I've been buying a lot of PCGS slabbed coins on eBay recently and many of these are all scratched up (the slabs, not the coins). I like to display coins in the slabs, but some of these look like a mess. I'm beginning to think we need a ratings system for the slabs themselves. (Yes, I know, "buy the coin, not the slab", but how can so many people be so careless as to scratch these things up so badly?)
Another take on your problem . . . I've been buying a lot of PCGS slabbed coins on eBay recently and many of these are all scratched up (the coins, not the slabs) . . . how can so many people be so careless as to scratch these things up so badly? But seriously, there's not much one can do, short of putting the slabs in a bubble to protect them. Even the scratch-resistant slabs take on marks if hit enough, and because they are inherently harder than those which are not scratch-resistant, they are nearly impossible to make look better.
How can you really see what the coin looks like if the slab is all scratched up? I'm asking because I have zero slabbed coins, I assume in a picture on eBay it would be hard to tell.
At my age my wife and I in a moment of senility adopted two babies. While I was re-learning how to put all my grown up things up and away, I happened to walk in one day on a tea party. The assorted stuffed animals and dolls were paying for their tea with MY SACK OF BUFFALOS!!... Really, no harm took place. It was a bag of no dates that I give away to youngsters anyway so they were in some fashion serving my intended purpose. However, had my baby girl happened to dig a tad deeper into my closet she could have created some serious unintended damage. Anyway, my point is that life is harried and I doubt anyone would intentionally mishandle something they made an investment in like a nice slabbed coin. But like it or not... Life happens.
FYI - Plast-X (available at your local auto parts store) does a pretty good job of getting rid of those scratches.
Have you ever attended a large show on the "Dealers Day"? You'll see a lot of dealers rummaging through boxes and boxes of slabs and tossing them around like they were junk. Chris
The auction houses are one of the biggest offenders for marking up slabs. There are a lot of threads on various forums about some good ways to clean them up that are generally pretty successful
My bigger issue is stickers on slabs. You either can’t get them off, they peel away weird, or they leave a sticky residue on the slab.
I have a "trade" program, where upon receiving your slabbed coin(s), I'll either send you an identically graded coin(s) without those offensive stickers, or the current C.D.N. stated value of your coin(s), along with the USPS postage amount paid. Just P.M. me. I've thousands of 100% positive feedback on various sites, and a 5 figure dollar positive "trade" record on this site, if feedback's needed. Declaration! This is "fair trade" program. Rich edited: No politics! and if serious, it will be removed as promoting, but I am assuming it is satire for the moment
I'm afraid to take my slabs anywhere near an office supplies store. It seems that coin slabs suck up adhesive labels like some powerful magnet grabbing iron filings. It's amazing!
I keep my valuable slabs in tiny plastic bags(mostly rattlers), they are made for slabs to be stored in them.
You mean you've never seen a dealer dismissively throw a slabbed coin clunking onto a table (as if to say "I couldn't care less about this piece of junk"), let alone throwing one across the room to another dealer? .
I "buy" VERY few. I have MANY more done for me, all by NGC, and nearly all raw stuff I buy at local back-country in-person auctions. There's one other type of material I have done - recent material that doesn't have "a hole" in contemporary albums, like the 2014 high-relief clad Kennedy halves. I want my collections to be in albums plus a small stack of slabs that complete the underlying set. I'm not doing this at random - I have a well thought out system. The last coin I bought already in a slab was an 1893 British Penny in MS63RB that I bid on and won at the NYINC Stacks Bowers auction in Jan. 2016.
