Some success at this difficult art of improving grades

Today I added a new MS 67 grade to my Costa Rican Cristobal Colon Gold Set. Even though my set has been completed for several years, I have worked hard to improve all the grades. Unfortunately, the coins of this set are not commonly slabbed and the high grades on auctions are scarce. So, I have had to practice the difficult art of slabbing doubles. Many times, I have purchased raw doubles, which I believe might, just might, improve the grades of my set. On several occasions, what I thought was a "GEM", turned out to be a disappointed lower grade or even graded as details. However, there are some happy days in which I do get improvements to these grades, like the MS 67 given to the "2 Colones 1928", whose picture I am enclosing.

Just to have an idea of how scarce the slabbing of some of these coins are, for the "2 Colones" of 1915, 1922, 1926 and 1928, just over 50 coins have been slabbed according to the NGC World Coin Census. I believe that for the 4 years mentioned above, at least 10 of these coins have been slabbed by me, most of which I have had to sell after failing to improve grades. My Cristobal Colon Set has all the 4 coins that have been slabbed as MS 67 which belong to these 4 years and are the highest grades slabbed by NGC. Only one of this MS 67 was purchased, being the other 3, a successful result of the difficult art of slabbing doubles.

This is my Costa Rican Cristobal Colon Set.

http://coins.www.collectors-society.com/registry/coins/SetListing.aspx?PeopleSetID=142146

Piefort

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