Slabs vs. Raw
MrEureka
Posts: 24,613 ✭✭✭✭✭
Forget for the moment the advantages and disadvantages of slabs. That ground has been covered.
Now, imagine all of your slabbed coins raw. Either in 2X2’s of some sort, or in an old or new coin cabinet, or in albums. Again, forgetting the advantages and disadvantages of slabs. Just for the moment, would you ENJOY your coins more, less or the same?
FWIW, I’m not trying to stir the pot. Just thinking about the possibilities for next generation certification and storage systems, and wondering if anyone else would care.
Andy Lustig
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
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Comments
If my coins were raw, I’d have better pictures of them. I would also be able to see the lettered edges which is a huge disadvantage with slabs.
I used to have custom made Capital Plastics holders made for my better coins before there were slabs. In that way I am sort of in the same place as long as I am not looking to sell. Slabs make coins more liquid.
Depends on the coins.
Example…. My Vermont coppers? I’d likely enjoy them more raw, just the sense of their history that they exude would be enhanced. In fact, I keep a small subset of the lesser graded colonials raw for exactly that reason. And with these coins, I’m not super concerned with handling issues.
My higher graded early federal type? No, the OCD/paranoia generated by the perception of reduced protection from leaving them raw (fingerprints, excessive moisture etc) would just nag me each and every day, I’d likely rather sell them than take that chance.
That’s just my thinking.
I would/I do enjoy them more raw. I don't really care about the slabs.
[Yes, you told me to forget this, but I also don't chase top pops. For people who chase such things, it would have to be less satisfying to have a raw coin that you just THINK should be a top pop.]
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
When I was young, I really enjoyed having my large cents (then, a set of a few low grade early dates and most middle and late dates in VF-XF, i.e., all worn to some degree and brown) in a Whitman album, and being able to see them all at once. Likewise my Lincoln cents, many of which were "unc" red, and my complete unc silver Roosevelt dime set. Seeing the effect of the albums on the unc coins over a few decades, at the very least I'd now want a safer storage medium.
For my nicer, more valuable coins now, I'm perfectly happy to have them slabbed. I can still see them as well as if they were in albums, just not all at once as easily. And they are protected from most damaging circumstances. My only real complaint about slabs vs. albums or 2x2s is the extra weight and volume.
Collector of Liberty Seated Half Dimes, including die pairs and die states
It depends on where the raw coin is going like an album. Slabs make house keeping better (sonewhat)
@MrEureka Andy, are Capital Plastics holders allowed in this scenario?
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Renegade
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I miss handling my coins for sure. These little time machines are somehow more “real” in hand.
Would enjoy my slabbed coins less, if raw. Now I have raw coins that are browse box material in 2x2 and none above say $50 cost.
Here’s an opinion for you:
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“Land of the free because of the brave”
“Saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”
In Deo solo confidimus
I have 2 Lincoln sets - one slab, one raw. So I guess I like them both equally.
WS
I have the opportunity to handle many high value rarities, and slabbed vs raw makes a huge difference. With so many valuable coins constantly trading in the marketplace, I hold a slabbed rarity with little enthusiasm and it is quickly forgotten. If a high value coin is handled raw, then I get to relish in an experience and pleasurable adventure of viewing this coin.
I believe the root of this scenario lies in this: A slab with a barcode and grade turns a treasure into a serial number and value. A raw coin has no external distraction or influence and allows the viewer to focus solely on the coin itself for a pure and awe-inspiring appreciation.
A numismatist has to admit the lure of a scene like this:
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" Matthew 6:33. Young fellow suffering from Bust Half fever.
BHNC #AN-10
JRCS #1606
It's hard to leave aside one of the advantages of slabs ... and that is the protection aspect.
That said, I would probably enjoy the coins themselves more, but I may participate in the hobby differently. But that again comes back to an advantage of slabs.
Edge lettering, tactile feel, ability to image better, and just the pure enjoyment of holding, examining and appreciating the coin without any preconceived grades, stickers or plastic in the way ... yes, I would absolutley enjoy the coins more, even if it was in a slightly different way.
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
Someone is going to complain that this is covered in a dozen or so old threads. I say, BS. Why not stir the pot a little. The curmudgeons need something to complain about.
This is an ongoing debate/
I love to hold a coin in my hand. the old adage that coins are a piece of history you can hold in your hand just doesn't sound right when you say a slab is a piece of plastic history, which you can hold in your hand. More like a coin is a piece of history you can holder in your slab. That doesn't sound right either.
If you are trying to buy the real thing, and you know what you are doing, raw is best. But online, the slab adds value.
