finally figured out what is wrong with coin collecting--slabbing services!!

[michael]

 

 

they have taken out all the fun of collecting

 

and filled it with

 

stress, greed, ms-70 grades, competition for holders in registry sets, anger over results from grading, bad feelings if the coin aint graded or net graded or bodybagged/non graded holders so cant be appreciated for the majority of collectors, a huge INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF PLASTIC VALUE ON many ugly, problematic and gifts in holders and finally last but not least stress and anger at failed crossover attempts

 

 

 

 

[michael]

coins rotated in holders, something wrong with the plastic holder, not the right name pedigree on the holder, mechnical errors

 

yes the fun is greatly dimished from what comments i mostly read on the internet

[World Colonial]

It isn't just the grading services, its the amount of money involved which matters because most collectors are not rich and have to work for a living. The typical collector is in no position to throw any decent amount of money away (even though many of them do) and would be completely insane to ignore the financial aspects of collecting.

[James_OldeTowne]

It isn't just the grading services, its the amount of money involved

Boy oh boy, you hit the nail on the head. How long have I been harping about this? ALL of the major problems that we see in coin collecting today are the result of hyper-inflated prices for coins.

 

Armies of coin doctors exist now because there is so much money to be made in adding a touch of color here, a dab of rainbow toning there. Counterfeiting has completely exploded because of the money to be made -- not just in rarities, but in common coins too!! You have to check all your 1880-S Morgans now, because China is exporting them by the barrel! And why is eBay so fraught and full of scammers and conscience-less crooks? Because they know the market is rife with foolhardy buyers who will pay hundreds of dollars for coins that cost fifteen just a few years ago.

 

Worst and saddest of all, so many coin collectors have simply given up because the cost of completing virtually any series of coins is so cost-prohibitive that it simply cannot be fun. The reality is that a decent 1909-S VDB should not cost $1000, and a slick 1901-S quarter shouldn't be nearing $5000.

 

Thanks for giving me a chance to !

[PerryHall]

I remember the bad old days before third party grading services. The market place was full of counterfeits (especially gold coins), altered coins, wizzed coins, cleaned coins, tooled coins, etc. I remember seeing polished commems being sold as proofs. Many of the 09-SVDB cents and 16-D dimes had added mint marks and virtually every coin was overgraded. Dealers would undergrade when buying and then overgrade that same coin when selling. Michael---Do you really want to go back to the bad old days?

[TomB]

 

they have taken out all the fun of collecting

 

and filled it with

 

stress, greed, ms-70 grades, competition for holders in registry sets, anger over results from grading, bad feelings if the coin aint graded or net graded or bodybagged/non graded holders so cant be appreciated for the majority of collectors, a huge INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF PLASTIC VALUE ON many ugly, problematic and gifts in holders and finally last but not least stress and anger at failed crossover attempts

 

 

 

Only if you let them.

[Tradedollarnut]

I remember the bad old days before third party grading services. The market place was full of counterfeits (especially gold coins), altered coins, wizzed coins, cleaned coins, tooled coins, etc. I remember seeing polished commems being sold as proofs. Many of the 09-SVDB cents and 16-D dimes had added mint marks and virtually every coin was overgraded. Dealers would undergrade when buying and then overgrade that same coin when selling. Michael---Do you really want to go back to the bad old days?

 

Logic has no place in a good rant.

[Tradedollarnut]

since the value of collector cars and art work has skyrocketed as well, I wonder if James would blame that on the slabbing companies too?

[James_OldeTowne]

I remember the bad old days before third party grading services. The market place was full of counterfeits (especially gold coins), altered coins, wizzed coins, cleaned coins, tooled coins, etc. I remember seeing polished commems being sold as proofs. Many of the 09-SVDB cents and 16-D dimes had added mint marks and virtually every coin was overgraded. Dealers would undergrade when buying and then overgrade that same coin when selling. Michael---Do you really want to go back to the bad old days?

I remember the "bad old days" as well - and they were not nearly as "bad" as some would have you believe. Sure, you could end up buying a counterfeit, and I'll even say the odds were significantly higher that you could buy a counterfeit back then... IF you failed to deal with legitimate dealers. So what's different today? Shouldn't you still only deal with legitimate dealers?

 

But what people seem to all-too-easily forget about the "bad old days" is that your level of risk was much less than it is today. A 1916-D dime in F-12 cost what, $100? So if you got swindled by a fake, you were out $100. Today, you get swindled by a Chinese fake and you are out $2000.

