Collectors Universe slab?

Zoins

What does it mean when a coin is in a PCGS slab but the label is Collectors Universe and there's no grade or serial number? I saw this in the ebay auction below:

1993 WTC ASE

robertpr

You can get more information on these by searching the forum for "death slab".

They were supposedly recovered from the ground zero site and encapsulated by PCGS/CU in bulk as part of a marketing deal. There has been a lot of controversy over these as they basically were profiting off of the 9/11 event.

Tootawl

This is a special slab that Collectors Universe used to slab coins from the World Trade Center.

Conder101

The first WTC/death coins were not slabbed by PCGS but rather by their parent company Collectors Universe. They can be recognized by the CU logo on the back rather than the PCGS Logo and the fact they are not graded. All of the CU slabs are Gem Uncirculated, while the ones that PCGS did later do have MS grades, mostly 68 and 69. CU slabbed anything recovered from the WTC vault (including small bars). When PCGS started doing their own WTC coins a few months later they only slabbed 2001 dated material. Then about a year later PCGS started slabbing other dated items as well, and producing "limited editions" labeled 1 of 400, 1 of 1440, 1 of whatever. The problem there was EVERY coin in the limited edition was "1 of" and scammer then sold them on eBay as low number items "The number 1 coin of just 1400!" And when an edition would sell out the submitter would just send in another batch for another "limited edition".

CU has also produced a couple other slabs as well such as gold dust from the SS Central America and some CA fractional gold. They have not produced anything that I have cataloged as production slabs, just Novelty slabs.