Sonic Sealing Slabs

I had just researched this yesterday for myself, I found Ultrasonic Clam Shell Hand Held Sealer are like $400 to 650 you cn find them on amazon/ebay and hobby stores and boxes of 25 Sonic Seal Graded Coin Slabs w/ White Foam Inserts in a coins size tend to be $20-25 or dollar each.

After more research, it looks like a Sonitek 840/870 - or Branson 8400/8700 - is optimal. These sealers are a bit more affordable than I expected, although not cheap!

Why do you wish to "seal" them in the first place? TPG's sonic-seal their slabs and the result isn't air-tight. That seems like the only appropriate priority - the average self-slab ( Coin World design in mind) is sound-enough structurally to stay together even if you drop. As far as airtight sealing goes, you're better off accomplishing that on a larger scale - food-safe Ziplock bags FTW!

is it worth the money to do this?

Just curious, why do you want to store them in slabs to begin with? Seems like a method that takes up way more space and $$ than simple pvc-free flips that pretty much provide the same level of preservation as far as environment is concerned.

And I agree with BadThad, it's the plastic itself that is the weakness rather than the sealing process. The sealing is indeed a spot process, but the slabs have multiple interlocking layers that basically makes the seams less porous than the comparatively thin front/back of the slab.

Sorry for the extra post, didn't see sonic's comment.

As for cost, is it worth it to do this? Well, for the cost of sending 100 coins to PCGS a person could buy a sonic sealer, slabs and inserts, and encase hundreds of coins. So what is it that we are paying PCGS for? Their grading service, right?

There are a couple of other things to consider:

1. Errors: TPGs can get the grade wrong - and with the IHC series this is an extremely rampant problem. This particular series is a strong reason why we have companies like CAC and Rick Snow willing to regrade and sticker coins. A high percentage of IHCs I see in PCGS slabs are not correctly graded. So out of 100 IHCs I send to PCGS for grading, I'll probably want to pop out 20 of those. Wow, now that is a lot of wasted money. In fact, I'd prefer them to slab it and not grade it.

Sending your coin to a TPG is a slight risk. People often don't realize that their coin can be damaged. I read on CC yesterday about a unique MS specimen that was photographed and graded by PCGS as problem free, but upon receipt had a massive rim ding. My personal story is worse. NGC completely destroyed an 1873 DDO Snow-1 of mine. Sure, they paid the full declared value of $1,000 - but that doesn't detract from the fact that they destroyed a piece of important numismatic history. And that can't be fixed.

Unfortunately, for the other guy, his dealer only put a $15 declared value on the PCGS submission form and effectively screwed his customer. So, there can be some trust issues when dropping your coins off at a PCGS dealer.

2. Opportunity cost: How long does it take to send out your coins and get them back from a TPG? The answer is always way too long! This day in age, with digital photography and a very astute numismatic community, collectors are willing to pay top dollar for raw or basement slabbed coins. You can see on ebay, everyday, raw coins auctioning off at certified prices or more - just because the seller is very good at photography (or whizzing).

Of course, I don't want to keep every coin I come across. I want to resell many of them. Being able to buy, properly store, and resell coins immediately upon buying them gives me an extremely liquid inventory. Having to wait weeks for a TPG to return your top quality coins greatly reduces the liquidity of your inventory, and comes at an up-front cost to the dealer that won't be realized for quite some time.

3. Nature of varieties: When sending coins in for attribution, one increases the time it takes to get the coin back from the TPG and the cost of having it slabbed. So for variety collectors, errors and opportunity costs compound. I won't go into PCGS's ability to properly attribute varieties, and which ones they've chosen to recognize.

That's a nice and neat storage method I'll admit. My collection is probably between 700 and 800 coins and fits in three albums which all fit in one large drawer. Your method is ideal for sure, but in a small NYC apartment, that luxury is just not possible :)
I use BCW flips and put them in 20 coins sheets. Everything from $10 coins to $5,000 coins the same way. Been that way for years and they have stayed well preserved.