How do you organize your slabs?
oreville
Posts: 12,201 ✭✭✭✭✭
I have organized my slabs by denomination date/mm and grade.....then by slab type whether PCGS or NGC.
PCGS Regency slabs were the exception.
Perhaps I should revise my approach?
A Collectors Universe poster since 1997!
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I have mine randomly in PCGS boxes in the SDB. I only have about 70 slabs so easy enough to find what I want anyway.
Crammed into an SDB. They’re loosely organized by a system that makes sense, a little, sometimes.
Like @TurtleCat, not enough to worry about.
By type then by date for my date sets. By date and denominations for doubled dies other that Buffs. And then I have a category of "45 favorites" also by date and denomination. All are kept in nine subject display trays, as such-
Some series, such as my Buffalo nickel date set, 27 coins, will take up more than one tray, in which case they are arranged in three volumes (trays) of nine coins each.
US federal by denomination and then by type. Various groupings for colonials; e.g. state coins by variety. Foreign that may have circulated in the us by country and type. All in archival (supposedly) boxes. The usual.
Have organized by category - Samples, Luncheon, White Rattlers, Swedish Monarchs, actual rare coins, Compugrade by date, etc.
Chronological order.
I have a box for my main set. A box for the set dupes. A box for like kind modern cheap stuff. A box for the foreign slabs. And everything else is across boxes sorted by denomination/date/MM/Grade.
Mine are in the SDB in intercept boxes in the order that I created images of them. Back in November I brought all my slabbed coins home and either took pictures with my iPhone or located a suitable image (such as a Trueview or an old image that I stored on a couple of old thumb drives, even a few auction images I thought were good enough to use). Some of the coins I hadn’t seen in over 10 years. I ordered a bunch of new intercept shield boxes and once I created an image of a coin I put it in one of the new intercept shield boxes and when each box was filled I took that box back to the bank. I didn’t organize them before taking pictures so they aren’t organized in the slab boxes.
Instead of organizing the slabs, I organized the images. They are all standardized into the same size and are just the round coin on a white background. I have all the images on my iPhone perfectly sorted by denomination oldest to newest in each denomination and with all the gold coins at the end, followed by so called dollars and similar things in order by date. I’m in the process of also creating side by side obverse reverse images with the grade in the middle out of the images I created.
Here’s just a few so you can see what I mean
Mr_Spud
In double-row red Intercept boxes and PCGS boxes. Those that are organized, US is organized in Red Book order but this may be overridden by VAM number, and world is sort of by country then period for which organizing further by type and date makes sense. Those that are not organized are in PCGS boxes, most likely ordered by when I got them. Raw coins are similarly organized, and in 2x2s in a double row box unless they're in albums.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
In random stacks on my desk.
I have a handful in my home safe, just some that are new purchases that I have not moved to the SDB or a few very inexpensive oddball slabs. The rest are crammed into a few SDB boxes in no real order, makes it a real PITA to find a specific one. I guess I should try and organize the boxs someday.
Edited to add - My collection is mostly viewed via the digital photos that either great photographers like Mark have taken for me and the photos that I take myself.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Just a blue box with holders in it
How do you organize your slabs?
Well, according to the coins inside them, of course: Ascending order by denomination and date, then, as applicable, mintmark, die variety, die state, grade, and date of acquisition.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
I have my 7070 Type Set housed in Lighthouse Coin trays that are placed into a Pelican Storage Case.
BST transactions: dbldie55, jayPem, 78saen, UltraHighRelief, nibanny, liefgold, FallGuy, lkeigwin, mbogoman, Sandman70gt, keets, joeykoins, ianrussell (@GC), EagleEye, ThePennyLady, GRANDAM, Ilikecolor, Gluggo, okiedude, Voyageur, LJenkins11, fastfreddie, ms70, pursuitofliberty, ZoidMeister,Coin Finder, GotTheBug, edwardjulio, Coinnmore, Nickpatton, Namvet69,...
In stacks by my computer, in stacks in the safe, in drawers of my coin cabinets, in PCGS green boxes and in some cartons still sealed from my last move. Cheers, RickO
I keep all of my graded coins in Intercept boxes. I like the protection they offer, plus the variety of available sizes from a 10 slab box to a 50 slab box.
In the old days, I used to line them up by denomination, date and mint mark in NGC boxes. Since the PCGS slab became too thick to fit in the NGC slab boxes, except catty cornered, I now separate the PCGS and NGC slabs. You can't put NGC slabs in PCGS and get the lid to fit on it.
PCGs storage box - PCGS and ICG
NGCstorage box - NGC and Anacs (newer, larger size Anacs slabs).
Want one universal storage box accommodate all 4. The old TTR storage box did this.
So organize by TPG / country, denom, date, mm.
I have a box of 20.
I have 10 other boxes of 20 too.
They're sorted by TPG, by denom, by mint, by date.
"It's like God, Family, Country, except Sticker, Plastic, Coin."
Organizing my slabs is easy as there is only one type, PCGS.
The coins are for the most part in the same order as they appear in the Red Book.
Donato
Donato's Complete US Type Set ---- Donato's Dansco 7070 Modified Type Set ---- Donato's Basic U.S. Coin Design Set
Successful transactions: Shrub68 (Jim), MWallace (Mike)
TPG, denomination, date, mm.
I don’t have any slabbed duplicates and I’ve outgrown my PCGS and NGC boxes (barely) so I have a few stragglers that live in the drawer outside the boxes.