MYTH NO. 1: You can't get ripped off when you buy a
certified coin.

This is absolutely not the case: You can get a terrible
deal on any kind of coin if you choose the wrong dealer.

Certified coins offer important safeguards. First and
foremost, they carry grades assigned to them by impartial
experts--informed, independent assessments regarding their
level of preservation--and these provide protection against
overgrading by unscrupulous sellers. It's up to the consumer,
though, to correlate this grade with a reliable price guide
stating how much each coin is worth in the designated level
of preservation.

In one recent case, a coin dealership grossly
overcharged customers for coins which had been certified by
major grading services. The grading itself was fine, and many
of the coins were extremely rare and highly desirable. The
problem was, the dealer priced the coins at multiples of
their fair market value. Just because a coin is accurately
graded, that doesn't mean it's fairly priced.

We've also seen scams in recent years in which high-
grade modern proof coins ... post-1964 Jefferson nickels
graded Proof-68 or Proof-69, for example ... have been sold
for hundreds of dollars based on their exceptional level of
preservation--when, in fact, they're encountered routinely in
such grades and might well be worth very little. NGC
took an important stance in this regard by refusing to
certify many late-date proof coins, but later lifted the ban.

Scams have also occurred in connection with esoteric
coins which have been certified--unusual pattern coins, for
example. Often, these coins fall into gray areas and people
have difficulty determining their value. You might have a
coin of which only three examples have been independently
certified--but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's worth
a great deal of money.

You need to do your homework--your research--in order to
establish the fair market value of any coins you're
interested in buying. Just because a coin has been
independently certified, that doesn't mean it's a good value.
The first step in protecting yourself as a consumer is to get
the coin properly certified, and the second step is to pay a
fair price at the correct time in the market cycle.

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