Question about slabs in general

Striker

When did slabs first come about? If I remember correct in was the mid 80s but I'm not positive. I was a freshman in highschool (in mid 80s) the first time I remember hearing about them but was wondering if they had been around before that and I just hadn't come across them yet. When they did first come out how were they perceived and accepted by collectors?

Catch22

I'm not sure of the exact year, but early to mid 80's is about right. I remember that the hype was that Wall Street would jump in since the hobby had an impartial and unbiased grading service that would allow for sight unseen trading in coins. I believe Hagar was the first to offer slabs, soon followed by PCGS. ANACS had been offering photo certification of coins for several years prior to that.

I wasn't very active in the hobby back then and only remember discussions with a few dealers and hobbyists with regard to slabs. Like most new things, it took a while to catch on. I remember several discussions along the lines of "I can grade coins myself."

One other thing I recall is that for several years after, most coins were still being offered as BU, Ch. BU and Gem BU.

291fifth

The first graded slabs were from the 1970's and were used for the Redfield dollars. The grading was a joke.

roadrunner

A search of the Forum History with key words "slabs" or "slab history" would likely bring up all the details you seek.

PCGS's slab in 1986 was the first really fully-accepted slab. NGC followed a year or so later. ANA had been doing paper certs for a number of years before this started. ACG was peddling their swill
years before PCGS, I think even in the later 1970's though it had no influence on anything. Didn't Hager start this as a way to market Ike
Dollars? But slabs that had a strong influence on the coin business began in the first half of 1986.

roadrunner

wingedliberty

Can the GSA dollars be considered the first slabs, even though they were not graded? They were attributed!, so I say the GSA program, then subsequently ACG, NCI, ICCS, etc.

Conder101

The question has several answers depending on how you define what is and is not a slab. Let's start by assuming it has to be a sealed hard plastic holder with the coin in the holder graded in some fashion. Then we seperate the "contenders" into two classes, those that only slabbed their own material and those that accepted outside submissions.

In the first catagory you have the GSA and the Paramount Redfield coins. Of these the GSA's came first in August 1972 followed by the Paramount holders in early 1976.

For the second catagory, holders issued by companies that accepted submissions for grading and encapsulation, the long standing record holder has been Accugrade which began using photoslabs in June of 1984. Alan Hagar held the patent on the slabbing concept and for several years licensed his patents to several other services. ACG's claim to being the first may be about to be overturned though. I recently caime across another firm SAGSE (South African Gold & Silver Exchange) that may have been producing graded slabbed pieces as early as 1975. (Research still underway, I know they were in operation before that date but using a non-ridged holder. I believe that was when they changed over but I don't have proof yet.). PCGS was the second US firm to start using slabs in Feb 1986 just barely beating out PCI (Photo-certified Coin Intitute).