Welcome back!
Congratulations on seeing through the companies and what they exist for -- to make money. Making money is not a bad thing...its just business. New gimmicks help their pockets grow fatter.
If you like the slabs for what they are, then you are enjoying not only the coin, but what the TPGs add to the coin. A hobby is all about fun.
But as Numisnorther wisely said:
[quote]I think of it like this, if you know the coin is real, if you can grade the coin yourself and you don't plan on selling the coin, then what do you need a third party for?]/quote]
Until the internet with its high exposure of slabs, TPGs were not seen as essential and the prevailing attitude nationwide was exactly what is posted above. It was the crazy Americans, having more disposable income than other countries, who would fall for gimmicky marketing and accept the slabbing companies as a whole.
Slabbing is the best way to maximize profits on a good coin when selling online to the masses. But as this forum says over and over, buy the coin and not the slab.
http://goccf.com/t/346174#2967242I may be proven wrong, but in the future when a legitimate scientific way of grading is established, the slabs currently in hand, because of their totally subjective grades, may take a hit in value. Its not hard to find examples like I posted in the link.
I see this all sort of like the Beanie Baby craze where the masses one day turned to a mindset of seeing the elevated values are an artificial add-on fueled by mob psychology at the time. Beanie babies were just cloth, plastic beads, and psychological marketing aimed at human emotional desires. Slabs are a coin with added "value" of an official (and nice) looking plastic slab, label (ooh...pretty variations!), company name, "expert" opinion, and a grade that can change if the unaltered coin is resubmitted even to the same company.
Personally I am looking forward to the day we can have a 1.00 phone app that will scan and grade a coin the
same every single time. One guy online suggested with AI we could even have the app learn what humans grade coins as by taking already slabbed coins and allowing the AI to figure out what "made" the coin appeal to humans giving it a (let's say) MS65 grade, and the program could then use that information as the way the program would assign a grade. Unless a coin sustained damage, it would grade the same all the time.
How much squash could a Sasquatch squash if a Sasquatch would squash squash?
Download and read: Grading the graders
Costly
TPG ineptitude and No FG
Kennedy halveshttps://ln5.sync.com/dl/7ca91bdd0/w...i3b-rbj9fir2
back!
Posted 12/25/2019 8:41 pm
