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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1906002, member: 19463&quot;]I partially disagree with this one.&nbsp; While I have no use for slabbed ancients, I believe the concept would be destroyed it the slabbers had to guarantee every coin.&nbsp; There are just too many ancient coins that are less than 100% absolutely, positively either fake or real.&nbsp; We do the best we can.&nbsp; For example there are some otherwise reasonable people who believe that all EID MAR denarii and (more certainly) aurei are fakes.&nbsp; Recently the find of a second Domitian II changed the status of the first one found from &#039;probably fake&#039; to &#039;almost certainly genuine&#039;.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &quot;Authentication&quot; is exactly as good as the expert doing the work.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; A very few ancient series have been fully die studied but guarantees on these would&nbsp; be more secure than on something like the million dollar one of a kind rarity.&nbsp;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Asking a slabber to pay for a small slabbing fee with no recourse is a lot more risk.</p><p><br /></p><p>Few things in life are guaranteed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I still prefer not to buy coins I can not afford to &#039;eat&#039; if I am wrong and which I risked purchasing from an &#039;as is&#039; dealer who knows less than I do or is not 150% honest in every respect.&nbsp; My collection may include 1% worthless fakes so I&#039;m potentially out the same amount as the person who pays a 1% slab fee.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I may have made fewer errors in which case it is all profit.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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