Slabs are great if you want to sell it, but don't think you're going to save any money by sending your precious raw coins in to be graded. As most of us have learned, there is an art and science in picking a good coin to be graded. And the market does figure in. If you ever want to sell on Great Collections, or Stacks and Bowers etc. you should be holdered in a PCGS slab.
One more random comment. If Slabbing weren't so expensive, there would be a much higher population of lower graded coins, which ironically would make grading more meaningful. At least that's how I see it. Sending coins off to be graded is like sending your kids to college. Its expensive and can either be rewarding or disappointing. Life is full of surprises.
I'd enjoy it differently than I do today. I'd probably have albums and flips with Kointains. Slab generations are meaningless to me, so I wouldn't miss that aspect of them. All the info that's on a slab can easily be fit onto a flip insert. I'd probably be less likely to collect stuff with really fragile surfaces.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
To address the question in the OP directly, I might enjoy my coins a bit less because I'd worry more. This may sound silly to some but though my collection might be meager in relation to others, it's important to me. I like the security and stability that the slabs provide in protecting my coins. At the end of the day, I can always break a coin out if I desire to. In the meantime, it is safe from mishandling, accidents, most environmental hazards, and will survive me for others to enjoy once my stewardship is over. With that said, I own both slabbed and raw coins and enjoy them all.
I must take issue with your last sentence. As I don’t want to “be holdered in a PCGS slab” or for that matter, in any other slab.😉
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
I’ve actually gone back and forth on this. Early on, I cracked coins out of holders so I could build my 7070 Type Album... I simply preferred the presentation. After completing it, I moved on to a two-volume Wayte Raymond album for Large Cents.
As I began acquiring higher-value coins, I started submitting them for certification. More recently, I’ve also sent in some of my type coins for grading or reholdering. I still enjoy the look of an album, but I also appreciate the protection and liquidity that TPG holders provide. To balance both, I’ve used a few workarounds in my Large Cent albums: plastic proxy coins or lower-grade placeholders to represent coins that are slabbed. This lets me visualize the set as a whole... blank spaces show what I still need, and proxies remind me what’s off in holders. The downside is when I own both a lower-grade example and an upgraded slabbed coin... like my 1839 “Booby Head” large cent... it breaks the continuity a bit.
At this point, my 7070 is starting to evolve into more of a “Box of 20” as I decide what to submit for grading and what role the album will ultimately play in the collection.
For illustration... here's a couple of pages from my LC album... and the upgrade coins
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I'm biased
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
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My collection is roughly 50/50, and I enjoy the raw stuff a lot more. Observing the feel of it, not just the look, imagining plunking it down in an old saloon, that kind of thing. I imagine everyone's collection starts out w/ raw coins, and as things get more expensive and the threat of counterfeits gets higher, we are forced into slabs. But as noted above they morph in character from pure coins more toward 'commodities'.
I much prefer raw. The only reason a large percentage of my collection is now slabbed is that others want them that way before reselling them so it has become tougher and tougher to find nice raw coins.
By the by, regarding protection from miss-handling, how did all those classic coins reach the age of slabs without being ruined?
But we don’t know how many classic coins failed to reach the age of slabs due to mishandling.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
If another thread here is to be believed, there are coins that managed to avoid mishandling until they reached the age of slabs.
Albums are nice for a quick presentation of a series, but if you really want to examine one coin closely, it’s a bit of a pain orienting the page, flipping back and forth to see both obverse and reverse, and of course, you can’t see the edge at all.
2x2’s are okay, but I never really liked the aesthetic of stapled cardboard, and the plastic film doesn’t have the optical clarity of slabs.
For the most part, I enjoy raw coins less than slabbed.
@SethChandler
“Land of the free because of the brave”
“Saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”
In Deo solo confidimus
I enjoy the very tactile experience of holding, viewing and examining raw coins.
I have a 2,400+ year old Athenian Owl coin that is raw. Holding viewing and examining that raw coin allows me and my mind to bridge the gap between today and 2,400+ years ago. A fun way to spend some coin time. I get the same experience holding other raw coins of more recent vintage (i.e., 1956, my birth year; allowing me to revisit my first appearance on the earth with related photos and family memorabilia).
I do enjoy seeing a collection of coins, raw, in an album or a Capital style holder.
However, I also have warmed up to slabbed coins and appreciate the many positive aspects of having certain coins graded and slabbed.
I recall reading that one of the main reasons for grading and encapsulation was to expedite dealer-to-dealer sight-unseen trading. Thus, an intentional step to commodify coins - the coin, the genuineness guarantee, and the grade all bound together so there was no reason to look at the coin at all.
