Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="daveydempsey, post: 395391, member: 22"]The slabbing and grading of coins is a relataively new thing invented by American coin companies to con the gullible of their cash.It hasn`t really caught on in the rest of the world. I`ve always said, "buy the book before the coin and buy the coin not the slab" The plastic used by the slabbing companies is usually some kind of trade secret, but no doubt it's as stable and inert as their R&D departments can make it, and should do no harm to the coins for the short or medium term.But frankly, we simply don't know how any kind of plastic will behave in the long term - plastic hasn't been invented for long enough. They can do all the artificial ageing tests they like, but the only true test of how a material ages is to wait around for several centuries and see what actually happens. We know some plastics degrade very quickly, and destroy any metallic objects embedded in them as they degrade (the plasticized PVC you often find in cheap coin albums is an excellent example). We also know that plastics are not eternal, and slabs certainly will not last as long as the gold, silver and copper coins they are purporting to protect.[/QUOTE]