jaggy

Just for info .... I have a lot of Glendinings catalogues from the 1980s and 1990s at home as well a a few others such as Downie Lepzic (spelling?) should that be of any help in the future.

I wonder if nonacceptance in the US is a concern they are trying to rectify. I suspect the average yank with treat a CGS slab as raw and cross it the moment they get it. Sorry ... double post

I wonder if nonacceptance in the US is a concern they are trying to rectify. I suspect the average yank with treat a CGS slab as raw and cross it the moment they get it. Slabbing is all about the market and the US market is a very big one.

That comparative table was very helpful. However, and no matter what the grading system in use, one still has to see the coin and make up one's own mind.

To put into perspective ....... I started my first job in 1970 and it paid less than £6 a week .... and I thought I was rolling in money. In 1970, a pint cost 1/11d In 1973, my week's rent was £4.

One of the reasons I choose to avoid Ebay.

Sadly that is not the case at all. Forgeries already exist in forged slabs, it will not be too long before the forgeries become better and then your online protection is not worth the stamp it will cost to post it. The rest of your post I have no argument with at all. If we all liked the same things, in the same presentation, the world would be a dull and very expensive place. Unfortunately, you get forgeries in every collecting market whether it be antiques or art. There will be forgeries whether they are in slabs or not. But that, in itself, does not invalidate the practice of authentication.

I really don't understand where the problem is. Just because a coin is 'graded' does not prevent the collector from making up his/her own mind. When I bid on Heritage lots I look at the coin not the grade the TPG has given it. And just because a coin arrives 'slabbed' does not prevent anyone from breaking the slab and storing the coin as they see fit. Of course, from the buyer's point of view, finding that rarity and paying a fraction of its value is always attractive. However, from the seller's point of view, that might be somewhat less attractive. People collect coins for different reasons and enjoy them in different ways. Grading and slabbing is not about collecting. It is about protecting buyers and sellers in a global, online, market.

Yes, but neither an artwork nor an antique is housed in a plastic slab, which was my point. And your point is well taken. But art work tends not to be minted in the thousands or hundreds of thousands and it is, therefore, much harder to substitute an inferior example for the one you think you bought.

Art work is usually/often sold with a certificate of authenticity and is signed (and in the case of prints, numbered) by the artist. Antiques are often 'authenticated' especially if they go to auction. It is essentially the same principal as TPGs for coins.

I can see the point here regarding the protection for the novice with their investment but what happens when these 'investors' or novices after say a decade of study start to realise that the 'guarantee' given on the slab maybe wrong for whatever reason? What I'm saying is that in my opinion the judgement given by these slab graders are not always correct, and a very small 'mistake' could make a huge difference to an investment. Buy nice coins, not this plastic crap!! and most important buy things with knowledge without relying on other 'experts' Agree with this. I have been bidding in Heritage auctions recently where all the coins are slabbed. Fortunately, their photos are good enough that I can make up my own mind based on the coin and not the grade. But that is me and I have been collecting for long enough to be fairly confident in my assessment. I got my first slabs a couple of weeks ago. I thought I would hate them and want to break them immediately. But, to be honest, they really are not that bad.

The reason why there is third party grading is to inject confidence into a market where not everyone is necessarily a collector or an expert in their area of interest. A higher level of confidence makes a market more attractive for investors. It is not the 'slab' that matters here but the grade given by a 'trusted third party' (yes, that is a technical term). What the slab does is to give confidence that the coin is the one that has been graded and not some inferior substitute. Any investor knows that you can lose money as well as make money on your investments. But for people who want to balance their portfolio across a range of investments and not just the traditional stocks & bonds the existence of TPGs is a plus. Because, in the US market, many dealers will buy coins on the basis of the grade given by the TPG that also injects a degree of liquidity into that market which, in turn, increases its attractiveness to investors.

So, to summarise ..... just because that 1839 proof says 1839 does not mean it was actually minted in 1839?

Interesting. I just bought an 1839 proof sixpence in the London Auction: Sixpence 1839 Plain Edge Proof NGC PF64 I will have to look closely at it when it arrives.

At the risk of sounding stupid how does a coin end up with a reverse which wasnt used for another five years If you think that is strange, check out this proof sixpence. The reverse is dated 1839 but the obverse is the third young head circa 1880. Rarity R5 in ESC (No. 1738). Yep, I saw that. I would love to bid on it but would probably have to take out a second mortgage to actually win it.

I gave this some thought. I could probably select 10 or 20 coins which are my favourites but it would be impossible to select just one. I don't have a single preferred coin.

There are three factors I look at: What the coin is worth (CCGB and usually at least one other source) What the costs of acquiring it are (buyers premium, postage, etc.) How badly I want the coin and how much over the odds I am willing to pay to get it (call it 'goodwill') Based on that I work out the maximum I am willing to bid or pay. Sometimes I will bid on a coin which I don't especially want but because it looks very cheap. I always tell myself that I can then sell it for a profit. But, to date, I have never sold a coin. I just enjoy having them.

I just factor it in to what I am willing to pay for a coin.

