Should You Slab Your Coins? Baldwin's Of London Discuss.

Where I stand, I want some old hammered stuff and other old world stuff, and I may likely buy slabbed, take photos, then crack and save the labels. I want my hands all over everything, especially when it's 200+ years old

I agree sel_69l I have coins I keep in slabs, even ones I sent in to be slabbed, but none of them are coins I truly enjoy, like my oldest raw colonial and EAC coins, and Two Cent Pieces. I want, and need to be able to see them in hand to identify them without plastic in the way, to measure them, weigh them, etc. Ultimately to store them in a way that make sense to me as well, slabs just don't fit in that equation any more. Not to say the slabs don't have purpose and some, I might even keep in the slabs for protection or financial reasons. I'm sure if I had millions of dollars in high value coins they would be mostly slabbed, but what I do have it just doesn't make sense for me to slab them, I already know what they are, I don't need confirmation of grade or in many cases the variety (which most TPGs wouldn't even accept or use), and I certainly am not willing to spend my hard earned and seemingly ever decreasing dollars to pay for that privilege.

There are definitely good reasons to have coins slabbed, in in terms guarantees (financially), and for protection they do offer that. Liquidity, sight unseen sales, or even seen in photographs only sales. But over the years I've learned to grade from some of the best graders around in the business, I trust my eyes, and I know where to turn for opinions, if I'm ever questioning myself. Heck I was even offered work at a major grading firm in the late 80's and again by a different firm in the 90's both of which I turned down. I saw too many graders get burned out from grading coins day in and day out. Sometimes you want to enjoy your hobby and your business, not work it like a slave owner.

I don't however think I know everything, and I'll often go to others for opinions on varieties and die states, as well as values. I like the Richard Picker way of market pricing and grading all in one.

"You like that coin? How much do I want for it? I'd say it grades right around $150.00"

Richard priced his coins, he didn't put a numerical grade on them, that way there wasn't any ambiguity. You either liked the coin of not, at his price. Richard was also a consummate professional numismatist and always willing to help answer a question or help figure out a die variety. He is one of the great old school coin dealers and sorely missed today, like Art Kagin, and Elliot Goldman to name a few of the top of my head.

They were some of my mentors and they came up through the coin dealer ranks pre-slabs.

I am VERY much for slabbing.
That means NGC or PCGS, not ANACS nor ICG.

Except for some of my birth year coins everything in my collection is slabbed.
In general all the coins that catalog over $150 are slabbed.
And I'm an EAC member!

Why am I strongly for slabbing?
In order of most to least importance:
(1) Authentication
-- My #1 collection is a US Type Set (1793-1964), Half Cents through $1 silver plus a short set (1834-1933) of $1 gold through Double Eagles. There is no way I could become proficient at authenticating all the different face values and different designs.

(2) Originality
-- I am reasonably good a detecting cleaned coins but weak at spotting altered coins.

(3) Grade
-- I'm a proficient technical grader particularly if I've got my grading guide for help with the less seen coins. I'm in the process of slowly learning EAC grading. At my age (80) I don't expect to ever get a strong handle on EAC grading.

(4) Value
-- I've got access to a few monthly catalogs. I only use the Red Book to get a quick idea of relative values within an issue. As I say to others, I'm going to go to the great beyond with my collection intact. That leaves dealing with the collection to my wife and a very trusted dealer.