Do price guides run the market?

For world coins, no. You use previous sales to determine prices, or otherwise just have to know the market. There really aren't any good price guides (not generally anyways). Any good price guide is still going to be out of date when it hits print.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The dealers with which I have transactions, because of the believed ridiculous general current C.D.N. pricing, use the values shown as a buy amount, and add a constant value to the C.D.N. for selling. I just don't buy from dealers who can't price their coins without an aid. When I sell to a dealer I'll usually use melt value plus a small palatable minimal premium, which they'll usually accept, especially on certified coins.

I eliminated the C.D.N. products, other than the CAC "launch issue", as a reference, generally knowing what's the current basis for PQ coins I desire.

This process generally eliminates frustration.

JMHO

 

World Coins a different ball game. For me it’s mainly cost plus. Single pop slabbed gem coins worth much more than say Krause CV.

 

I have a Redbook 2020 that I carry to me in shows - I don't use it for exact prices but for ballpark values when looking at coins. I also have marked it up with the current coins in my collection and some other notes of my own (rarity, is it on my want list, etc). My intention is to use it just as a guide - but I'm willing to pay over "market value" if something about a coin catches my eye.

Anyways, the last time I was at a coin show, a dealer told me the 2020 guide was actually printed in 2018. Also the Redbook was fairly worthless for assigning a value to a coin (and especially the one he was trying to sell me!).

 

If, and it's a big if, they know how to interpret price guides.

To me, common stuff always overpriced, really rare underpriced, and middle of the road on average fairly priced. What I mean by on average is you need to recognize that for a VF coin, there are ugly ones, average ones and superb ones. A person who always buys middle of the road coins at or below price guide will most likely have inferior looking coins. Better coins bring better than average prices, and advanced collectors know this. Therefore, over price guide is fine for superior coins.

A senior, well respected dealer once told me "you want to buy what I don't have". What he meant was superior for the grade, problem free, rare collector coins. The reason you do not see these often is because people always buy them, and dealers on average are left with the others.

 

I guess you won't have been buying from me when I was dealer. I always checked the Gray Sheet to see where the current price was. A couple of times when I didn't, I sold something too cheap to another dealer after it had gone up in price.

If the price had gone down while I had something inventory, you can bet that I would have gotten less for it in a wholesale transaction. When it goes up, it's only fair to get more when the market supports that.

I marked all of my coins with a retail price and then went from there as to the final price.

 

It's the way of the """Free""" market. You are free to get shafted. Coins or bullion, the same thing. Just substitute the 'Gold fix" or "Melt" for Graysheets. As JPMorgan and all the other large gold mongers set the Gold Fix every market day based on what they want it to be, and the bullionistas think its demand and supply, and when they go wrong, they say its JPMorgan's fault .....well yeah, plus friends.

 

Pricing coins without research is like driving blindfolded lol.

 

Always go with the simplest answer, a guide is a guide. What you sell it for changes the market value. volume changes the market value, economics changes the market value maybe even weather changes the market value. All in all it is a guide which you should be asking "does it pursuade" the market. Your stuff is worth whatever you say it is until you sell it, and then and only then is it worth anything. Here's a thought experiment, Is a hundred dollars worth the same to a person that makes $20,000 a year as it is to a person that makes 2,000,000 a year?

 

Funny thing is.... I have only known only a few people that have elevated themselves to these kinds of financial levels. And they will pinch a penny hard enough to make it bleed.

 

I understand but we will have the same dilemma we want to know what are coins are worth. Probably the most popular subject in this forum. I think PCGS regulates the market more than any price guide. And I would refer anybody that wants to know what their coin is worth to go there and use their services . Unfortunately if your corn and wheat is not worth $50 or more it's not worth it . So everybody just hang on to their change and wait for it.

 

A coin is worth what I would be able to sell it for. Therefore, for me, eBay prices are my first reference. Providing, however, that there are enough sales of comparable items, and discounting the outliers. For thinly traded items the pricing is a bit more complicated. Also, eBay and other auction records aren’t as useful when pricing a nice looking coin if the ones in the auction records are butt ugly.

it’s an entirely different question to ask whether the market drives price guides or the price guides drive the market. I would guess that a few decades ago, when the market was more fragmented, prices on some items were more “sticky” and were price guide driven. Now that the internet has given us an open and transparent market we are seeing supply and demand driving prices down on a lot of coins previously thought to be scarce or rare.

 

What a great response

 

A coin is worth what a buyer will pay for it at a point in time. I simply try control it so that buyer is a retail buyer not somebody getting it cheap bc I listed it at 99c in an eBay suction.

I never know what will retail as this can vary. A CAC coin I had over a year recently sold around CPG. It was a better date low pop coin. I had to keep it awhile to get what I wanted.

 

I don't know if that's a "typo" or not, but that is a common sound on eBay!

 

For those who have priced the coins elsewhere, those prices are atrocious. For the people paying the tv-sales-pitch-price, that is what the coin is worth. Everything is relative. We each live in our own little universe and create our own reality.