April 16, 2006: Top 10 things we would change about coin slabbing
In no particular order:
- All slabbed coins would be photographed by the services and would thus be traceable, and it would therefore be impossible to crack out and resubmit a coin and receive a higher grade than the one originally conferred.
- Numerical grades would be replaced by the old reliable adjectival grades.
- A dipped or cleaned coin would be either body-bagged, or graded lower by the services than would the same piece in its original state. This really doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?
- With the new fancy photography system in place (see #1), the pop reports would be kept totally up-to-date and accurate and would not be corrupted by multiple resubmissions of the same coins.
- It would be impossible for a coin to tilt in a holder like a frisbee in mid-air.
- It wouldn’t take so interminably long to get our coins back.
- We’d never again receive a coin either backward or upside down in a holder. As an ironic aside, we have had our requests to holder specific coins backward (such as an 1848 CAL Quarter Eagle) denied by the services, but have received literally dozens holdered backward by mistake.
- We see no way this could ever happen, but the set registry concept would not merely rank coins by numerical grade, but by overall desirability, eye-appeal, strike, centering, color, etc., etc.
- The edge of every coin would be visible in every coin holder.
- Any coin net graded for some reason would have that reason noted by the services so that we are not left scratching our heads trying to figure out what the heck they saw that we didn’t.
We could come up with another 43 more, but 10 seems a good number.
JA
