The slabbing/grading craze started with coins many decades ago, and some slabbing companies made piles of money. Simply providing a 'genuine' cert for a coin (with attached photo) isn't good enough, though. There are many coins that probably look like the one in your (imaginary) cert's photo, so how do you know the photo'd one is the one in front of you? Coins (generally) don't have centering issues, or perfs with a unique spacing/location, or perfs that separate a certain way. If you have a loop, you can see the grain pattern in a coin's metal, but is that visible in a cert's photo?
Anyway, good reasons to cert coins. Those reasons simply evaporate when it comes to stamps. Slabs are bulky and don't allow us to dip our stamps in watermark fluid, etc. Someone in their 'ultimate wisdom' decided to introduce slabbing to stamps - if all this money was made slabbing coins, then why not stamps?? And there is enough 'cross interest' between coin and stamp collectors that enough bought into the idea that it didn't die off.
I think stamp slabs are silly. I don't have any. If the only way I could get a stamp that 'I just had to have', I guess I would own a slab shortly after that. And I would probably leave it in place for fear of damaging my treasure trying to remove it. Would I ever get a stamp slabbed? No way, no how.
BTW, I used to collect slabbed coins. I have nothing against the concept of slabbing. But I am a believer in the right tool for the right job, and slabs for stamps aren't the right tool for stamp grading/certifying.
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Posted 12/15/2020 5:51 pm
