Slabs - were you reluctant at first...
dan1ecu
Posts: 1,573
...to accept the practice of slabbing coins? Was it initially a controversial issue in the collecting community? If someone who was collecting at the time could give an idea of what the early days of slabbing were like, that would be interesting. It must have taken some skillful marketing to get dealers and collectors interested. Were you once a diehard raw coin collector that eventually gave in to the idea of having your coins slabbed? If so, what influenced you the most? Who was first in the business? Was ACG actually respectable when they first started?
Dan
Dan
0
Comments
There was a good number of people who hated the idea then, and still do. The fact that you can't see the edge really is objectionable, especially to folks who like coins with lettered edges. The EAC (early coppers) crowd still is very much anti-slab as far as I know. Some dealers swore they would never handle slabbed coins, but the market demanded it and they caved in.
Remember, though, at the time you didn't have single-point grade differences. They used 60, 63, 65, 67. And people (rightly, for the most part) didn't see why you had to pay someone to tell you a coin was a 63 or a 65. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to learn the difference. Once it evolved into the full 11-point mint state scale, you couldn't be so sure of your own judgment any more.
But once people saw the big money potential in playing crackout, I think many of them abandoned their objections in favor of chasing the money.
If you follow the casino chip hobby, I believe they are in the infancy of slabbing today, with all the same pros/cons.
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
Then came the slabs and people were skeptical at first and also many thought certification really meant they could walk around and say hey, This coin is certified so there is no doubt to it's grade. I remember buying a common date Morgan in 62 and thinking I really had something. BTW the prices started reflecting all this.
One thing that really comes to mind was my local favorite dealer (and still is to this day) took the pcgs dealership and was really trying to promote certification. At a local show in town he walked in with his briefcases filled with slabs and set up a few tables with all slabs, and written info on pcgs and certification.
Well, his tables were empty all day long and he kind of looked like a fool, as he was almost the only one selling slabs. But didn't take long for others to follow and accept all this.
<< <i>I'd also be interested in hearing comments from the old timers about what it was like collecting coins prior to the computer and eBay! Twowood >>
..............it seems like a diffrent world back then. q david bowers and his partner james ruddy came out with a book, with pictures, showing where all the high points of the coin were, thus, one could tell if the coin has any wear. back then, the coin was unc.{bu} or it wasnt. but as time passed one could see some unc. {bu} coins were better that others, thus we had bu, and choice, and some coins were way above in appearence of the choice bu. {gem} so it seems everone beleived thier coins were now choice bu, or even gem. needless to say, it all got out of hand, as no one could agree what was bu, choice bu, or gem bu. and the prices were all over the the place. some people ended up paying gem prices for bu coins. many were not very happy. then someone got the idea to encase...slab... the coins with with grades they beleived to be in line with the times. we now have ms60 ms61 and so on... iam trying to make this as simple as i can, but we could talk about this for ever. hope this helps.
Coin shows, coin dealers, and coin clubs were bigger then because it generally was much "harder" to buy coins insofar as there was no ebay. Large towns might have several coin dealers; medium sized towns might have one or two; and small towns were lucky to have one. So, even smaller coin shows were an important part of a collector's life because it enabled us to actually see a bunch of coins.
The lack of an Internet also meant that coin magazines and newspapers were more important. I recall that in the early 1960s, Coin World had a subscription base of about 175,000....about 90,000 more than it has now. Numismatic Scrapbook was an important (and great) monthly magazine and Coinage was new. Numismatic News and Coins were also worth reading. On the other hand, The Numismatist was much drier than it is today!
Unlike Russ, I LOVE the fact that coins are now slabbed, authenticated, and graded. Back in the 60s, I helped take several whizzed coins off the market by buying them and including them in my collection. I expect that I also helped remove a counterfeit or two. All I have to say about that is:
All in all, while I wish coin prices equaled what they were in the 1960s while our incomes equal what they currently are, I think it's a LOT more fun to be collecting nowadays than back then.
Mark
K S