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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 197054, member: 2100&quot;]I do believe tpgs have value as authenticators, and I can see using them for establishing a grade for big $$$ coins (although I am not impressed by the consistency/accuracy of any of them), but it seems to me so much of the slabbing is done in the name of greed. </p><p><br /></p><p>With exonumia, many of the reasons for slabbing that possess some level of validity with regular coinage, pretty much lose that value in regard to tokens. Only an extremely small percentage of tokens are counterfeited, and most of the older token fakes were made back in the day to use in commerce, not to pull one over on a collector. Most of those were cast, and pretty easy to spot anyway. With Civil War tokens, I would estimate ebay has 2-6 fakes per year on average, with most sellers describing them as fakes. </p><p><br /></p><p>Exonumia has not embraced the Sheldon scale at all. The only ones who seem to use it are those folks selling token slabs. No reference or pricing books use it that I am aware of. The old fashioned G, VG, F,...Unc grading system is used. Some price lists only give a price without any grade designation. So many tokens are so rare that coindition really doesn&#039;t matter, the fact that it is what it is determines the value, not its condition.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cleaning is virtually a non-issue, and even severe damage such as holing, scratching, bent, etc. may only reduce a token&#039;s value by 10 or 15%. Those types of problems certainly don&#039;t require an &quot;expert opinion&quot; to reveal. As far as protection, there are as good or better methods of&nbsp; protection available at a fraction of the cost. </p><p><br /></p><p>Not to mention the cwt identification skills displayed by the tpgs is that of a rank beginner, with mistakes being commonplace (when NGC slabs first started appearing on ebay, IMO about 10% were misattributed - they do better now, but still far from perfect). And their grading? I should figure out how to post pics and start a guess the grade thread. I think many of you would be very surprised. </p><p><br /></p><p>So what real value does that leave an exonumia slab? That of a selling tool I suppose. A piece of plastic that&#039;s basic function is to bring a higher selling price. These were not well received when first appearing on ebay. In the first batches, I saw many an MS-something Civil War token slab that did not even attract an opening bid of $0.99, even though the token may have been worth hundreds. Unfortunately, that has changed. To me, exonumia strips away the secondary &quot;values&quot; of a slab, exposing the primary one. I can think of no other reason why someone would slab common circulated cwts, other than expecting to recoup slabbing costs and then some upon its sale. With regular coinage that feature may be clouded by other &quot;virtues&quot;, but who has not seen a great deal of slabbed coinage and wondered why?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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