, I still wonder what it means for the grading service (or, for that matter, any expert) to declare an ancient coin to be "authentic." Take, for example, the Ides of March aureus sold a few years ago:



My sense is that about 50% of expert dealers believe this coin is genuine, the other 50% believe it's fake. But that didn't prevent the coin from selling for over $260,000 in 2008. So if one of the dealers in the former category is willing to authenticate the coin, what does that mean? If 99% of experts consider the coin fake, then of course the value wouldn't be $260K, but if it's 50/50, does that mean the 50% who are willing to declare the coin authentic is sufficient to support the auction price? Would it have been higher if 90% of expert dealers consider the coin authentic?

To some extent, my point here is that I'm more willing to trust an expert, experienced dealer (or group of dealers) regarding the authenticity of an ancient coin, than I am to trust a coin's authenticity just because it's been slabbed by a grading service.

 

I don't think it would have gone for more. The buyer and one underbidder agreed that their trusted expert was right. I would rather have a photo certificate signed by David Vagi than a slab inscribed NGC even if that is the same thing. I would absolutely love to have consensus opinions of a half dozen experts of my choice but I am not willing to pay for $50 x 6 for opinions about my $300 'difficult' coin. If I did this and the results came back 4 good and 2 fake, would I feel better? Hardly. If 2 good and 4 fake, would I destroy it? Nope.