:bow: Your help needed again 1874 bun head type 2 sydney mint full sovereign what grade would you give and how much is it worth Dave
bullion value is only 165 euro yet they are selling for allmost 200 pounds on ebay which at presnt exchange rate is 220 euros dave
My 2009 Maccas catalogue (from Australia) lists the 1874 Sydney at AUD $375 in VF. That's about € 231.67 at current exchange.
I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to ebay prices. Way too many people over-paying these days because they don't know any better. As for catalog prices, I can't think of a single one I've ever seen that was accurate.
Dave my point is this. Probably 75% of the people buying coins on ebay have no clue what they are doing - none. And if they don't know what they are doing - then how can they possibly know what something is worth, or how much to pay for it ? Don't believe me ? Take a look sometime at how many people buy all those coins in SGS slabs. Then add all those buying coins in all of the other bottom tier grading company slabs. Then add all of the people buying all those obvious fakes, altered coins and harshly cleaned coins for outrageous prices. Of course I could push the limits and mention the grilled cheese sandwich that some idiot paid something like $28,000 for it. And you still want to tell me that you want to use ebay prices as a guideline to establish the value of anything ? No my friend, if you want to use something as a guideline for prices, then use realized auction house prices. Typically, the people buying from them are educated. They know what the things are worth - and what they are not worth. Now yeah, you may be able to get a bit over spot for the coin from the right buyer. Heck you might get 10 times spot from some idiot on ebay. But that doesn't make the coin worth that. It only means there is some idiot willing to pay that much for something he knows nothing about. Kind of like the thousands of folks who pay $49.00 for 35 cents worth gold from the TV ads. Are those coins worth $49.00 ?
I would agree with that. The values listed in Krause for some coins are off, particularly for countries / coin series with strong domestic collector bases, such as Australia. For example, the Aus. 1925 Penny (a key coin) is listed in Krause for $200 VF. In an Australian catalogue (Maccas), the same coin is AUD $425 (USD $392). If I could get that coin for $200 in VF, I'd buy all I can and export to Australia. Krause has taken a blanket approach to valuation, and many common coins are simply overvalued in there. Perhaps the same can be said of Aussie sovereigns, as applied to the US market. However, what might be cheap in the US can be priced quite differently in other collector markets. I buy a lot of Scandinavian coins in the US which would cost 2-3X the price in Europe. Just a few examples. So I'll see what my Aussie friends say about your Sovereign, although it might be different for the UK.
I would also agree that prices can vary from one country to another for coins that are not from that country. Here in the US, world coinage is cheap compared to US coinage.
