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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robp, post: 24845513, member: 96746&quot;]As an outsider who has no interest in US coins, it is difficult for me to understand the American obsession with slabbing in general, but also that after the 40 years or so the TPGs have been operating, there is still so much debate about which TPG is better for which type of coin. Surely, in a world of grading, consistency is paramount and if they are still all grading to the same Sheldon scale then the TPG shouldn&#039;t matter, nor indeed should the grades vary from one grading event to the next time the coin is submitted in the hope of an &#039;upgrade&#039;. </p><p><br /></p><p>All I see is a triumph of marketing over education and a majority collector base that has been brainwashed into believing that the TPGs somehow have knowledge that a collector could only aspire to.</p><p><br /></p><p>The idea of a grade meaning you can sell a coin unseen might work well for US coinage and is great if you can have confidence the coin has been identified correctly in the first place, which a US TPGs should do as it is their bread and butter. But in the case of British coinage which I collect, the first thing I do is check they have identified it correctly because I have limited confidence in their ability to recognise anything that deviates from the basic type. I would never buy blind and never pay a premium for a label. In their favour, I will say that over 80% of the slabs I have purchased were correctly attributed, and the percentage for all slabs is obviously higher because I actively seek out things people have missed, but they do still get an awful lot wrong. Given the cost of submission, I would at least expect the description to be right even if I disagreed with the grade.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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