Can I trust midwestcoin?

GoldCoinLover

Please help me if you can. This is my first gold coin purchase in quite awhile. I don't have much money, so I want this purchase to be a good one. Can I trust midwestcoin? The link to the launch is herehere. Its a 10 kroner

gxseries

I'm quite sure it looks fine to me, but do listen to other people's opinion too.

MadMuffin

With a feedback of 2500 and 100% happy customers I'd go for it if I were you. I have never personally done business with this dealer, though.

One advice from a collector in a part of the world were slabbing doesn't always rule: do look at the coin before you buy it. Request better pics if you need it - the ones in the auction are poor. I live in Denmark and I know that these gold coins are scarce in truly uncirculated grade. Yet on Ebay they are offered all the time and I hardly ever see one that is not uncirculated. I know that US grading is different from Scandinavian grading but if you have a particular interest in the grade this is something you ought to know.

On the major coin auctions in Copenhagen I often see slabbed Danish gold coins on offer. In general they are downgraded by one full grade in comparison to what the slab says. The tendency is that if they are MS66/67+ they are usually considered truly uncirculated by Scandinavian standards.

Good luck with the coin. It's nice to see some interest in Danish coins

Marcel

MadMarty

Hmmm Old Fattie NGC slab, Seller in the midwest, convinced all those buyers to leave positive feedback. I would steer clear! Besides that coin is mine!!! So stop looking at it!!!

ajaan

That badboy is also on my watch list.

weresteve

<< <i>Hmmm Old Fattie NGC slab, Seller in the midwest, convinced all those buyers to leave positive feedback. I would steer clear! Besides that coin is mine!!! So stop looking at it!!! >>



Hmm ... guess I could call up his shop and tell him to steer clear of you Marty ... been dealing with him for the past ten years and he definitely has a good eye for coins.

Danegeld

It looks good from here

wildjag

I dont understand why this question was even asked as I see nothing that raises any fears about trust with this seller

Danegeld

<< <i>I dont understand why this question was even asked as I see nothing that raises any fears about trust with this seller >>



You know it's from all those Willy Nillys who say "Don't buy gold unless you know what your doing, it's all fake..." or "Raw gold is always fake unless it's been graded by PCGS..." Yawn, there are reasons for this I THINK.

Be Your Own Best Friend
Ben


edited for sp

SYRACUSIAN

On the major coin auctions in Copenhagen I often see slabbed Danish gold coins on offer. In general they are downgraded by one full grade in comparison to what the slab says. The tendency is that if they are MS66/67+ they are usually considered truly uncirculated by Scandinavian standards.



So if a coin is an MS64/65 slab, will it be sold as an XF?(AU does not count as a grade in Scandinavia, right?) Most of all, will it be priced as an XF? That's really the extreme attitude of the antislab dealers who hate them for various reasons. I wonder if all these dealers are as strict when they grade their own raw coins for sale. If what you say is true about MS66/67 being the only ones considered as true unc, then there must be a severe lack of unc coins in Scandinavia and people must be content building collections in XF grades at best.Uncirculated coins don't have to be perfect, just as struck, remember that European dealers are still extremely hostile to slabs and will do anything to give them a bad name. I'm very tired of this old generation and the horror stories they make up for slabs. It's still a new thing, they hate it and think that it will go away. Unfortunately for them, it won't,the new generation embraces them, at least here in Greece.

MacCrimmon

<< <i>....If what you say is true about MS66/67 being the only ones considered as true unc, then there must be a severe lack of unc coins in Scandinavia..... >>



At least 'true uncs' are available for Swiss....

I cry for weeks if my submissions come back with less than MS66....

Cruzi

<< <i>So if a coin is an MS64/65 slab, will it be sold as an XF?(AU does not count as a grade in Scandinavia, right?) Most of all, will it be priced as an XF? >>



It really depends on the grading system they are using.

There was a time here that Unc was the highest grade a coin could get, it then went down from there.


As for slabs over here, the major auction houses actually look at the coins and offer their opinion on what grade it is, generally the revision is downwards, never upwards and sometimes they do agree.

Under our current system MS60 would equate to around gVF to EF. MS62 is gEF to aUnc, MS63 is Unc , MS64 is Choice unc and hardly any MS65 actually exist for Australian pre-decimals.

Don't forget, our EF is not the same as US XF, nor is our VF the same and so on.

MadMuffin

Dimitri, I know that most Americans and a growing number of collectors worldwide are beginning to accept slabbing. Personally I am not against slabbing of rare and valuable coins – although I might have given another impression in my reply to Goldcoinlover. I like the possibility of having the coins authenticated. The grading part, however, is another story.

As cruzi says the Scandinavian grading system differs from the American which in reality makes slabbed coins rather useless over here. We will have to disregard the holder completely and look at the coin itself in any case. That is, by the way, what I wanted to encourage Goldcoinlover to do. The seller of the gold coin he was looking at clearly expected to sell the coin by the holder, not by the coin itself, and I am against that as a principle. We collect coins, not pieces of plastic.

What worries me about the US grading system is that I have personally seen slabbed Danish gold coins, graded by major companies as MS 62, 63 and 64, that were not uncirculated. These coins had rubbing marks on the high points such as the king’s eyebrow and moustache or the very top of his head. Some of these marks were visible even to the naked eye.