 

David Hall has called the "bad old days" the Wild West of coin collecting, but if I had my choice, I'd go back 25 years without the slightest hesitation.

[World Colonial]

since the value of collector cars and art work has skyrocketed as well, I wonder if James would blame that on the slabbing companies too?

 

I attribute it at least partly if not primarily to the credit bubble. There is a vast amount of money and credit that has been into "alternative investments". Though the market capitalization of collectibles is an absolute pittance compared to asset classes such as stocks, bonds and real estate, this money or more properly, primarily credit, has enabled "liquidity" to flow into all types of areas and pushed prices up.

[World Colonial]

The prices you describe are one of the primary reasons why I do not collect US coins. The prices in relative terms are ridiculously inflated versus non-US material and it would be impossible for me to accumulate any collection of what I would describe as comporably desirable material with remotely the same amount of money.

 

The material I buy is much scarcer but also much cheaper. And some of it I am able to buy even cheaper because I utilize my relative information advantage over other collectors. That is much harder to do for a collector of any US series.

 

Though I like US coins less than my areas, I would consider collecting some of them if the prices were more reasonable. But unfortunately, they are not.

[MikeKing]

you're 100% right

it's destroyed REAL collectability, in my opinion

it's made people want to have the pedigree written on the slab...could be wrong just as verbal and catalogue could be e.g. I was told a Bust Half I bought was Myer, and turns out to be Palmer. But what should either matter.

grading is for wildly_fanciful_statement

makes it for the 'trade' which is what it shouldn't be

then there's the cac sticker

can't sell coins sometimes with people who REALLY don't know truth about how to know a coin and rely on the CAC and place more into the CAC than what they SHOULD know as a collector.

Of course, it's a new brand of collectors. Enough to make me want to get out of this 'industry'.

Dealershaven't changed since the earliest times, only now they have other means of convincing you to buy their merchandise.

Then when you go to sell it back they annihilate you having told you they have a buyback policy, blame the lowball amount they'll buy it from you to the 'market', stretched quite a bit by their greed and imagination.

I could and will go on and on.

ONly good thing about grading sercives is that they can identify fakes for the beginners, and some of us olders, preserve the coin and prevent it from getting nicked when I drop it.

But hysteria nonetheless exists as I've found out from trying to sell a coin to an untrained, easily influenced by others, that is NOT to ever be found elsewhere, but ignorance took it's toll and in other cases, greed.

 

Alas, I left the stamp collecting hobby now that pcgs has begun to destroy with with certifications people are taking seriously. There goes the stamp hobby.

 

And that IS a SIN

 

An effin SIN

 

EDITED to add:

 

this does not apply to all dealers, I know five that are honest

remember, dealers read the boards whether you know it or not, another issue.

furthermore, the auction firms read the boards

could end up to your detriment because I've run into problems with that, though, I did get an auction firm to retract a buyback $$ on a coin that was way overpriced and probably tried to set a new high.

 

Virgil Brand got sick of it all, left his political numismatic positions, said the same about dealers but was one of the most voluminous coin collectors.

 

[World Colonial]

I do not underderstand why any (at least knowledgeable) collector with quality material would ever make an outright sale to a dealer. I could see placing coins on consignment, but not a direct sale.

[Tradedollarnut]

I remember the bad old days before third party grading services. The market place was full of counterfeits (especially gold coins), altered coins, wizzed coins, cleaned coins, tooled coins, etc. I remember seeing polished commems being sold as proofs. Many of the 09-SVDB cents and 16-D dimes had added mint marks and virtually every coin was overgraded. Dealers would undergrade when buying and then overgrade that same coin when selling. Michael---Do you really want to go back to the bad old days?

I remember the "bad old days" as well - and they were not nearly as "bad" as some would have you believe. Sure, you could end up buying a counterfeit, and I'll even say the odds were significantly higher that you could buy a counterfeit back then... IF you failed to deal with legitimate dealers. So what's different today? Shouldn't you still only deal with legitimate dealers?

 

But what people seem to all-too-easily forget about the "bad old days" is that your level of risk was much less than it is today. A 1916-D dime in F-12 cost what, $100? So if you got swindled by a fake, you were out $100. Today, you get swindled by a Chinese fake and you are out $2000.

 

David Hall has called the "bad old days" the Wild West of coin collecting, but if I had my choice, I'd go back 25 years without the slightest hesitation.

 

What was your discretionary income 25 years ago? I know for a fact, mine was zero since I was a junior in college. I'd hate to go back 25 years.

