Is A Coin Graded By A Basement Slabber Guranteed To Be Real?

I personally would not bank on that. They obviously know nothing about grading coins as evident by their consistent MS70 designations on AU-MS63 coins. I would not suspect they know anything about altered identification or counterfeit coins either. I'm mainly speaking of your highly counterfeited key dates or some of the early silver coins. I wouldn't worry about your Roosevelt's and Jefferson's. Just grade the coin.

I'd buy raw before I trusted some of these basement slabbers.

I've bought coins that were from "basement slabbers" that would would not guarantee the grade but did guarantee the coin was authentic.

I view them as raw coins and take the necessary precautions. Many people never buy from these people but I have with some success.

There may be some money to be made through frivolous lawsuits because of irreputable back alley slabbers, if they are foolish enough to give guarentees.
-XoG

I never stated they would intentionally put a "fake" coin in one of their holders, I just meant they would not know if the coin was genuine or not in the first place. I do agree it would be up to you, the buyer, to make sure of that.

Actually PCGS and NGC were never small companies. Both were started by a group of some of the largest most respected dealerships in the country so they started out with major funding and a triple A reputation before they ever opened their doors. (Similar to CAC) PCI could have been considered to be a self-slabber that made it close to the top, but that was because they were one of the first companies (PCI predated both PCGS and NGC) The only "self-slabbers" that have ever come close to being respected after the establishment of PCGS and NGC are ICG and SEGS. And I'm not sure I would call ICG a "self-slabber since I believe they were still a corporate entity with major funding behind them. SEGS on the other hand was a small single dealership with an excellent reputation in variety attribution and it started up on more of a shoestring budget. DGS is also a single dealership firm but I believe they are much better capitalized than most startups.

As for whether or not basement slabbers coins are guaranteed for authenticity, yes most of them are, but since so many of these companies do not survive for long, good luck tracking them down to try and have them make good on the guarantee. Even the ones that are still in business would be very hard to collect from and possible the best you would get would be a refund of the grading fee. You will find that although most of them state they guarantee authenticity, they never spell out exactly what that guarantee is or how the holder of the coin will be compensated. Believe it or not neither PCGS nor NGC would spell out that guarantee either for a very long time. It was only due to the constant nagging for years by myself and Majorbigtime that got PCGS and NGC to finally spell out their authenticity guarantees in 2007 after 20 years of operation.

There are still some surprises in their guarantees as well. Believe it or not the authenticity guarantee does NOT apply to the person who submits the coin! For example, if you sent in a coin for grading and they slab it, and then later you send it back in for regrading or say you sell it and the buyer send it back as a fake and you send it back in and PCGS agrees that it is a fake and de-holders it, you are entitled to no compensation.