Collecting the holders — not just what's inside them.
The Slab Collectors Society is a gathering place for people who study third‑party grading slabs: the sample and promotional issues, the mainstream labels, inserts and shells, and the whole tangled history of slabbing itself.
Recent developments
Meeting notes
Brief notes about our organizational and pre-cursor meeting have been posted here.
Mailing list
We have a mailing list at https://www.groups.io/g/SlabCollectorsSociety (Yes, you have to create an account at groups.io, no there is no cost, yes you can choose to receive each message separately or as a digest.).
Head over to Reddit (sign up if you aren't already a participant) and join the group: here.
Zoom
Our online monthly meetings will be held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, at 8 PM US/Central time.
Organizational meeting at the 2026 ANA World's Fair of Money in Pittsburgh
Well -- we met, chatted for about an hour, skipped most organizational stuff, but did take a picture. If you are willing to de-anonymize yourself, let Burton know your number.
.jpg){kind=link}
Officialish
Officially, our ANA Representative is David. And I guess I (Burton) am the website admin, Reddit Moderator, Future Zoom host, and mailing list administrator.
Recognized as an ANA Member Club
The Society is now an official American Numismatic Association member club — still not listed in the directory, but official all the same. Thanks to David for covering the membership fee.
What we collect
We're expanding beyond samples to the study of grading services, generations — labels, inserts, and shells — and the whole history of slabs and slabbing.
Most numismatists collect what's inside the holder. We collect the holder itself — the sample slabs handed out at shows, the promotional and club issues, the luncheon and novelty pieces, and every generation of shell and label the major grading services have put out since the beginning.
That means tracking down the odd and the overlooked: dot‑matrix rattlers, discontinued inserts, one‑off shells, and the paper trail — newsletters, forum threads, and first‑person accounts — that explains why any of it looks the way it does.
We're a young, volunteer‑run club, newly recognized by the American Numismatic Association. If you've ever turned a slab over just to look at the back, you're one of us.
Grading services
PCGS, NGC, ANACS, CACG, ICG, and the long tail of services beyond the big names.
Labels, inserts, shells
How the physical holder itself changed — plastic, printing, and security features — over time.
The story of slabbing
From ANACS's earliest certificates to today's tamper‑evident shells, told through the objects.
Beyond the sample
Registry sets, oral histories, and the wider collecting community around slabs.
Things we'd like to pull in
Early ideas from the founders on what a Slab Collectors Society should gather and preserve. Consider this an open invitation, not a finished list.
Robert Paul's ANACS years
An early, hard‑to‑find account of the certificate and holder history from ANACS's first days. A copy has been preserved by David.
Read the account ↗Old Slab Holders, by service
Pointers into John D's holder‑by‑holder history for PCGS, NGC, ANACS, CACG, and others.
See the resources ↓Registry sets
Formal registry sets built around slab holders themselves, not just the coins inside — like this one at NGC.
View the set ↗What else?
The founding list is short on purpose. Tell us what belongs in a slab collectors' archive.
Suggest something ↓Where to dig deeper
A working set of pointers into the wider slab‑collecting literature — taxonomies, photographic histories, and first‑person accounts, mostly scattered across old forums and archives until now.
Generations & Taxonomies
First‑Person Histories
Sister Projects
Join us!
The Society's first (organizational) meeting as an official ANA Member club (10th BoAF) was held at the August 2026 World's Fair of Money in an actual meeting room instead of at 6 p.m. in a bar we get politely asked to leave.
Long on the social, short on organization, still no dues, no paperwork.
- We have a mailing list at groups.io g/SlabCollectorsSociety.
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SlabCollectorsSociety/...
- Monthly Zoom meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, 8 PM US/Central.
The Slab Collectors Society is a volunteer organization. Please allow two business days (Monday–Friday) for a reply — we're spread across the US/Central and US/Pacific time zones.