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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2424496, member: 19463&quot;]Nothing is what most people seem to want when the pay full&nbsp; price.&nbsp; Slabbed or not, you can buy very ordinary coins from sellers who know nothing except how much something similar brought from a full service and knowledgeable source.&nbsp; We have frequently discussed here certain auction houses that seem to have a fondness for tooled or fake coins but they continue to attract customers who would not think of buying from eBay where the lack of expertise is similar in many cases.&nbsp; Ancient slabbers are doing a wonderful thing for that part of the market coming over from modern US where the slab is sacred.&nbsp; The fact remains that the average collector who started in ancients in the last millennium (or as Prince said it, 1999) will not have one. New collectors feel comfortable with the plastic when what they should be seeking is the expertise.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This is a big problem to me and I am perfectly capable of IDing my own coins.&nbsp; For the price of their slab you should get a long form explaining what there is about the coin that contributed to the ID or the opinion not a couple letters that may or may not apply to the coin.&nbsp; You really can not authenticate many coins without being up on the differences in mint styles and fabrics.&nbsp; David Vagi certainly has these skills but they do not convey on a slab label.&nbsp; Sear charges extra for a long form certificate but at least he has room of a complete sentence.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>This seems a little long for a T shirt logo but I like the thought.&nbsp; We have lost members here because some of us have a bad attitude toward people whose only question is &#039;What is it worth?&#039;&nbsp; Tough.</p><p><br /></p><p>This said, NCG is by far the best of the slabbers with the rest being closer to jokes than experts.&nbsp; I have been outbid three times on slabbed coins on eBay that I wanted as an example of a minor error in the label.&nbsp; NGC errors are harder to find by a hundred times compared to the others.&nbsp; I still want nothing to do with the process but at least feel their labels have a reasonable chance of being correct if not something I&#039;d bet on. No one will guarantee ancients beyond refunding you purchase price.&nbsp; A TPG mistake on a $100000&nbsp;&nbsp; coin would require $1000 to underwrite.&nbsp; How may $40 slabs do you have to sell to cover that loss in a game where many coins are disputed by at least a few &#039;experts&#039;.&nbsp; If a reasonable student makes one error in a thousand and people only send in coins with some doubt, being so perfect you will guarantee is hard.&nbsp; I admire NGC&#039;s honesty in returning many coins as &#039;Unable to determine&#039;.&nbsp; That is the name of our game.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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