I hope that we can all agree that an uncirculated coin must be as struck, that is: with no damage or wear whatsoever. Personally I always add to that: original lustre or toning as well as no major spots, fingerprints or dirt. Gold is a soft metal, and if you slide a gold coin across a table or counter just once it will be visible on the highest points of the coin. If a gold coin is kept in a wallet and rattles with other coins for a while, it will also damage it enough to keep it from being UNC. According to the Scandinavian way of grading. Too many bagmarks will make a coin AU.

The grading companies apparently believe that Danish gold coins were not fully struck or that they were sometimes struck with “flat” details on the highest points. How else could they grade the coins uncirculated? The problem is that at least 95% percent of the Danish gold coins were struck to a very high standard with full sharpness in the strike. No flat parts.

And that is the reason why slabbed gold coins are often downgraded in Danish auctions or by coin dealers: these people don’t care about the slab. They look at the coin. And yes, this will create what you call “a severe lack of uncirculated coins”. But you know, the number of uncirculated coins is kind of hard to change (unless you send them to the US to have them graded, of course…) and that is just fine with me. I was brougt up to grade coins conservatively and among my collecting friends I do have a reputation of grading strictly (including the coins that I sell). I consider that better than grading optimistically.

On the other hand I have also seen Danish gold coins graded as “low” as MS62 that were in fact uncirculated (but MS61 and MS60 always look like AU to me). This is a little puzzling to me and it doesn’t exactly strengthen my trust in grading companies.

I hope this explains my ongoing “look at the coin you’re buying for God’s sake!”-campaign

Marcel

SYRACUSIAN

Marcel,

thank you for your extensive reply,and please accept my apologies for the harsh tone of my previous post that had nothing to do with you or your opinion on the matter of course,it was just a bad day for me and unfortunately these moods of mine always reflect on my posts here, that's why I consider this place psychotherapeutic.

Regarding slabs, I tend to be slightly defensive because it has always been an easy target here, in the forum of purists, although more and more members ,and among the most knowledgeable ones, accept the fact that they have become a necessity even if only for resale purposes. What many people refuse to accept though, is that slabs ,in most cases will protect them from buying cleaned or grossly overgraded coins, and I'm sorry to say this, but I see them all too often presented here, I just don't post my opinion, because I don't want to spoil the atmosphere,or the joy of the new owner. If some hard core (on the subject of slabs) members ,had to send their raw coins for grading, they would be very surprised at the number of bodybags they will end up with, for all kinds of reasons,improper cleaning all too often, harsh or not , altered surfaces ,counterfeit and the list goes on. They choose to ignore it and continue this hit and run method as a friend calls it, that is buying raw examples from dealers or ebay ,usually at bargain prices, with 50-50 chances of getting a good deal on a good coin, or a good deal on a very bad coin. The bad coin very often goes undetected and ends up in the collection as another good purchase. To each his own and this is strictly my personal opinion of course.

I'm by no means an expert on Scandinavian gold coins, although I've owned a few and find them very pretty. I also understand that people tend to be more or less conservative when determining what a unc is. Especially since gold, unlike any other metal, tends to keep some of its luster even at F-VF grades ,gold coins are not easy to micrograde. Personally I seem to have no problem with some defects that for others are unacceptable. Non distracting scratches, especially those made at the mint or in the mint bags for instance, don't bother me at all, nor am I a big fan of perfect strikes, but I can't stand rim nicks,haze,spots, discolorations,and I'm very demanding in terms of luster, colour, toning and general eye appeal. That, as far as unc coins are concerned. For the other grades, I tend to agree with Cruzi, that an AU55 for ex. can often be a VF, I've learned this the hard way unfortunately, when I bought (sight unseen) an expensive PCGS AU53 Cretan coin from a Stack's auction, back in 2000,only to discover that it was a (very common) anattractive VF, and this is an indication why I answered that I price AU coins as EF or gEF at best in your other thread. Yes, slabs are not perfect, big deceptions can be had there too, so Marcel and everybody else is right, look at the coin first, or buy the coin not the holder, only sometimes we don't have the chance to see a photo, or the coin in hand and we have to take an important decision sight unseen. My 1833 MS63 20 drs gold was bought like this from Teletrade, a great coin that still hasn't shown up in the market since,in any true unc grade. A similar case is my recent purchase of a 1833A MS63 5 drs, that I'm still expecting. How did I take these decisions? Because I trust the MS63 grade. Generally, I have abandonned lower grades, my collection now only consists of unc coins,and this is where I tend to try to specialize, and make an effort to determine what each MS grade really represents,not out of snobbism, it's just that I only like unc coins, and it took me quite some time to discover this.Perhaps some numismatic immaturity is hidden here, I don't know. I simply don't go after coins that are unavailable in unc, I really don't see the point of spending thousands on an ugly coin ,no matter how ultra rare it is,and this has totally liberated me and helped me change the course of my collection.

Sorry for the rant, sometimes we feel the need to clarify a few things and I hope I haven't offended anyone, nor did I intend to hijack GCL's thread. I hope you found it amusing.

Cruzi

Apologies to GCL for continuing on the hijack.

Whilst I understand the need for TPG's and gawd knows the Australian Coin market on Ebay really needs something along the lines of the US system, IMHO slabs are simply a substitute for knowledge, and the seeking and acquiring of of knowledge is what this hobby is all about for me.

Danegeld

<< <i>Apologies to GCL for continuing on the hijack.

Whilst I understand the need for TPG's and gawd knows the Australian Coin market on Ebay really needs something along the lines of the US system, IMHO slabs are simply a substitute for knowledge, and the seeking and acquiring of of knowledge is what this hobby is all about for me. >>