Burks Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 Well I was looking through my Redbook today, just kind of browsing, and I noticed that some of these prices are really low. So I check out here, CU, and Ebay to see what similar coins are going for. WOW! I see people selling coins listed in Redbook for like $50 (with many bids) while the Redbook only values them at $3 or so. My main question is, what is an accurate way of pricing something? Let's say in the future I want to upgrade my Morgan collection and sell a few off to buy a Carson City. How would I make sure I am not getting ripped off? Any tips are greatly accepted. I've been to numerous online price guides but not sure what to go buy. Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackhawk Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 There is a price guide included in Numismatic News every month that seems to be pretty close to retail market on US coins. The price can only be set by what a certain piece is bringing at the time, so a venue such as Ebay is much more an indicator of current price than a yearly publication such as the Redbook, which is compiled months before it's released. It works both ways though...sometimes a coin will be listed in price guides at a certain price when they are selling on Ebay for 60% of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
papadoc Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 i can't think of a single $3 coin that'd go for $50 but go to a local coin shop and offer em a couple bucks for an newer copy of the greysheets.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burks Posted July 30, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 i can't think of a single $3 coin that'd go for $50 but go to a local coin shop and offer em a couple bucks for an newer copy of the greysheets.. Just an example. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea. I bought my 85 Washington PR69DC for $5+$3 shipping while PCGS prices it at $25 for the PR69. Maybe I got a good deal or PCGS was just high. Just curious as to how people decided to price their coins. I know baseball cards are normally based off the Beckett price guide. The more I know the more I can pass on to other, semi-clueless people like myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtryka Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 Most dealers are going to go from gray sheet (Coin Dealer Newsletter), and since I don't subscribe, I usually just go off the most recent auctions on eBay as a proxy for current value. Coin World also has a monthly price guide supplement and it seems pretty good for retail prices, and they have a website where you can input a portfolio of coins and it will automatically update the prices. The problem with the Red Book is that the prices are older, and in many cases the grades offered don't come close to the full spectrum (in Saints, they top out at MS-60, which doesn't help for most of my collection. Also, for rarer coins, even the monthly retail price guides can get out of date quickly when the market is moving. As an example, a 1916-S in MS-65 was listed for $1,800 for several months, even though this coin was selling for $2,500 retail. So it's best to look at as many sources as possible, the guides are fine, but also look at eBay, look at the Heritage auction archives (this is a great resource, especially for rarer coins going back a number of years), and even look at ads in coin magazines and newspapers (there are ads to sell as well as buy, which is just another data point to add). For price discovery, the more information, the better! Hope this helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gxseries Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 Supply and demand at the time fixes everything... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccg Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 Just an example. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea. I bought my 85 Washington PR69DC for $5+$3 shipping while PCGS prices it at $25 for the PR69. Maybe I got a good deal or PCGS was just high. Just curious as to how people decided to price their coins. I know baseball cards are normally based off the Beckett price guide. The more I know the more I can pass on to other, semi-clueless people like myself. Use the PCGS guide with a grain of salt. To use the Beckett guide for example, a hobby shop I used to frequent usually retails singles at 70% of Beckett, with current sets at 50%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbycoin Posted July 31, 2005 Report Share Posted July 31, 2005 I like ot use: http://search-completed.ebay.com/ You can search completed auctions to see what similar coins are currently selling for. -Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
28Plain Posted July 31, 2005 Report Share Posted July 31, 2005 Sometimes on ebay it seems that people are taking the stated grade on raw coins with a grain of salt. I know that I disagree with the stated grades when looking at the pics of raw coins on ebay. Slabbed coins are a different matter. They seem to sell for something nearer their actual value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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