Actually they do come up quite often, usually in high grade as do a lot of these late colonials (1902 and 1913 1/3 farthings being cases in point). Seems most were just put aside as curiosities and hence the survival rate is high. Spink in my opinion seriously overvalues them at £80 (EF) and £185 (Unc.). That's the bad news though, yours looks at least EF and seems to be nicely toned, so imho a nice thing to have even if it's not worth a fortune. Yep, I looked at some auction results and they do appear quite frequently. Still, it is a nice little coin. The photo doesn't really show it but the fields are really quite shiny. So much so that, at first, I thought it might be a proof. Not bothered about the value because it didn't cost me anything and I don't plan on selling it.

When I made my first auction purchase through Heritage they sent me a book 'The Collectors Handbook'. This is what is says about Third Party Authentication and Grading: "NGC and PCGS remain the acknowledged leaders for coin grading. The reason for their success is that they are the only firms that have maintained sufficient dealer confidence to allow coins to be traded routinely on a sight-unseen basis" I think this is quite telling. Now that we are in the internet and eBay era, we have a market that is largely unregulated with very easy access for disreputable sellers. The purpose of TPG-ing is to inject confidence into that market. As a coin collector I have not been back in the market long enough to get burned. But I am sure that if I dropped a few hundred pounds on a coin that was not what I was led to expect then I might take a different view of grading.

So ... here is the story. A few years ago my mother, knowing that I was interested in coins, gave me an old brown envelope with a few of them in there. I looked at the contents ... mainly some silver threepence, a couple of GVI sixpences, etc. and didn't pay too much attention to it. As I have said in a couple of other posts, I have come back to my coin collection after around 15 years. So yesterday I was looking through all my 'odd' coins and came across the old brown envelope. And I saw this coin and said to myself "is that a proof threepence". But, on closer inspection, it turned out to be the four pence. So I grabbed my ESC and my copy of CCGB and, lo and behold, I have a fairly unusual coin given that they were destined for British Guiana. And I have no idea where my mother got it from. Maybe out of a Christmas pudding.

Jaggy, if you are based in the UK - can you tell me how long did it take for the coins to arrive, how much was the postage and taxes (if any, %). I'd like to bid in Heritage auctions and I do wonder what would be the total cost (apart from BP). Hope you don't mind me asking. Thanks. M. Mike I am based in the USA (although British) so cannot really help you there. Postage within the USA was $6.80 and no U.S. tax. One nice thing is that I was able to pay by credit card with no extra fee (London Coins charge 3%).

Well, today, I received my first ever slabbed coins (from a Heritage auction). And I have to admit I can see the attraction of having the coins in their slabs. Not just from a commercial perspective (which really doesn't interest me that much) but in terms of the 'presentation box'. So, I think I am going to leave them in the slab for now and, perhaps, research ways of displaying the 'slabs' alongside my raw coins. Also, and in fairness to Heritage and to NGC, the Heritage photos really showed all the warts on these coins. They actually look better than I expected and the grading looks fair. Based on that, I am beginning to think I got a decent deal; essentially, two fro the price of one.

I am currently bidding on some coins in the Heritage auction which, of course, are all graded and slabbed. However, and thanks to the excellent photography on their site, I am able to bid on what I think the coin is worth and not what they say the grade is. In my opinion, the grading is generally higher than the grade I would give them, While I do tend to err on the side of caution, I would be worried about grade inflation under pressure from customers. I don't know where CGS sites in terms of generous grades or conservative grades as I have not seen any of their slabs. That should change shortly as I bought a CGS graded coin at the London auction and just waiting for it to arrive. However, I would be concerned if they found themselves trying to compete with US graders.

My father had a very good stamp collection. Unfortunately, he died when I was 9 so I was never able to share his hobby. Perhaps one reason for his collection was that my grandfather spent a lifetime working for the Post Office - only interrupted by 4 years service in WW1 (Royal Garrison Artlllery) - and ending up with an Imperial Service Medal when he retired. After his death we were forced to sell it as money was tight. History was always my passion and coins dovetail into that very nicely. Stamps can illustrate modern history too and their ability to do it pictorially gives them an advantage. But anything prior to Rowland Hill doesn't work for stamps so you need another medium. As a child, 6d got you into the ABC Minors and another 6d got you sweets for the weekend. 6d also got you in and out of town (Glasgow) on the subway - 3d each way. So sixpence was always a meaningful coin for me ... at least until 1971. Do children have meaningful coins today? One thing I have learned over the years is that you can never predict where the markets is going. And so it is with stamps and coins (or antiques or art or vinyl, etc. etc.). Stamps might be in the doldrums at the moment but that does not mean that they will be there in 5 or 10 years time. So long as there are collectors then there will be a market. What has really changed in the past 15 years is the internationalisation of the collecting market thanks to the internet. There is good and bad to that. On the one hand it gives people a cheap entry point and access to a bigger stock of collectible coins than ever before. On the other hand, it gives charlatans an opportunity to rip-off the inexperienced through markets like Ebay. My own view is that quality always has a market and that will be true in any collecting field. So I don't think it is all doom and gloom but - thanks to the internet - there is much more 'clutter' than before and collectors will need to learn to work through that ... which they will over time. Oh ... I also have a small collection of 45s and a turntable if anyone wants to do a 60s & 70s night.