Archie..in answer to your question about qualification to grade a strike I would say that the only strike worth slabbing would be a rare one. For instance a "Rockettes." To accurately grade one you would have to have a quantitiy to compare and I do not think that you could get 10 of any rare strike together in the same room. Coins are a bit different and are minted in the hundreds of thousands...strikes are minted sometimes only in the hundreds. I would also suggest that anyone who found a "Rockettes" whether it was slabbed or not, and they needed it in their collection, would buy it. In comparison to chips there are relatively few very rare strikes and these would certainly be the ones worth slabbing. Would you slab a $15 Luxor strike, when they are a dime a dozen? I think not. So with striking I think the focus is a little different on the effect of slabbing...certainly someone who is going to slab will give a rare coin a grade...but the value is in the rarity of the coin, not the grade. The positive aspect of this is a slabber will have to spend quite a bit of money to get anything worth slabbing, or his efforts may be for nothing. This is speculative, but there seems to be such a discussion going on that the simplicity of it for strikers is simply not to buy a slabbed strike.