Roman Gold Help

The slab is the plastic container. I hate them for ancient coins. I have only bought a couple in slabs, and, once home, immediately broke them out. On a serious note though, I think you should break them out for other reasons. They were sold to you as gold coins. You need to be certain that what you have is what was sold to you, and the only way is to have the coins tested.

I agree. One of the reasons I like antiquities is that I like to hold and touch them. Can't do that in the slab. I did go to the NGC site and entered the serial numbers on these coins. A picture of this coin in this slab comes up. Exactly positioned, etc. I feel sure they are real and I guess NGC takes pictures of them when they grade them for that reason.
I'm not going to sell them anyway. If and when I do decide to sell them, I'll have them tested. Until then...I'll just believe they are.

I went to a public coin auction a couple of days ago and viewed three lots of aureii, all of which were catalogued as fake but made of very good gold. They all weighed in the 7.5 to 8.0 grammes range, and they were all reserved at just below melt value for pure gold. Three out of four of them sold at the reserve value.

I examined each of these fakes in very closely hand, and I could not pick them as fake. I did not bid.

There are an alarming and increasing number of these very excellent quality fakes around.

It can be inferred from from this thread so far that the slabs may not be genuine. They certainly prevent close examination of their contents, and prevent them from being weighed for verification.

At the very least these coins, should be verified out of their slabs by specialist coin dealer, who has a well known and established reputation for examination of these pieces, at least for the Byzantine one. He should be able to verify the slabs also, if experienced in this area.

I have never been interested in slabbed ancient coins, because of verification difficulties.

What seems to be too good to be true usually is.

Even if they are fakes, and if they are of very good gold, it appears that you have done very well, on gold value alone.

I have 5 pieces of ancient gold. They have all come from dealers, or from auction, that have an excellent reputation in the verification of ancient coins.

f you do plan on selling these one day I would definitely keep them in the slabs. NGC is one of the best TPG companies which will make these a quick sell if you do plan on selling them in the future. Without the slab their authenticity would be questioned by a potential buyer which would lower the amount of money they would be willing to spend (if you have a smart phone or a scanner scan the barcode on the front of the slab).

Some of the fake slabs have incorrect barcodes. The barcode information should correspond to the written information on the slab.

I don't think you have anything to worry about - it sounds like NGC has a decent system to avoid fakes.

As many have said slabs are personal choice and most ancient collectors break them to handle the coins. One good thing about them is they do give people confidence when buying even if the first thing they do is break them out when they get their hands on them.

In 99.9% of cases I'd say break it out - in this case, considering the value of the coin and the benefit to resale of it being slabbed I'd say leave it where it is.

At least until the urge to hold it drives you crazy

Hmmm? ... yah, I don't have any ancient "gold" coins yet ... but the night is still young!

=> yyyyeeeehaaaa!

**** ummmm, what's that honey? ... I should come to bed? ... ummm, but I was gonna buy an ancient gold coin and ... and ... and ... ummm, never mind ... I'll be there in two secs ****