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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;BigsWick, post: 313118, member: 3534&quot;]I&#039;ve always had a problem with &quot;First Strike&quot;/&quot;First Day of Issue&quot;/&quot;First such-and-such&quot; designations. I would never even consider buying one unless it was a really nice coin and, most importantly, could be had for the same price as a non &quot;First.&quot; I certainly <b><i>would not </i></b>pay a premium for it. Obviously other collectors disagree or there would be no demand.</p><p><br /></p><p>By participating in such &quot;schemes&quot; the 3rd party graders did little more than&nbsp; lower their reputations amongst those collectors not already put off by slabs. Futhermore, there are lots of numismatists who want nothing to do with &quot;professional&quot; graders, and this whole &quot;First&quot; business serves to validate their conceptions that TPGs are more in it for the money than anything else. Is that wrong? I guess that depends upon your perception. Profit motives aside, my belief as a collector is that NGC, PCGS, ANACS and others should be held to the highest of high standards because they bill themselves as the true professionals of our hobby. As such, they should be taken to task when necessary.</p><p><br /></p><p>As has been noted in prior posts there is really no way to verify wheteher or not something is truly a First Strike. There&#039;s the rub. Yeah, the holder says it is but, for example, I&#039;m sure we&#039;ve all seen coins in holders that had been assigned a grade that we questioned. The collector is free to disagree with an assigned grade, and he can make up his own mind if he has the coin in hand. A &quot;First&quot; designation can not be debated because there is no way to prove/disprove it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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