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Message:: [QUOTE="sjnebay, post: 71650, member: 1665"]The days before the TPGs were certainly better. This was (and for the most part still is) a hobby of honorable people. When I was a young collector, there were at least half a dozen dealers in my local area that I could call on the telephone and ask for a particular coin in a particular grade. I'd send payment and they would send me a coin, sight unseen. You could have bet everything you owned that the coin would have solidly graded what they said it would. I don't know any dealers these days that I would trust to do that. I also have no faith in the TPGs due to my experience with them but they are somehow necessary to the whole idea of trust. Grantedl, the vast majority of dealers are probably honest but the TPGs have completetly changed the economics of collecting. A good solid MS-65 raw coin would, I estimate, sell for about half to two-thirds what it would if it were in a TPG slab. It's much more pleasurable, for me anyway, to collect raw coins. They somehow seem more like coins to me. Yes, they must be carefully handled and stored, but it sure beats having a boatload of coins that have about half their value in the plastic that encases them.[/QUOTE]