Alot of folks here take their coins out of slabs. How exactly is this done? How do you avoid ruining the coin? I have never messed with one so I don't know how solid they are.
There are some videos on how to do this on YouTube. After watching a few of these, I improvised and broke out my first coin. I put the PCGS slab in a thick sock, set it on the long edge, gripped the front and back between my thumb and fingers, and hit the top with a hammer. After increasingly harder hits, I felt the slab open up. I slid the slab out of the sock and separated the halves. I could then remove the coin with no damage at all.
I put on my safety glasses, place one of the slabs long edges in a groove in the side walk and then pop the exposed long edge with a hammer. Once the slab cracks just use a screwdriver to pop it open the rest of the way and carefully remove the coin, retaining ring and insert.
I'm a chicken. I carefully use a saw and cut the four edges then lift the top from the bottom. Power band saws can produce enough heat that they remelt the plastic simply making a smaller sealed holder. A coarse tooth jeweler's saw seems to work as well as a carpenter's coping saw. Coping saws are readily available at your local hardware store, ebay and even cheaper at local garage sales.
Be carefull. Many simply repeat what they've read in the past. In most instances, simply using a vice, hammer, etc. creates flying pieces of plastic. Remember that having a piece of that in your eyes could possibly make you blind. The simplist and safest method is to simple use a saw and cut off all 4 sides. Then simply lift one half off. You could place them in a vice if possible to hold while you cut. Using a Dremel type device is faster than a saw but sometimes the heat melts the plastic back together. Any smashing type method could create marks, scratches, dents, etc. on the coins. Cutting with any kind of sheers too may cause flying plastic. Regardless of how you do it, use safety glasses. And remember that the coin inside is yours so open that slab as carefull as possible.
Wow, I have never tried this, and would not buy a slabbed coin if I were going to break it open. But, if you change your mind later and want to put it back in I recommend using duct tape to reseal it.
I would buy a slabbed coin even if I were to break it open. A couple of reasons would be to increase that chance that it is not fake and to get a more accurate grading than I might be able to give as a novice. I don't want to be paying $300 for a coin marked AU by some random seller if it turns out to be EF and only worth $175.
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Posted 05/01/2014 12:42 am
