PCGS 3000 INDEX

I was poking around the PCGS website and noticed at the bottom they had gold & silver spot, and the PCGS 3000 index. I go to that page and notice this in the disclaimer, i won't post the whole thing;

"...the PCGS3000® should only be used as one guide to rare coin prices and historical price movements, and not as the sole source for determining the value or market history of a particular coin."

Then i look at the different timeline charts and the 10 year shows that the end of 2019 & early 2020 was the lowest periods. So is this saying coin prices in general were at their lowest and they were much higher in 2012-2015, or just certain rare coins? And now they are ticking back up?

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Only because of covid did i decide to open my old box of coins i had not touched for 15 years & have been doing all i can to "catch up" on coins i like. So should most of what i have purchased go up in value according to the trend of the chart?

 

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Hodl.

 

?/

or yup.

 

Chris:
Rare coins have been in an upward trend for most of the last 18 months.

Folks at home, not spending money, so they buy coins.

Or that is what the news says

 

Also keep in mind that the PCGS graph isn't based at zero, so it exaggerates fluctuations.

 

It should be mandatory that all charts be displayed upside down.

 

Never mind. Tried to copy and paste the 1 year, 3 year, and all-time charts, but the images I got were from 2017. Serves me right, I guess.

 

I will repeat, because I can:
HODL.

 

How very cryptic

 

I try. God knows I try. But then the Irish takes over, and wham.....

 

I was trying to be funny. It didn't work.

 

No, no, no...it DID work. That's why I mentioned the Irish spelling.

 

https://academy.binance.com/en/glossary/hodl

 

Heh, yup. Mine was a poor attempt at a play on crypto.

 

Nope, it was a perfect attempt, as it applies to the PCGS 3000 Index.

 

Hah, meant mine, not yours. Ok, I'm going to step away before I cause a fist fight. Lol

 

Yes, that is the way I interpreted it. Seems we agree. We are both funny....

 

Graphs like these don't really mean that much. That huge drop from '08-'18, where it looks like coin values fall off a cliff, actually is less than 23%. Not insignificant, but about what the auction house takes on top of your bid.

Plotting an incomplete Y-axis like this makes for a very misleading report. A lot of people call it a "gee-whiz" graph because it magnifies small differences.

Another aspect of these price/time graphs is that price is too often presented on a linear scale, whereas it should be presented on a log scale. If coin A increases from $1 to $10, it increases 10X. If coin B increases from $1000 to $10,000, it also increases 10X. You may think "big deal" if your $1 coin goes to $10, but WOW if your $1000 coin goes to $10,000, but the change is the same. It also seems worse if a $10,000 goes down to $1000 than if a $10 coin goes down to $1, but if you spend equal amounts on the A and B coins, you'll do equally well (or badly).

Here is a graph I did a few years ago that illustrates this.

 

This. This guy gets it.

Logarithmic-scale graphs are only confusing because people aren't used to them. For things like prices, they're much more useful than linear-scale graphs.