Buy The Coin Not The Slab Or Buy The Slab Not The Coin

It was a touch of hyperbole, but given the absurd price for the slab, it seemed warranted. Think of all the truly innovative companies that produced world-changing inventions and later went defunct. They fade quickly from memory. You might run across artifacts from them, but I don't think that will provoke anything beyond faint recognition from people.

For example, would someone pay $100,000 for the first Blackberry? That company was huge, and hugely innovative. It hasn't even been gone 20 years, and I doubt that people would remember it. And that product helped to kick off the cellular revolution. It was way more potent in the global zeitgeist than enclosing vintage coins in plastic holders with a quality and authenticity certification.

There's something alluring about (really) early PCGS holders...

IMHO, the vast majority of people who collect coins in slabs are actually collecting the grade numbers, not the coins themselves. For example, one person "collected" consecutive grade numbers of the same coin. Personally, I call this "near-numismatic masturbation.

I disagree.

This person wasn't interested in studying anything; he was just collecting "numbers."

Grading is a subjective process. Today I might be in a good mood and give a higher grade, but yesterday I argued with my wife and gave a lower one. There are thousands of stories and discussions online about "unfair grading." Almost everyone has probably encountered this. I witnessed a coin gain two points simply by being washed with soap. Two points, not one, a two! With a uniform approach to each coin, this is impossible. I emphasize: grading as a whole isn't numismatics; it's a business with subjective assessments.

All materials with photos or descriptions are available on the grading companies' websites. If I'm not mistaken, PCGS even has YouTube videos showing grading examples. To study the "subtle differences" (which even graders change from case to case), it's not necessary to collect every "number" of the same coin.

I would really like to be wrong, but the fact remains: all grades are subjective. And there's proof of this, even if you just compare PCGS and NGC.
You didn't understand me — what you're saying would work if the grading were done objectively by a robot, counting all the scratches, etc. But since it's all done by people, the grading is often subjective. That's why your "proper approach" doesn't work. It's that simple.

That's what I'm talking about. I agree 100%.
By the way, the coin I mentioned earlier was bronze, not silver, and after being washed, it was given an MS65, whereas before it was MS63.

I consider myself one of the quirkiest coin collectors, so I never judge others.

Recently, I added a collection of slabs to my inventory, chosen entirely based on their label styles.