Anybody Have Any Coins In Nci Slabs? ..... Who Are/Were This TPG?....

Sorry, not my best photos

Keeping it in the third party slab won't increase a value either without the paperwork referred to on back of slab. Only then may a collector of oddball slabbed coins jump big. Crack it and resubmit if you so choose, may lose a grade, but worth it overall?

You never know, one day the old slabs themselves may be highly sought after over the coin that is inside them. To a degree this happens nowadays when people want to collect, for example, a set with all the same type of special labels (marketing ploy that works) used by TPGs. Hobbies don't need to make logical sense.

When you consider a person can get rich selling pet rocks, or a business can get rich selling Beanie Babies, you never know.

I'm not a big fan of slabs, but I agree with @basebal21 and @earle42 that unless I was going to re-submit it, I might leave this one alone in its current tomb.

NCI was begun by Jim Halprin back in 1984. (The NCI grading guide states NCI began in 985 but the first generation of certificates are dated in 1984. ) Jim was also one of the founders of Heritage. While they claim their was no connection between the two firms, I find that somewhat suspect since they were both owned by the same person, both dealt extensively with coins, and were both located in the same building. NCI was also the first TPG to actually publish their own grading guide. If I remember off the top of my head NCI issued eight generations of photocertificates and one generation of slab. Five varieties of photocertificate were produced in 1987 and there is some overlap in usage dates. The slab was issued in conjunction with the 8th photocertificate variety in 1988 and 89. Then the certificate was phased out. NCI closed their doors in 1992.

Back during those years NCI was considered the joke TPG, rated lower than Accugrade. Once they closed their door ACG then became the industry whipping boy. Oddly though for a long time the Coin Dealers Newsletter had a box on one of their pages rating four or five services giving for each what percentage of sheet price each would bring. I believe they listed PCGS, NGC, ANACS, and NCI. Usually NCI was rated higher than ANACS. I always found that interesting because this was going on eight to ten years after NCI went out of business and their slabs were seldom seen in the marketplace. It seems odd that they would be rated so highly when they were considered bottom of the barrel while they were still in business.