What is the best way to crack open a slab?

VonZipper

Was wondering what was the best way to crack open slabs and are certain one's easier than others?Thanks

kyleknap

Here we go again.....

NO chainsaws, pipsaws, nuclear bombs, hammers, power tools of any sort
NO wrapping in 10 feet of cloth and shooting at

It's simple. Just a pair of wire clippers to the edge of a PCGS slab, very simple. You can do one in about 3 seconds with no blood, and no damage to the coin.

Kyle

edit........sorry.......cant spell my own name

MastaHanky

gsi26549

I would recommend putting your hammer away

Use Wire Cutters along the long edge. Once you have chipped away on both sides, take off all four corners. Use a screwdriver to force the two halves apart. (USE THE SCREWDRIVER ACROSS THE SLAB WHERE THE LABEL IS!) Do all this over a nice soft cloth. DO NOT PLACE THE CUTTING EDGES OVER THE COIN. I cracked two Morgans like this last week, easy as pie!

NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU SCREW IT UP!

Bradford

BowAxe

The following is my own homegrown method, developed because I already owned a band saw. This is copied from comments I made in another thread recently:

"I don't know how others go about it, but I use a band saw to cut through all four edges of the slab, then while holding the two sides together like a sandwich I brush off the plastic "sawdust", remove one side and lift out the flexible insert that holds the coin (this done over a soft cloth lest I fumble and drop the whole thing), then gently bend the insert so that the coin drops out onto a padded surface. I have had no mishaps (knock on wood!) over the course of a couple hundred crackouts--I am much more likely to drop a coin while trying to put it into a flip."

The only danger here is that you can't let your mind wander--you have to stay focused so you don't inadvertently slice off your finger.

lava

I am curious BowAxe, why would anybody be cracking out a "couple hundred" coins? Are you sccoping up ACG crap?

BowAxe

Lava: I've never bought an ACG slab in my life. In search of "perfection" for the holes in my Modern Commemorative Circulation Strike sets (they're under the title "Pittsburgh Collector") I have bought a lot of ICG MS70's cheap and cracked them out to submit to PCGS. This unfortunately has not proven very fruitful, because virtually all of them have come back MS69 from PCGS. However, I haven't lost much by doing this, because the PCGS MS69 commems generally fetch about the same as (or sometimes more than) what I paid for them as ICG 70's. I've also cracked out a large number of NGC's that I had intially had slabbed by them years ago, to resubmit to PCGS.

keithdagen

BoxAxe,

You can send them in, in the slab, and not risk damaging the coin. Put a sticky on each slab that says CROSS ANY GRADE and they will slab the ICG 70's as PCGS 69's for you. That way, you don't have to actually crack the slab and risk the damage.

BowAxe

Keith,

Yeah, but that's thirty bucks a pop for a crossover compared with ten bucks for a modern submission if I crack it out myself. For $20 less, I'll do the work and take the risk. Also, there is that remote chance (perhaps equivalent to hitting the Lotto) that an ICG 70 actually might make PCGS 70 if you crack it out and resubmit. Doing it as you suggested, with PCGS knowing the coin has come from an ICG holder, I suspect there would be absolutely no possibility of getting a 70.

keithdagen

BowAxe, you can submit the coins as Economy Cross for $15 each if you have trouble cracking the slabs.

PCGS will not cross a 70 without it being cracked. They have stated that publicly in the past.

Coll3ctor

Easier than I thought about 20 seconds each with wire cutters.

lusterlover

20 year old thread revival....that has to be a record.

WAYNEAS

Maybe Rip Van Winkle has awakened again.

Wayne

Coll3ctor

Kind of felt a little bad cracking this one... ;/

Dan50

I use bolt cutter on the edges

Tom147

Much the same as Dan50. Side cutters to all 4 corners. Then just lifts right off.

Murphey

Mail it, via the US Postal Service, to yourself in a six-inch regular envelope...NoJoy will run it through one of his two remaining automatic sorters/cancellers and it will be cracked spectacularly...But don't bother insuring it because you, and everyone who ever reads this, will be dead by the time you file a claim; deal with at least a half-dozen or so postal employees, all of whom claim it's some-else's responsibility and pass it off until it comes back to the first person you spoke with; write a saga longer than all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings and Lonesome Dove, combined, explaining what you mailed, to whom you mailed it, where you mailed to and from, why you chose USPS rather than FedEx (or even DHL) to deliver your precious cargo, what color was the envelope, etc.; and then provide, at minimum, sixty-one notarized statements of the value of the item from certified appraisers. Oh, and each one of these appraisers must be at least 80 years old or older and be accompanied by a birth parent. Easy peasey.