[Tradedollarnut]

I do not underderstand why any (at least knowledgeable) collector with quality material would ever make an outright sale to a dealer. I could see placing coins on consignment, but not a direct sale.

 

Because some dealers are willing to step up and pay full retail for the right coins. When Mr Law chose to sell his half dime set, he set the price and Legend paid it.

[World Colonial]

I do not underderstand why any (at least knowledgeable) collector with quality material would ever make an outright sale to a dealer. I could see placing coins on consignment, but not a direct sale.

 

Because some dealers are willing to step up and pay full retail for the right coins. When Mr Law chose to sell his half dime set, he set the price and Legend paid it.

 

OK, so that is better than I thought in isolated circumstances. But since the dealer has to pay less than the collector to make a profit, presumably this collector could still have sold them for more to somebody else, right? Wouldn't this collector still have been better off placing these coins up for sale at public auction?

[Tradedollarnut]

I do not underderstand why any (at least knowledgeable) collector with quality material would ever make an outright sale to a dealer. I could see placing coins on consignment, but not a direct sale.

 

Because some dealers are willing to step up and pay full retail for the right coins. When Mr Law chose to sell his half dime set, he set the price and Legend paid it.

 

OK, so that is better than I thought in isolated circumstances. But since the dealer has to pay less than the collector to make a profit, presumably this collector could still have sold them for more to somebody else, right? Wouldn't this collector still have been better off placing these coins up for sale at public auction?

 

Maybe, maybe not. What if he needed the $ right now vs 9 months from now. What if the coin market crashed in nine months? If auction price is defined as full retail, doesn't the collector receive less than full retail after 10% auction fee and 12% interest on any advance for almost a year? And who is to say the person who bought the set intact would even bid on the individual coins at auction [he happens to like full sets]. And I know for a fact that certain sets are worth more intact than the individual coins are worth - so maybe he did BETTER than he would have at auction - and didn't pay any fees whatsoever.

 

A bird in the hand is many times worth more than 2 in the bush.

[James_OldeTowne]

since the value of collector cars and art work has skyrocketed as well, I wonder if James would blame that on the slabbing companies too?

I didn't blame anything on slabbing companies . My response was in reference to "its the amount of money involved".

[MikeKing]

I do not underderstand why any (at least knowledgeable) collector with quality material would ever make an outright sale to a dealer. I could see placing coins on consignment, but not a direct sale.

 

Because some dealers are willing to step up and pay full retail for the right coins. When Mr Law chose to sell his half dime set, he set the price and Legend paid it.

 

I've never had a dealer willing to accept my asking price (which I've always thought reasonable). I guess my coins are just not good enough or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong direction or have bad luck. whatever the case, except for one or two that are seemingly fair, most try to rip me off.

 

 

[WoodenJefferson]

As with all collectibles, logic and sanity is rationed.

[JCM-Houston]

I'm with Perry Hall on this one.

 

As an example people that were buying significant coins back in the bad old days could be ripped by the coin doctors much easier than today. A 16 D Merc might have been $100 back then, but it could very easily have had an added mint mark, hidden cleaning under fake toning, or other issues with altered surfaces. And what was your income like in the days of $100 16 D's compared to today, I know mine is significantly higher.

 

I know a lot of you will say just learn how to grade and all the problems go away, and that's a bunch of hooey. There are some very well respected collectors who have been done in by putty artists, only to find out 2-3 years later when the putty finally showed itself. If you think you are infallible, or even better than the graders at the TPG's, then you may get to learn some seriously expensive lessons.

[James_OldeTowne]

As an example people that were buying significant coins back in the bad old days could be ripped by the coin doctors much easier than today.

This is something I cannot agree with. It is definitely easier to get ripped by coin doctors today, because all they have to do is get a doctored coin into a slab, and voila, big-time premium. There have been, what, hundreds? thousands? of posts here and ATS on this very issue. Back in the supposedly "bad old days", the premium for beautiful toning was quite small, and therefore your downside risk was limited. But look at the absurd 200%, 300%, and 1000% premiums paid today for colorful coins, merely because of the plastic. How comforting is it to find out that the common-date but rainbow-toned MS-65 Morgan in the PCGS slab that you paid $1000 for was made in a lab last month?

 

A 16 D Merc might have been $100 back then, but it could very easily have had an added mint mark, hidden cleaning under fake toning, or other issues with altered surfaces. And what was your income like in the days of $100 16 D's compared to today, I know mine is significantly higher.

