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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;johnmilton, post: 6300561, member: 101855&quot;]I have been a collector for over 60 years. At first, I didn’t care for certified coins, but now it’s about all I buy for U.S. coins. I still prefer raw coins for most of my British and ancient Roman pieces.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you are going to buy most anything that is expensive (over a few hundred dollars), certified is the only way to go for U.S. coins. The trouble with a lot of raw coins is that they have problems or are over graded and overpriced. With Chinese counterfeits abounding, that makes it hard for everything because the Chinese are counterfeiting it all, cheap and expensive.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I see an expensive U.S. coin offered, and alarm bell goes off in my head. “Why is this coin raw?” Quite often there is a reason, and that reason is seldom to your advantage.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you are going to buy circulated raw coins, you will really have to sharpen your grading skills. You need to know how to grade when you are buying certified coins because many of them are optimistically graded. When you are buying raw, the need to know how to grade coins and spot problems becomes doubly important.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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