1938 LWC MS-67+ Just Sold For $6455

To me, the definition of insanity. For a common date? Does PCGS have a time limit on their warranty for red coins like NGC does?

The seller must be elated!

Must be nice to have that kind of money to blow.

Makes sense to me ; A red cent can turn over time even in a PCGS slab .

This section of numismatics obviously is NOT the coin hobby. It is a market-created, based on nothing verifiable, slab+label+coin hobby.

But since there are people who enjoy it (and what is a hobby for anyway?), it continues to drive prices up to astronomical levels. through marketing ideas such as the registration sets. These were a genius marketing idea to drive up the costs of better graded slabs. Create competition and make it a game some will enjoy playing.

And...this was predicted by some back of us back in the days when these companies first set themselves up as THE hobby experts in order to find a way to make money from the coin hobby. Although we never thought something like a CAC sticker could come into being b/c we said the concept was ludicrous enough no one would fall for it (that is what we said - it is not an insulting statement made for this post).

None of this is saying the companies are evil. These were and are businessmen who are just trying to make a living with a business and so have set up a huge system some people enjoy being a part of.

Unfortunately the system pulls in a lot of newbies who do not do things like read the PCGS guarantee themselves to see how it actually does very little (exception: when PCGS grades a fake coin as genuine) except put PCGS ahead, and the owner ends up with a lot less than they were expecting/due considering how the guarantee is highly touted in the marketplace.

In the 1990s they all abandoned the more accurate (their words when marketing it) computer systems (they spent a $lot$ to develop) that would give an actual grade eliminating "human error," and they all went back to the less accurate (their words when marketing the computer system) system they currently use.

Of course the companies now saying they would be able to give the actual scientifically derived grade of the coin, may have been killing a huge area of profits: The crack out and re-submit phenomenon that naturally occurs when there is no scientific and verifiable standard used to come up with a grade. A business wanting to survive would move (and they all did) back to the error-prone (as they called it when pushing the computer based system) human system.

Business will go where the money is. People will enjoy hobbies different ways.

I personally see numismatics as being about coins. Some people see numismatics it as being about plastic+label (changeable if resubmitted) and all it does to make marketing fun while including coins.

I do not appreciate the large negative effects the latter side of the issue has had on the former. But since people will enjoy what they want to (what are hobbies for?), some of us saw this coming a long time ago.

well then......fools and their money..IMHO

no way I would put up that much money for such a common date. I have a hard time coming up with $1200 or so for a 1909-S VDB cent (and I need one to complete my cent collection.)