Yesterday I heard a rumor from a friend in the coin business. I can't find any info to back it up, but maybe you all have heard something. He told me Greysheet has been sold to a head honcho at David Lawrence Rare Coins.
Here are the details that were posted at NGC on Sept. 5. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=8848388#Post8848388 Chris
Just a question... what's to stop a former dealer who controls price guides from manipulating the system to increase the value of the coins that his friends and former business own?
Uhhh, maybe because he can't do that. With can't meaning it is not possible for him to do that. The prices listed in the CDN are taken directly from the electronic dealer networks. They are composed of the current highest Bid and lowest Ask found on those networks. Blow the picture up and read the fine print in the center. In other words the people who publish the CDN do not make up, or even choose the prices they publish in their weekly paper. They merely report what the current Bid/Ask is at a given moment in time. Realize, these are real numbers taken from every dealer who is a member of the electronic dealer networks. Also realize that you, me, or anybody else who wants access to those electronic dealer networks to see the actual Bids and Asks with their own eyes can do so. In other words it is impossible to fake it or manipulate it. Now if the new owner were to reformat the CDN, in other words do away with the source for the prices and make up his own prices, yeah he could do it. But then the CDN would be no different than any other price guide. It would also lose any and all credibility. That's what makes the CDN what it is and always has been, for over 50 years - the source of it's published prices. That is what sets it apart from all other price guides - the CDN is real.
I read that the buyer is John Feigenbaum, the son of David Feigenbaum, the founder of DLRC. I've bought some nice coins from DLRC over the years. Actually, I bought a 1909-S VDB graded MS64 RD from them at this year's ANA convention in Rosemont.
GDJMSP - so I guess what I am getting is that the CDC is a reliable source - maybe not perfect or biblical in a numismatic sense - but a reliable source. So...when I was at the recent ANA show, why were several dealers referring the Gray Sheet as a bunch of __? I have been collecting for awhile and I just recently saw this attitude.
The question earlier about why a dealer who controls a pricing guide doesn't just make up prices to make his coins look more valuable than they really are reminds me of the thread about Hannes Tulving. In fact, before he went to jail the first time, that's exactly what he was doing. He was selling people coins and then putting out his own price sheet that made it seem that the coins he had sold were constantly increasing in value. Eventually this caught up with him, but he had a good run for quite a few years. You would have thought that his prison experience would have taught him something, but I guess not.
There could be any number of reasons, but I suspect the chief among them would be that they just don't agree with the current prices being reported in the CDN. In other words they are thinking that the coins are worth more than what the CDN says they are worth. But like I said the CDN is real, it merely reports what dealers all over the country are offering to buy, or sell, a given coin in a given grade at a given point in time, with the that point in time being the present week. Kinda like this for example, (and no I don't know that these are the real numbers because I didn't take the time to look them up). A dealer looks at the CDN and sees that a '82-CC Morgan in 63 is worth $175. He then says, oh bull, that coin is worth at least $225. The CDN is a bunch of hogwash. But he's saying that because he's trying to sell his examples of that coin, in that grade, for that amount. But nobody will pay it because the CDN says it's worth $50 less than that. So his only recourse is to badmouth the CDN and claim the numbers are no good in order to validate himself. To understand it you have to understand how the market works. A lot of folks think that the coin market is mostly composed of sales and purchases primarily between dealers and private individuals (collectors). But nothing could be further from the truth. Sales and purchases between dealers and individuals only comprise about 20% of the coin market. The other 80% is sales and purchases between dealers. That's why the given value of any given coin at any given point in time is determined by what a dealer will sell one for, or pay for one. What some bidiot pays for a coin on ebay doesn't have anything to do with the real, the true value of any coin. It never has and it never will. But the average collector won't believe that because he doesn't want to believe it. He wants his coins to be worth more. So he thinks they are because somebody who doesn't have a clue about the coin market pays too much for them on ebay. While the whole time he could go and buy the same coin, same grade, for less money from a dealer. And often a good bit less. You know how I've talked about Heritage, Heritage is a dealer, the biggest dealer. They sell almost a billion dollars worth of coins a year, every year. And yeah that's with a B. And that's just 1 dealer. And a whole lot of those coins sold by them end up being sold again on ebay for more money. It's not rocket science, it doesn't take a genius to figure things out to understand the coin market. You just have to know a little bit, open your eyes, and actually see what is going on.
Quite strange, at the local show I regularly attend the Graysheet is used and respected by ALL of the dealers. Does that mean you'll get a coin at those prices? Absolutely not, all coins are different, I sometimes pay more and even MUCH more but sometimes I also pay less. Any dealer saying it's _____ is probably trying to get too much. That's alright for an occasional special coin that has merits you can see in hand. But if the bashing is being used as a tool to bilk a buyer out of more than should be paid, well, that's the real _____.
