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Message:: [QUOTE="flintcreek6412, post: 1848611, member: 61025"]While I agree with most of what you said, what do you think the real percentage of knowledgeable coin buyers are there?  I would venture very few.  You will obviously have your professionals, followed by very knowledgeable hobby buyers, then what I would consider the vast majority of recreational buyers which is where I would fall. I think slabs on historical coins are very helpful  for a guy like me that cannot determine a cleaned from problem free coin.  Or a step further a counterfeit.  My buying opportunities(shops and shows) are few and far between so most of my buying is going to be internet.  Slabs offer me confidence that I frankly won't have otherwise.  But that is older and not modern coins.  I'm OK on grade for circulated coins but even that is very subjective at time.  Slabs help me with that confidence also.  I hope to have the knowledge some day and by buying what I know are problem free coins I will eventually hope to learn and compare to others. As far as value being the same, if I was in possession of a raw common date coin and you had the same coin and grade with only different year but equally as common and they booked the same price but your was slabbed, would you trade it even up?  Or what if my coin was actually a grade higher but only booked $5 more, would you trade even up for a slightly better raw coin?[/QUOTE]