So I have been trying to fill a dansco with walking libs and am trying to find some of the tougher dates. I have noticed online that there is a good group or population of walking liberty halves in these older ANA and ANACS holders. My experience is that peace dollars also have a large population of coins in these slabs. My thoughts with some of the older pcgs and ngc holders they command a premium due to the history of the plastic. Is that the same with these holder small holders? What I really want to know is long term am I dumb to crack these things, will I regret it long term? I've cracked a lot of plastic before so I don;t have an issue with cracking slabs, just curious about these ones.
I like them, but I don't know if they command a premium - though they may down the road, because as they say with real estate, they ain't making any more. On that note, here are 4 early ANACS holders I got in the mail today!
They are generally conservatively graded. I very much like these ANACS soapboxes, and some will pay up for them, but not nearly as much as people do for earlier PCGS holders. My profile image, 1891 proof seated quarter, is housed in an old ANACS holder, and I pick them up regularly when I come across them at a good price.
The soapbox or SWH covers a two different ownerships and a range of grading practices. ANACS ownership (first of the 2 letters 4 numbers) grades were strict technical ANA grading standards. Under Amos Press ownership (later 2 letters 4 numbers and into the all numerics), the grading morphed into the market grading we know today. If you wanted to interpret that as looser the higher the cert#, I couldn't argue. This makes for some interesting "grades"... For example, there is a period where ANACS did net grading of details coins. "AU Details Net VF35" or this gem: (try this search: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=anacs+details+net&_sacat=0)
I'm assuming it was from the time they were still considered upstanding members of the numismatic community. Is there a date on the certificate?
The way I look at most old soap box holders is that yes, Amos press was over grading but there grades really never got to the point of the market today. They did give bad grades, don't get me wrong, but most of those got cracked and either sent to PCGS or NGC, or just went into a Dansco or Whittman folder. Personally, I have a hard time passing up any old slab, even if I don't buy it. I call it sharpening my skills of why they graded it the way that they did.
It can be eye opening to read old grading guides and see what were the focuses. The ANA Grading Standards. PhotoGrade. The NCI book. Penny Whimsy. Even Alan Hager's books. They are all different from each other and different from how we describe grades today.
The small white Anacs holders have a premium (especially the early ANA ones and some harder to find coins that might be in those slabs). However, there are some later generation slabs where the premium is minor at best. You are likely ok cracking those out if you don't have a better/cheaper source for the coins. I did crack these two years ago when doing my type set (neither carried much of a premium at the time nor would they be that much more now).
This was the "soap bar" holder coin I have bought in many years. This a minor gold type coin. It was Gobrecht's first take on the $10 Liberty. I covered the type without spending a fortune on it. It only cost a small fortune.
Conder101's post ATS https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/256678/sizes-of-anacs-slabs describes these. BTW ANACS and I disagree with defining these as 19 and 17 characters... ANACS calls it 18 and 16, not counting the check digit! See this post in the thread ATS for the definition of the barcode https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/comment/13613178/#Comment_13613178 For example, John's Eagle scans as 18 characters: Code: 008574450231168610 123456789.12345678 Which makes it Version 2, graded between April 1, 2000 and January 22, 2006: PCGS# 008574 Grade 45 Serial 02311686 Type 1 (regular grade) Reserved 0
Denis' nickel is type 1, 16 characters, thus graded before April 1, 2000 Code: 0039156200370116 123456789.123456 PCGS# 003915 Grade 62 Serial 00370116