Your income might be 200% higher today than it was in 1978, but the cost of coins like the 1916-D could be 800% higher!! No, without a doubt, the pace of income has drastically trailed the cost of coins over the last 30 years.

 

I have price guides from the 1970s and 1980s, but they are stored away right now. When I get a chance to dig them out, I may try to do an analysis of the pace of coin values vs. inflation. I'll bet a silver dollar right now that we would find that key-date coins have outpaced inflation by a large amount since then, which is why coin-collecting has lost so much of its charm.

 

Put it another way. In 1978, a person on a reasonable median income had hope of completing a Morgan dollar set in BU (MS-63) in his lifetime. Today, what's it going to cost you? Just three coins in the set would individually cost more money than I make in a year!!!!!

 

Michael is right - the big-money that's been dumped into the coin market and driven coins beyond the means of normal collectors has irrevocably damaged the hobby, as it has many hobbies. Take a look at baseball cards. Absurd hyper-inflated pricing on the rare cards drove many folks out of that hobby, including several of my friends that simply sold off their holdings and left collecting for good.

[Golden Oldie]

And it's not just coin collecting that has been spoiled. Now, to my amazement, stamps are graded to get more at sale time.

And what's this with toys? Collectors want them in the original box, never played, etc. A toy is NOT a toy if it has not been played with by a child,IMHO!!

 

Back to coins: Maybe 200(?) years ago someone with time on their hands liked to clean or polish their pocket money to make it look pretty. Now, oh my, it's next to worthless.

[Tradedollarnut]

Forget inflation, what's important is the change in income. My income is currently 1,000 times what it was twenty five years ago.

 

So forgive me if I don't long for the good old days.

[DWLange]

The high prices of long established collectibles may be a deterrent to some, and I'm not the coin collector I once was. I still dabble in circulated USA coins, trying to complete matched sets in F-VF of the 1892-1964 coinage.

 

Part of the problem is that the current generation of collectors (those who have discovered the hobby since the advent of slabbing) has not been given the opportunity to develop a fondness for worn coins, due to the greater emphasis on high grades than in past generations. Ads that appeared in coin newspapers and magazines 50 years ago offered page after page of low grade, low price coins, and yet somehow these dealers made a living. Today, it's very rare to find display ads offering coins at less than three or four figures apiece, and this may reinforce the message that circulated coins are not worth owning.

 

I also like world issues of the past 200 years in nice AU or MS when I can afford them, but I've found the real thrill of collecting for me in trying to assemble all varieties of coin boards, folders and albums. While I don't consider this activity a real substitute for numismatics, it has recaptured the simple pleasure of seeking small treasures without the worry of grading and high prices.

 

I suppose the lesson here is to find something that is both affordable and satisfying to collect. I would like to assemble a Mint State type set of USA coins or a complete, gem set of Barber Halves, but I don't let it ruin my life that this is no longer possible at current prices. There's a whole world of numismatic collectibles, and every collector should be able to find one or more areas that will bring pleasure without pain.

[James_OldeTowne]

David, that was a terrific post. Everyone ought to read it!

[Golden Oldie]

Here, here, agree entirely.

[BillJones]

I remember the bad old days before third party grading services. The market place was full of counterfeits (especially gold coins), altered coins, wizzed coins, cleaned coins, tooled coins, etc. I remember seeing polished commems being sold as proofs. Many of the 09-SVDB cents and 16-D dimes had added mint marks and virtually every coin was overgraded. Dealers would undergrade when buying and then overgrade that same coin when selling. Michael---Do you really want to go back to the bad old days?

 

I'm with Perry on this one. The grading services are not perfect, but they beat the devil the bad parts of "the good old days."

 

This comment goes double now that the Chinese are out to screw us. Without the grading services, this hobby would be in even more trouble over counterfeits than it already is.

[Bugmann1974]

And what's this with toys? Collectors want them in the original box, never played, etc. A toy is NOT a toy if it has not been played with by a child,IMHO!!

 

 

Not all toy collectors dissagree with you (thumbs u This is the prize of my VW toy collection, made back in 1938.

 

 

Now back to coins...

 

I agee with David 100%, Though I think that there are alot more circulated coin collectors than he realizes. I know I am one of them.

 

In fact, most of the collectors that I know personally are circulated coin collectors.

[World Colonial]

My term "any" was too inclusive. But I will stick by my modified statement that most collectors would do better not selling to a dealer under most circumstances.