Fans of coins encased in plastic with special labels who also are baseball fans must be ecstatic that Fans of coins encased in plastic with special labels who also are baseball fans must be ecstatic that Numismatic Guarantee Corporation and Major League Baseball agreed to an exclusive deal that will allow NGC to reproduce team names, logos, and stadiums on labels used in NGC slabs.
NGC announced that they will “encapsulate the National Baseball Hall of Fame commemoratives and other legal tender coins with attractive certification labels that feature a range of popular MLB trademarks.” Aside from the Major League Baseball logo, the logos of the 30 clubs, and stadium images, it will also include logos of All-Star Game and those used for post season.
NGC says this is gives their customers “an exciting new opportunity to combine their passions for the sport and the hobby.” What it gives is NGC a new area for marketing and to extract money from the market.
I understand that NGC is a business and has owners that are concerned about the business generating revenues. But what this will do is increase their revenues at the risk of some of the protections they claim is good for the hobby by encouraging cracking slabs, thus making the population reports even less reliable than they are today.
Let’s consider that I am one of those odd people that happens to collect the coin but it happens to be in a slab to ensure that it is genuine and the grade is something agreeable. This is a really nice coin and it fits in with my collection. But the coin happens to be in a slab with the logo of the New York Yankees. I hate the Yankees. I despise the Yankees. I have hated the Yankees ever since my father, the Brooklyn Dodgers fan, taught me to say “Let’s Go Mets!”
Unlike the fans of plastic, I really consider the coin encased in the slab. It is possible that I may like a coin even with the consequence that the label inside that slab has a decoration I am allergic to. If I decide that the coin is worth purchasing even if I ignore the label, I will buy the coin, but that label will have to go. There is no question that when I bring the coin home, the slab will be cracked, the coin removed, and the label finding its way to an appropriate disposal fitting of my opinion of that team.
Once cracked out of the slab, I could send it back to NGC and just have them re-grade the coin an put it in a plain slab. I could send it to Professional Coin Grading Service to see if they will give me a more solid grade. If it is a Morgan dollar I can ask ANACS to attribute the VAM. I could also ust keep it as a raw coin. Since the vast majority of my collection is not slabbed, this is not a problem. Besides, I know it is genuine because NGC slabbed it and I could submit it later if I need it slabbed again for resale.
Frankly, how many people actually save the labels and report their crack outs to the grading services? In the few cases when I have cracked coins out of its plastic tomb, I have not reported the cracked out coin to NGC. They have been cracked out of the slabs from multiple companies and submitted to NGC at a time I was working on a registry set. I believe this will encourage cracking out of the slab and make the population reports less reliable than they are today.
Not only will this affect the grading service population reports but it could affect coins with Certified Acceptance Corporation stickers. My hatred of the Yankees will not have me think twice about cracking that plastic just because the CAC or anyone else put a sticker on the slab. If I am not telling NGC I obliterated their label, I am not reporting it to CAC either—especially since I am not exactly a fan of CAC.
I do not begrudge NGC for doing what they need to do to earn a living. But they need to explain how these gimmicks align with their uncompromising standards and a commitment to integrity. Just admit that these gimmicks are being used to improve revenues and that everything else is window dressing. I would respect the honesty.
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