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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;KSorbo, post: 2264416, member: 56370&quot;]Okay, so now I&#039;m going to apologize in advance for crashing the slab &quot;tea party&quot; and throwing a turd in the punchbowl lol...</p><p><br /></p><p>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.&nbsp; There were a couple of good takeaways from that.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>First, it was very refreshing to encounter such a laid back attitude toward numerical grading.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I completely agree that relying too much on numerical grading of ancients would be silly.&nbsp; There are way too many variables and even as a noob I feel comfortable deciding for myself whether a coin looks good. </p><p><br /></p><p>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.&nbsp; That&#039;s a concept that I understand and respect.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.&nbsp; 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&#039;m not comfortable with my own authentication skills.&nbsp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now you will probably say that you plan to never sell the coins and want to enjoy them in the buff.&nbsp; There&#039;s a lot to be said for that, but personally I like my coins to be liquid.&nbsp; 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&#039;t share my interest.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>You will also say that &quot;NGC doesn&#039;t even guarantee authenticity&quot;. Of course they don&#039;t, because then they would be liable for much more than what money they received for the service.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Regardless, I&#039;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.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>So now that the punchbowl has a turd in it let&#039;s break out a keg of beer and start arguing <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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