Protecting The Coin Protectors/Slabs

I found my cut page sections. I stuck a PCGS ANACS and NGC in these and they fit pretty nice.





Cutting these right on the line was a tedious job but I got quite good at it. I think I will sell these in lots of 50 and 100 in the auction section. The baseball thin sleeves would work too I bet but these pages were non pvc and the thin sleeves could be less safe and less durable.

Litote said:



I may get flamed for this - but so be it. Growing up and having 50 years in the States has "larned me a thang or tooo."

When slabbing started, I saw it as just a way [ouch - here it comes] for the inventors of the system to take advantage of US people. After all, the US public is notorious for parting with money easily.

Remember the pet rock fad? Where else but in the US would people be dumb enough (oops) willing to buy a rock in a box at a store b/c, "everyone else is doing it!"

No - I am not saying slabbing was/is equivalent to pet rocks. But I am saying when it was started, it seemed to me as if someone had just found another way manipulate a hobby to make money from it. Friends and I even joked about, "What next? Will people be dumb enough willing to pay a place to verify what the grading services did to the coin?"

Oops - sound familiar? A green bean!

And sorry for any offense - but this was what we said at the time!

BTW - what color will the next level of bean be?


However, now that the services have been around for so long; and a lot of new collectors have been around only in the days when slabbed coins have been a part of the hobby, it seems what started out as a service with somewhat questionable necessity has become legitimate in a majority of the hobby's eyes.

Although I still talk with dealers who were around before all of the slabbing started who think, like myself, TPGs hurt the hobby a great deal. Gone are the days when individual silver coins were worth something depending on their mintage/scarcity. Now most coins that are not a key or semi key are only worth melt - unless in fantastic condition. Part of the fun used to be finding coins with lower mintage - although not necessarily rare.

It used to be it was good enough to have a 1950D nickel. But now, unless it has full steps on it there is always (for some) that little nagging voice in their mind that says, "upgrade, upgrade, upgrade! Yours is not perfect!"

Europeans have always, it seems, been a bit more frugal and have not thrown their money around like we do over here. Over the years I have seen many instances where they did not "fall for" the name brand game (although I see this changing), but seemed to better research what they were buying/doing. I used to attribute it to the cost of living (whether right or wrong, I cannot prove) differences since the US people have always seemed to have more "disposable cash" on hand.

Now before I get a lot of negative, I also want to say that as of last week, I sent in a few coins to b graded/slabbed!

Why?

No one in my family knows anything about coins except me. Since the time has come in our culture where slabbed coins are part of the norm, the "certification" the slab seems to bestow upon the coin (to most people) will make it such that my family would get proper returns for the coins if they would wish to sell them. I may as well take advantage of the situation to my benefit.

I personally think if they would get on the ball and make a computer/scanner machine do the grading, while making the grading algorithms available for anyone to inspect, then the system could become a lot more reliable. The tech has been available for years.

Hey, c'mon, we even have face recognition in some of our computers now for personal pictures. Since a desktop computer can ID something as differeing as human faces, surely the uniformity of coin dies could be recognized and/or scrutinized - without personal objectives and human error - by a machine. So why has no TPG established this? I know at least one of them said something about it in the 90's but it went nowhere.

The tech is such that a computer coin grading system might be able to be done at home by the right person. Come to think of it... anyone up for starting a business?

Okay - I'm in. I just ordered some. It's way cheaper than my original idea. I don't need fifty but I'll bring a bunch to my next coin club meeting and maybe somebody will by me a drink.

By the by --- what got me thinking about this was my coin club. We're all trying to save a buck by pooling our NGC submissions to get the reduced rate. I'm sending in two coins that have each got to be worth less than a dollar but have great sentimental value to me and I want to protect them and their slabs.

Thanks Buddy, I am sending you a PM right now for your order.I wish I would make it to my coin club meetings but the darn school bus wipes me out. In the summer I'll get to more of them. You'll get some brownie points with these maybe? I appreciate the business.

Where I live we have two separate garbage cans. One is for garbage and one blue one is for recyclables. In order to help the invironment, I put all plastic items in the blue one. A great source for that plastic is those coin slabs and all the plastic stuff people use to protect the slabs.
By not having slabbed coins I'm really helping the invironment.

Love the way you think Mate
If you are buying a coin purely for your collection and you are not adept at spotting a fake or grading it, by all means buy the coin in a slab.
But at the end of the day it is better to free it from the slab so that you can enjoy the coin for what it is, after all if you don't damage the coin in the process how could it possibly loose its value by freeing it
But if it is bought as an investment only I would suggest that it be put in one of those slab albums and never touch the surface of the slab ( what a boring way to collect coins)

Some say ta - may - toe, some say ta - maw - toe.

Hey? If you you were a dealer and wanted to put a code or price tag on the protector, the next guy wouldn't have to take it off the holder.