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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 1904613, member: 42773&quot;]I can&#039;t watch the video at this moment, but here is my personal take on the matter. I absolutely will not buy common ancients in NGC slabs unless I can get them for roughly the same price I would pay for a raw coin. I have bought a few, but only if they went up for auction at low starting bids, and the bidding didn&#039;t go stupid. Then I promptly cracked them out - like so many other collectors of ancients, I need the tactile element in the enjoyment of my coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Many dealers jack up the prices of slabbed coins to ridiculous extremes. They may occasionally get sold to collectors of moderns, who know little of ancients, and want the security of David Vagi&#039;s opinion. That&#039;s all well and good, but I seriously doubt the educated collecting community will ever warm up to slabbed ants of Gordian III in middling grades for $100 apiece.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve seen plenty of those sitting on shelves until the dealer decides to cut his losses and put them up for auction starting at 99-cents. Then they end up selling for approximately the same prices as raw coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the other hand, I would be wary of buying a rarer, pricier coin without a second opinion. I wouldn&#039;t touch a tetradrachm of Alexander without some sort of authentication, and even then, I&#039;d probably buy it raw from CNG or FORVM, not because I don&#039;t trust NGC, but because dealers think they can quadruple the market value of a coin just because it lives in a plastic coffin. Plus, it saves me the trouble of destroying the holder.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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