PCGS price guide explained

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Doug,
I could have expressed myself better and you were right for calling me on it. The PCGS Price Guide is a decent place to start if I am considering a purchase from Mark Feld or Bill Shamhart or Tom Bush or Kathleen Duncan (as examples) because i have a good feel for the quality such dealers require. For a more run of the mill purchase (say an average coin from Teletrade), the PCGS Price Guide is likely of little use.
As for CDN, what I should have said is I find the PCGS Price Guide of more use for my purposes, but there is little doubt if you go to a coin show, there are Grey Sheets everywhere and I don't see people checking the PCGS Price Guide.
Best advice for new people is to learn to use Heritage Auction Archives or better yer, CoinFacts if they're willing to spring for it.

 

In your opinion, how well does the CDN price guide cover the entire spectrum of US coins? I agree dealers use the guide, "to the extent they possibly can". But when I see them check the guide for something I"m interested in buying at a show, half the time I think it's a joke. It doesn't break it down for everything. It's not detailed for most issues.

If a guide like PCGS or NGC online covers nearly 100% of individual US coin values, I will go out on a limb (without putting extensive thought or calculation into it) and say CDN grey sheet covers about 30% of US coin values in detail. For example, the generic values for gold coins in CDN are worthless IMO. There's such a broad range between a key date, semi key, and a common that the CDN is worthless.

When people are given advice on here to buy the grey sheet, they assume they're going to get a guide similar to what they see online or in the redbook. But it's not even close. If you're looking up silver dollars, commemoratives, some bullion coins, etc..., the CDN can help you. Much beyond that, it can't. It's interesting to look at and gets updated weekly, but it's definitely not an end all, be all price guide.

Edit: To prove my point, I just tried to look up the coin I have in my avatar. It's an AU-53 Classic head. There isn't even a generic price listed for these in CDN. They're not in there.

Under US gold prices, it states (Prices are for the most common date of each type.) Ok, well that's great. What happens if you're not buying a common date? You need another resource because CDN can't help you.

It's cheap to go online and buy one. If anybody's curious, go ahead and pick one up. I usually buy a couple CDNs a year. Not saying I have anything against them. Just that it is limited in it's coverage.

 

Even all US gold? I guess you learn something every day. I didn't know I had to buy everything they offer to get a full price guide. Why do they do it this way?

 

This is what I thought. However, some coins appear to be $10 more valuable with the (+) designation while others (like my 1904 Liberty Head $20) are $13,000 more! That seems crazy.

 

Really old thread but that's not crazy at all. You're referring to the jump from a 66 to a 66+ for the 1904 $20. The jump from 66 to 67 would be massive on those. The bigger the value jump with the next grade up the bigger the + price will be.

 

Here's the real issue - the price on any given coin is a moving target. Up and down and up and down. I use it only as a rough guide.