Who here collected, bought, or sold coins prior to the advent of the 3rd Party Grading Services?

Nic

The "old" thread reminded me to ask this ?

Log in please ....

K

STONE

I'm sure there's a lot of forumites who have.

As for myself, TPG's have been around longer than I've been alive!!!

19Lyds

I collected and bought in 1971.

Never sold though.

Bossman88

I collected, bought, and sold in 1961
at the ripe old age of 12.

Regards, Larry

Elcontador

Buying coins was okay as long as you bought from other collectors, auctions or bid boards and you knew what you were doing. A few dealers were all right, but most of them screwed you. Ie, their BU coin you bought from them became an Unc. if / when you wanted to sell it back to said dealer.

Your best selling venues were also other collectors, auctions and bid boards.

coinkat

I was a collector well before TPG- I still maintain TPG has been for the better even though it remains a work in progress

coinmanic

As a kid, I used to go to the bank after bowling on Saturday and ask the teller if they had any Silver Franklins. More often than not they did and I bought one.

AUandAG

Yep, I'll confess to collecting back in the 50's. A bit before TPG's.

Grading was by letters and not by numbers. VF, XF, AU, Gem Unc, etc.

bob

Bear

In the bad old days we faced the following difficulties.

Every dealer seemed to have their own defination of

what a grade meant.

BU..............................XF-45, - MS-60

Select BU....................AU-58,- MS-62

Choice BU...................AU-58,-MS-63

select CH BU...............AU-58- ms-64

Gem BU.......................MS-62/MS-65

Select Gem BU ...........MS-63/MS-67 and up


As you can see, there were enormous differences in what the actual grade was.

If you bought a coin that you thought was MS-67 and in todays market it is only

MS-63, then you would have waited 20 years to suffer a loss in value. In those days,

very few of us ever saw really top of the line coins, so it was difficult for us to know the

difference between AU-58, MS63, MS65 and MS67. TPG were a Godsend to the average

collector.

roadrunner

I did a lot of buying at major auctions during 1975-1977 and 1982-1986 time frame when it was standard practice to overgrade everything. NYCity and Boston were close enough that I made frequent trips to the auctions or had someone go to bid for me. Unless you occasionally tried to sell things, you really had no clue as to how you were doing. Thinking you are doing ok and knowing it are two different things.

A number of major dealers were using a 7 pt system (60, 60+, 63, 63+, 65, 65+, 65++ or 65/70) as early as the mid 1970's. It was one of the reasons I had so much trouble winning gem coins at auction when I was grading them gem 65 and others were grading them 65+ or 65++. By the early 1980's grades of 60++, 67, 67+, 67++ were being used along with an ABC strike, eye appeal, and marks designation. That was very close to the 10 pt system that was used starting in 1986 when numerical grades of 61, 62, 64, 68, 69 came into vogue. But in essence, they had been there all along for a decade of more.

roadrunner

21Walker

Yep, I did late 50's on.......Rick

dizzyfoxx

Not me, I was still in high school and it was long before I collected coins.

mdwoods

I collected coins from circulation and bank rolls in the early to mid 60s. Got back into it in the late 90s.

ColonialCoinUnion

I did.

Sam123

They were not around 60 years ago. I know that for sure.

yellowkid

<< <i>Yep, I'll confess to collecting back in the 50's. A bit before TPG's.

Grading was by letters and not by numbers. VF, XF, AU, Gem Unc, etc.

bob >>




Me too!

CarlWohlforth

Me. But I had nothing valuable except for a present given to me by a friend of my grandparents. A beautiful, RB UNC, 1856 half cent. Wish I still had that one!

JCMhouston

I started collecting in the 70's, I'm with Bear on this one, TPG's have been a godsend for collectors. No, they don't always get it right. But they get it right a lot more than the dealers of the time. I actually used to buy quite a bit through QDB back int he day, mostly Capped Bust Halves in XF or so. Bowersand the successor companies were one of the few dealers I felt you could buy from based on their description. When ANACS first got started I submitted a lot of my CBH's and sure enough, the Bowers coins all made the grade or better.

kranky

Technically I did collect, but I wasn't in a position to buy valuable raw coins.

GrumpyEd

I was a wheatie maniac before TPGs.
Filled a circ set except for the 3 keys and those were all nice brown circ coins.

At one point I bought some red & RB 20s-30s wheats from shops and on bid boards. Later I could see that about half were recolored but I did get about 20 of the better ones slabbed and most graded well.

Still have a roll of circ barber dimes I picked up at melt as junk silver. They look pretty frugly, probably not worth much over melt today.

MidLifeCrisis

I started collecting in about 1977.

Bear

Actually I started collecting

in 1667. Things were

different then.

droopyd

Been collecting since the early 60s about the time I started preschool. First bought anything at age 10 (a set of brand new 1968 PDS cents), first sold at age 12 (on a coin shop bid board).

bidask

tradedollarnut

When I was a senior in high school, I made $1500 one day at a local coin show just buying and selling items from dealers' wares. That was 1980.

littlebear

I started serious collecting after getting out of college in the early 70's, but have been collecting since the early 60's. It was a different world in the coin business, and one had to be very careful. Of course, the learning aspect became particularly acute when you got burned a couple times, as everything was raw. Thankfully, coins were relatively cheap (at least what I collected). The TPG services are not perfect, but none of us are. They perform a very valuable service. It would be a real zoo out there without them.

Larry L.

291fifth

I did.

