Around and around the coins go where they stop nobody knows.

I have been in pleasant conversation with the Wisconsin Collection who again states the premise that "CAC just puts a sticker on the third party grading companies holders to say that they were correctly graded or that they are "premium quality." Do we really need that?"

I beg the Wisconsin Collection's pardon that I submit my response, to our private correspondance, in the public arena because I feel that the answer has importance to all the members of the Collector Society and to the numismatic community in general.

I compare the CAC labelling as the numismatic equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. The GHSA is a sign of the reliability on a consumer product that has been scientifically tested in the laboratory. The GHSA is awarded to products of proven superior quality and those that deliver the best performance. This sign of reliability allows the consumer to purchase GHSA products with a sense of confidence.

The CAC label on a slab differs of course in many ways from the concept of the GHSA on a consumer product. By definition such products are purchased for consumption, a food product, for example, to be eaten or a computer, for instant, to interface with members of the Collector Society. Yet the core concept behind the GHSA and the CAC remains essentially the same.

The CAC label will be registered on a Network just as the certification numbers on the slabs are register by the grading services. Furthermore, the CAC dealer's Network will maintain an active, "sight unseen" market in coins so labelled. Thus the confidence factor again plays into the equation. It might be reasoned that the confidence factor is a product of one's personal sense of insecurity or the collector's inability to judge the grades of coins even those already certified and placed into holders.

But personal opinion is not what the coin market is all about. It is and it ain't all about us. Numismatic is all about us in the most fundamental sense. For example, what makes a 1933, gold $20 Double Eagle worth $7.5 million, a 1913, Liberty Head Nickle, a Million Dollar Coin or a 1849-C Open Wreath gold $1 in AU condition worth 1/2 of a million dollars. Lets all say it together, "scarcity."

Put another way around, the value of any product is the amount a willing seller will accept and the amount that an eager buyer, with the financial sources to afford it, is willing to pay.

However, it also ain't all about me, the owner of $7.5 million 1933, gold $20 Double Eagle, when 10 others are brought out of hiding and are threatening to be put on the open market for sale. (If they can ever be wrestled back out of hands of the government seizure.) When there are 10 other coins available rather than just that one, the impersonal laws of supply and demand, having little or nothing to do with our personal ideas, feelings or preferences, are brought into play.

In an attempt to further illuminate this numismatic principle let's look at evidence from afar seeming to have no relationship whatsoever to our coin collecting habits.

Recently a "double blind" study was conducted concerning the amount of "pleasure" experienced while drinking "expensive" wines. The essence of a "double blind" study is to keep the participants ignorant of the true nature of what's happening to them as subjects. The subjects were offered different wines to drink and were also told various prices that 'supposedly' were related to the drinks they were consuming.

The amount of "pleasure" the participants reported experiencing was totally unrelated to the actual price of the wine they were drinking but it did relate to what they were told the price of the wine was.

The 'higher' the subjects assumed the price of the wine to be the 'greater' their experience of pleasure in drinking it. Thus there was a "subjective" experience of "pleasure" that was related to the imagined value of the wine being consumed that had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual "objective" price of the vintage.

The assertion can now be made that the stated values above, paid for the various coins, likewise have a "subjective" component having nothing whatsoever to do with their "objective" values. With the exception of the actual facts, that the value of any thing is the value a willing seller will accept and a willing buyer, with the resources to afford it, is willing to pay.

Let's now go step further and combine the two concepts that have already been elaborated. Take the Poster Child of the PCGS grading service's "buy back" guarantee. The case in point is a 1963 Lincoln cent, certified Proof-70 Deep Cameo, encapulated in a PCGS holder. It sold for $39,100 at a Heritage FUN auction. This Registry Coin was the only one of its kind, with a certify perfect 70 grade, from either PCGS or NGC. It was in a census population of being the one and only. Thus the $39,100 sticker price. Later on when the coin "had turned in the holder" and started to exhibit spotting, PCGS "brought the coin back," for $40,250, and took it off the market.

What also can be learned from above example is how the third party grading services are in the business of wealth creation. Who else but a coin collector, a numismatist would make a Proof-70 Deep Cameo, 1963 Lincoln cent with a mintage of 3,075,645 units worth $40,000? (A person with an obsession like yours and mine.) The average outsider would likely perceive us as being absolutely crazy.

There you have our hobby all in a nut shell. We all know the sense of anticipation we have while waiting for our coins to be graded and the grades posed on the internet. Why? Because we are all acutely aware that the grade on the holder can mean the difference between, in some case a hundred or so dollars of value and/or in other cases, thousands of dollars. Objectivity we might know that the coin submitted for grading is as ugly as sin. But on the other hand, subjectivity we have nothing against being pleasantly surprised by a grades that exceeds our most optimistic espectations.

While submitting coins for grading, we are quite aware of the fact that the results of the grading process is the creation of wealth. So aware we are of these facts, that there are those among us who earn their living by breaking high grade coins out of their holders and resubmitting them to the certifiers in the quest for the higher grade. Altough among some coins, where the known population are a few dozen examples, a half of hundred units are shown on the population and census reports because of the endless stream of resubmissions. So much for the concept of trusting the objectivity of coin grading industry.

In short, the hobby of coin collecting is an admixture of its subjective and objective components, neither of which occurs in a pure vaccum. All coins are not graded egually, there is a great variance between one coin and another having equal grades on their holders. In the market place, there are even great discrepancies between the value of coins with identical grades but from the different grading services. (As an aside, most of us have placed our coins in the NGC Registry because Collector Society accepts coins from both of the major grading services while you know who does not.)

In the same manner that Good Housekeeper does not produce products but acts as a consumer watch dogs, I see CAC performing a simular function within the coin industry. I see the role of CAC as being that of an independent arbiter, a object