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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;calcol, post: 2564935, member: 77639&quot;]There is a LOT more to the hobby than grading. I&#039;m old enough to remember the bad days before slabbing.&nbsp; The biggest service TPGs do is not grading; it&#039;s authenticating.&nbsp; In the bad old days, you had to be able to decide if that nice shiny seated liberty was real or not, which was a lot more important than whether it was AU or BU.&nbsp; A lot of folks who can do a great job of grading certain series would be fooled by a good struck counterfeit.&nbsp; They&#039;d give a very accurate grade to the counterfeit though.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the scariest nights I had in the hobby is when a prominent dealer set down with a small group of us collectors and showed us his &quot;dark&quot; collection.&nbsp; They were all counterfeits.&nbsp; Some were crude casts and easy to identify.&nbsp; The best though were beyond our ability to distinguish from the real thing.&nbsp; He had to point out very small details to show the difference between real and fake.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think many collectors are really good at grading because they have looked at thousands of slabs and in reality, have learned grading courtesy of TPGs.&nbsp; But few of these folks have looked at even a dozen good fakes.&nbsp; Without slabs, they would have to get an additional education to avoid spending real money on fake money.</p><p><br /></p><p>ANACS photo-certificates were a step in the right direction, but I can remember certificates, especially black and whites, being sold without coins among dealers at shows. Send a coin in, get a certificate, find a cheaper coin that resembles the photo, sell the pair, send in the original coin for another certificate, repeat.&nbsp; Certificates alone had value.&nbsp; All you had to do is find a coin that resembled the photo but of lower grade than stated, then sell the pair.&nbsp; Slabs put an end to the practice.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally, I&#039;m interested in grading along with other facets of numismatics, but not authenticating.&nbsp; But if someone is interested in varieties, history, etc. and in neither grading nor authenticating, they can rely on TPGs to lift a burden of concern.&nbsp; If they buy a NGC or PCGS coin with a green sticker at a price published in a popular guide, chances of a total rip-off are very small indeed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cal[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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