Just as today, the great majority of collectors couldn't grade and the great majority of dealers could overgrade.

PerryHall

I've been collecting since the late 50's. I remember getting mercs, buffs, slq's, walkers, Franklins, Morgans, Peace dollars, etc frequently in change.

TennesseeDave

I started collecting at the age of 10.That was in 1974.I never really sold any coins till the TPG's had started.I remember the 1st slabbed coin I ever got.It was an 1879-S Morgan in MS-63(Pcgs rattler)I do not still have it.

DieClash

I was totally turned off by the concept of TPG and how the investors drove the prices into orbit during the 1980s bull coin market. Having collected all my coins raw, either from change, a coin show or by mail order up to that point. When TPGs arrived on the scene along with the investors and speculators, the average guy couldn't afford a decent coin. Fastforward to today, I just bought my first slabbed coins off eBay this very month. I still prefer the raw coins 'cause they don't carry the extra TPG cost. But collecting nowadays with all the Chinese counterfeits to be wary of, there certainly is some value in the TPG premium.

OchoReales

Me!

MrHalfDime

I collected, bought and sold coins long before the advent of TPG's, and I still collect ..... in spite of them.

WinPitcher

I did.


Steve

Cameonut

I started in the early sixties. Back in the days you had silver coins and could find an Indian cent once in a while.

JRocco

Collecting since the late 60's.
Not a seller.

Bear

Back in the early to mid 50s, I had no trouble finding

Lib Standing Quarters, T-1 and T-2 in F/VF condition.

Of course they were the more common dates and tended

to be 1917 T-1 and 1929,29-s, 30,30-s as well as 1925.


Standing Liberty halves in VF/XF mostly the P Mint as I

was on the East coast at the time. I would find Barber Halves

and quarters several times a month in VG/F condition.

The Barber dimes, for some reason not so often, perhaps every

4-6 months. Indian hread pennies tended to sho up in VG/F condition

every other month. Silver dollars of course could be found in abundance

at any bank.


I would find buffalo nickels every week, but mostly 1936,37,38, 38-D, 38-S

In vg/vf condition. V nickels showed up about once every 4 months in g/f.

Seated Liberty coinage , if one were lucky might show up every year or 2

,mostly a dime in fair/G condition. It was enough to keep me as happy as

a cow in clover.

ElKevvo

I've been collecting since the early 70's...

K

Bayard1908

I started collecting in about 1971 and stopped in about 1982. I restarted a few years ago. I would not have returned to the hobby without third party grading.

timber100

I have, but whats the point? I did not trust my grading when I was a kid and I still dont.

mrearlygold

Yup, sure did. Long before.

Set up my first table at a small Red Bank NJ show in 1979. I was heavily into lincolns of all things. Imagine that.

BlindedByEgo

Me. 48 years old, which is ancient, according to my daughters

PQType

I started in the late very 50's a friend of my dads was a coin dealer in town.

GRANDAM

I have purchase coins since 1965 when I was 7 yrs old. My grandfather would help me order.

However I never spent any big money until PCGS came along

GrandAm

jdillane

I would get bank rolls of lincolns in the 60's, around 67 I started saving silver coins that I got as change. In the mid 70's I'd by low end stuff at coin stores. TPGs came on the scene after I went on an extended hiatus.

barbershopper

My God!! I beat the advent of the Red Book with its 7 grades.
Started in 1943 at age 7 after my philatelist big brother suggested I try to get one of every date of Lincoln cents.
Within a year, I was adding MMs. Good thing too; I found a '14-D in 3 cents change!

Cheers. JT

dorkkarl

i did, it was WAY WAY WAY MORE FUN + affordable back then

believe me, people who have only ever known pla$tic have no idea what they missed out on.

K S

UtahCoin

I started in 1962....

BillyKingsley

I didn't but I wish I had. I was born in 1984, so I "beat" the TPGs by a couple years, but I didn't start collecting until last year.

I have a feeling I will look upun on that as one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It's not there yet (we don't need to go into what is! Nothing illegal ) but it could be.

I wish I had been around to take part in the hobby at that time.

tydye

Been collecting since the late 70s. Never owned a slab until I joined PCGS about 2000 when I started submitting my own items. Now I have about 250 slabs most of which I submitted myself

MikeInFL

I started collecting from pocket change in 1977ish, purchased my first coin in 1982, purchased my first slabbed coin in 2004, sold my first coin in 2006, and submitted my first coin to a TPG in 2008.

FWIW, while there are certainly shortcomings in todays TPG system, the hobby is a better place because of them...Mike

Cocoinut

I started collecting from pocket change in 1955, but there was no dealer close by until 1965. Fortunately, they had an extensive stock of BU rolls going back to 1934, so I learned to distinguish good coins from not-so-good by searching through rolls. It was a "you pays your money and you takes your pick" situation, with grades within the rolls running the gamut from MS60 through MS67. If an opened roll contained only a few coins, I knew that the good ones were likely gone, and would wait a few weeks or months until a fresh roll was available. Those were the good old days. Imagine going through an original roll of Walkers today and cherrypicking the gems! I've kept some of their price lists; BU rolls of common date Walkers sold for $70 in 1967.

In the 1970's, I was interested in buying Standing Liberty quarters, would go to shows, and leave without finding any that I thought were properly graded. The advent of the TPG's changed things for the better. Many of the coins that had previously been sold as MS65 were now in MS63 or MS64 (or even AU) holders, at a lower price than before.

Jim