VOTE: COFFIN FREEDOM or LET THEM LAY ON THE SLAB

Ah, the vice method; my favorite. This is clearly not your first time.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

A few...

 

I cracked most of these guys out much to the dismay of some collectors. Of course for US coppers, I still need to protect them from damage and the environment to protect their value. My avatar coin is amongst the group.

 

That's a great group there!

 

I don't know much about American coins, but the eye appeal is terrific!

 

Those are really nice. When I still collected US coins, the large cents were some of my favorite designs of all. Glad you liberated these.

 

@Carthago
Yep, the hammer method works for me

 

Those are very nice!

 

Why thank you very much.

 

Okay, so now I'm going to apologize in advance for crashing the slab "tea party" and throwing a turd in the punchbowl lol...

I posted a slabbed coin on this forum last week and enjoyed taking part in a very spirited and fun discussion about third party grading of ancients. There were a couple of good takeaways from that.

First, it was very refreshing to encounter such a laid back attitude toward numerical grading. This was exhibited especially well by one person who speculated that someone may have attempted at one time to turn my Alexander drachm into a necklace, but then in the very next sentence said that it was a nice coin for the grade. I completely agree that relying too much on numerical grading of ancients would be silly. There are way too many variables and even as a noob I feel comfortable deciding for myself whether a coin looks good.

Second, I learned that in the Ancient community, a tag or provenance from a reputable dealer is valued even more highly than an NGC cert. That's a concept that I understand and respect.

The problem I have with removing coins from slabs (such as the very cool examples in the OP) is that they now have neither a third party cert nor dealer provenance. As a collector with ADD who is interested in adding a few nice ancients to my collection, I only know enough to be dangerous, which means that I'm not comfortable with my own authentication skills. That leaves me with either buying a slabbed coin, which I can do from most any seller on Ebay from the comfort of my computer, or buying an unslabbed coin from a reputable dealer that I know will be genuine but potentially at a very high markup.

Now you will probably say that you plan to never sell the coins and want to enjoy them in the buff. There's a lot to be said for that, but personally I like my coins to be liquid. I may never sell my coins either, but if I pass on I want my two precious girls to be able to turn my coins into money if they don't share my interest. If they are slabbed, all they have to do is put them on Ebay and someone will pay at least a decent fraction of what they are worth.

You will also say that "NGC doesn't even guarantee authenticity". Of course they don't, because then they would be liable for much more than what money they received for the service. When a dealer guarantees authenticity, they have received the full retail value of the coin that they sold at a big markup, so there is less downside risk. Regardless, I'm willing to trust that NGC knows what they are doing while realizing that there is a slightly bigger risk of fake ancients than with other types of coins.

So now that the punchbowl has a turd in it let's break out a keg of beer and start arguing

 

Personally, I have no problem with your remarks except that the "if" should read "when". As far as this poster is concerned, to each his own, and I do not begrudge anyone for what they feel is right for them. BUT, I will also add that buying a slabbed coin generally means the price includes the cost of slabbing. As Steve might put it, "just sayin".

 

Yes, unfortunately you speak the truth, I stand corrected... I really meant to say "if I pass on early"...

Just keep rubbing in my loss of youth :-(

 

You could always keep the NGC tag with the coin. AS long as NGC has a picture on their website I don't think it's too different from keeping it slabbed. It's not hard at all to determine that an ancient in-hand is the exact same one in the picture. As far as your coins being liquid when you pass away, IMHO it's not a difficult problem. I have a piece of paper with instructions and business cards of two different auction houses with instructions to submit all coins except those on a given list(mostly ugly, low grade coins I bought as a new collector) to either one of the two, whichever offers the lower fees. I don't really think slabs add liquidity in my experience.

 

I think RS has a good plan, probably best to have instructions on what to do with the coins for you family.

@Kirkuleez
those are nice looking coin, I'd like to get a nice one of these myself...has been on my list for over a year and just haven't got around to it. what was the rationale on removing those coins from their capsules?

 

Actually that sounds like a good idea, I didn't think about the photos. That would work better for ancients than for moderns, since ancients have unique features that can be matched with the photo.

 

This is why it is easy for me to deslab ancients...they are recorded, have a photo on public website file, and I always keep the tag as part of the flip provenances... Win-win to me.

 

"Please, Mr. Alegandalf ... please free me from my cage"






... oh, and here are my Galba & Caligula offering (free the innocent!!)

 

LOL, Lovit!

 

Very nice Mikey! And I love denarii!

 

Thats what I have done with a few NGC coins I have. I keep the labels, they fit fine in 2x2 flips.