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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ziggy29, post: 13380, member: 1113&quot;]In my opinion, you&#039;re partially right.&nbsp; I prefer the look of a well presented, unslabbed set, but I can&#039;t deny today&#039;s market realities.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you&#039;re building a set for personal enjoyment, and you have no plans to ever sell, I agree -- aesthetically, I just prefer a well presented set of unslabbed coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>But if you&#039;re concerned about resale, if you have a coin that&#039;s worth hundreds of dollars or more -- and sometimes as little as $50 or so -- the extra value you get from the sale of a coin certified by a <i>respected</i> grading service will usually more than offset the cost of slabbing it.&nbsp; That&#039;s because the added confidence buyers have in the coins you&#039;re offering will often result in a higher bid or offer.</p><p><br /></p><p>In a perfect world, where all coins are sold as -- and priced as -- the quality that the consensus of experienced impartial graders would assign it, I&#039;m totally with you.&nbsp; But grading is subjective and subject to manipulation, and there are plenty of hucksters out there who would try to sell AUs at just under &quot;BU&quot; prices and sell them as BU.&nbsp; This is especially problematic when a person new to the hobby starts buying and finds out shortly after their first purchase that he/she was burned, and that the bargain &quot;BU&quot; coin they bought was a slider or a cleaned XF.</p><p><br /></p><p>Many people drop out of the hobby when that happens to them, particularly when it&#039;s among their early experiences.&nbsp; It&#039;s these experiences that also drives the belief that dealers are a bunch of cheats that buy an AU coin as an XF and sell it as &quot;BU.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, some dealers do that.&nbsp; And they pollute the numismatic gene pool; ethical dealers hate that more than anyone as their reputation is often dragged down in the process.&nbsp; Many newbies to numismatics leave after such bad experiences.&nbsp; That can reduce the demand (and value) of the coins the dealers -- ethical and otherwise -- are selling in the marketplace, and it reduces the vitality of the hobby.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that&#039;s why in today&#039;s market, even if you don&#039;t like its effect on the presentation of a collection, slabbing can be a necessary evil.&nbsp; Yes, I&#039;d MUCH prefer to take some of my coins and (very carefully!) handle them and actually feel a personal connection with the history I&#039;m holding.&nbsp; But to do so in this era is to allow yourself to lose quite a bit on the sale.&nbsp; A very confident, competent and experienced coin grader who physically examines the coin may not need the slabbing to confirm the value, but today -- in the age of eBay and sight-unseen or seen-by-jpeg sales to less than expert graders, the expert confirmation of grade -- AND authenticity and lack of problems like cleaning, corrosion, or PVC -- is key for most.</p><p><br /></p><p>My heart is 100% with you.&nbsp; My head, alas, is not.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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