What’s great for dealers may not always be great for their customers. If you are competitive, and many people with enough money to indulge a coin habit have had to be, this commodification creates a new playing field where collectors can compete in a numbers-based environment. Yes, the coins have to be nice, but did numismatics really need to be infected with “My coins are nicer than your coins!” ?
On a more personal front, the TPGs and I do not agree how coins should be graded, and which criteria are important. A pet peeve is the Circulated / Uncirculated divide. It just seems like an arbitrary judgement call that was carried over from the days of AG to BU or GEM letter grades. I think the “circulated” call on a nice AU58 should be treated like any other effects on BU coins, such as hairlines, unpleasant toning, or any other flaw. I would happily consider a straight “64” with a good strike, nice luster, and a trace of high-point wear.
(Getting to my point soon…)
Speaking of luster, it’s another place where I diverge from TPGs. I collect Lincolns. They have a compound curve on the obverse, which has a distinctive radiance. However, it comes with a subdued effect, shown below. True cartwheel luster does not appear unless the die is worn and there are substantial flow lines to create the spinning effect.
So here we have a bias against a well struck coin from an early die stage and for a less sharp coin from old dies. This works exactly against my preferences, which is to see the coin as it was intended by the designer.
The point (finally) is that the slabs, and especially the grades, don’t do much to help me decide on a coin.
When I do buy a slabbed coin, I have criteria to decide whether it stays in the slab. Is there a big step in value if it loses a grade? No, then I won’t lose much if I get it regraded to sell it. Is it a preferred TPG? No, may as well crack it. Do I feel it’s undergraded - then hell, yeah, break that baby out. If I’m right it would need regraded anyway if I sold it.
Finally, I bought this coin graded MS63. I imagine it had been bouncing from dealer to dealer for a long time. The holder was so scuffed it was hard to tell what it was. Only by cracking it out could I see its potential.
EDIT: I realized I should show the coin through the slab. This was my best photo. The seller’s picture was even worse - I’m sure it cost them some bidding, but saved me substantial money. So much for “commodity” selling.
By the way, all the cents are in an Intercept Shield album so I can see them easily and to protect them. I have one small album on my desk instead of hundreds of slabs in a closet, safe, or safe deposit box.
I will take raw coins all day long. I don’t collect uncirculated colonials so I’m not afraid of handling them.
(I’ll go read what everyone else said in a bit)
Thinking about the OP question, I like the slabs. I like having a grade on there that isn’t hand-written. I like the coin info in one spot. I like the plastic holders do my valuable coins. I used to put my raw coins in hard plastic 2x2s if they were “better” for my collection.
My handwriting is atrocious, so if there weee no slabs I would be using a label maker or something to create a uniform written sure of identifying my coins.
I still like my raw stuff, but wish it was slabbed like the rest of my collection. I’m not an album guy at all and my raw stuff is just in 2x2s (some normal, some hard plastic) and in folders or a Velveeta box.
I kind of get the best of both worlds with my collection. The coin has been authenticated and graded but is not in a slab.
To answer the OP question, I enjoy my coins more slabbed, because I can view/show/share them without worry of damage. Freeing my mind of that allows more enjoyment.
In answering my own question, I find that the most important consideration is the size of the collection. If it’s just a handful of coins, slabs work well for me. But if hundreds or thousands of coins, the giant pile of plastic is annoying, whether I’m just looking at the pile, or going through it coin by coin. I guess there’s a connection, at least for me, between being attracted to small individual objects - like coins - and wanting the entire collection to be reasonably compact. So I’d be delighted to own a complete set of 9 slabbed matte proof Lincoln cents, for example, but am repulsed by the thought of owning a complete set of 280 slabbed business strikes.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
How about the Coin World Premier holder? Great value for the money. A problem I've had recently is finding them. Out of Stock? Maybe they haven't sold all that well but if they would make an insert with three prongs to hold the coin along with the high-quality precision-made two halves to complete the self slab that one doesn't need to glue together...well, that would really be something.
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“Land of the free because of the brave”
“Saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”
In Deo solo confidimus
If encapsulation had been invented 200 years earlier we would probably have many more high grade coins to enjoy.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
In the pre-slab era, I remember spending a fortune on insured postage returning overgraded, counterfeit, cleaned, ATed, etc problem coins to many major coin dealers.
Also, in the pre-slab era, coin dealers had two grading standards---one for buying coins and one for selling coins. They would buy a coin as an AU58 and it would magically become an MS65 after they dipped it and put it in their display case.
The advantages of slabs from the major grading services far outweigh the disadvantage of not being able to touch my coins.
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