What is the most accurate price guide for U.S coins.. I find eBay a little inaccurate but can’t find anything else besides a Red book. Is there any Websites, apps? Or anything..thanks
Are you asking about graded coins or raw coins? For raw coins, I love looking at the eBay sold listings. If you use a retail price guide, realize you will normally only get about 60% of what the guide is listing for prices if you sell to most dealers unless it is bullion related or the price trades around its precious metals content. For graded material, you can use the PCGS price guide online or look things up on auction websites as well. https://www.pcgs.com/prices/
If you find sold eBay listings to be "inaccurate", perhaps you could explain why? *And yes, Doug.... I'm well aware.
For raw coins I use a subscription to both Numismatic News which has a monthly price guide and a subscription to Coin World also which also does paper money by series. Much more up to date than the Red Book, which prices are already one year old at print time.
I realize there's not much other there addressing this, but have you ever looked into exactly where red book prices come from? If not I suspect you'll be in for somewhat of a surprise. It's not the age of their "prices" that are the problem.
Actually, I really do not have any idea where they get their prices Books. I had always assumed that they were following markets, doing research with dealers across the country and such but I probably would be surprised.
Yeah, I'd be interested in this answer too. I thought it was from a survey of dealers. I also thought that by the time the Red Book was released, the data was almost a year old or worse.
I was thinking about how to explain this in a way that makes sense. Using the Red Book for on and the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guides. In the Red Book and Overstreet Guide, both have a list of contributors. Both use high volume dealers as their sources for information on market values. In the Red Book you will not see a detailed analysis of these dealers sales for the past year, just a list of contributors. In the Overstreet Guide you will, in the front of the guide, see a very long detailed analysis of sales, what's hot, what's not, etc. and a pretty good overview of the market as a whole from a lot of the contributors. This gives you a better perception of how they come to the prices in the guide that they come to. Where the info in the Red Book leaves too much to the imagination and such info could be tainted depending upon what these dealers sell, prefer to sell, their favorite coins and series. There's just too much of a gap in this info and therefore the prices in the guide tend not reflect any real substantive market value. Any given coin could be way left or right of it's real value. Of course I'm only talking of the hardcover regular edition. I have not pursued this in the Mega Red Book yet. And also, this is only my opinion. The Red Book is very good for all things except real market values. In the end it's always best to do homework on ebay, the gray sheet, Heritage, other auction houses, different dealers price lists, etc. This is the same for comics, as from year to year some series rise and others fall out of favor. Humbly submitted.
I create my own price guides by cataloging Ebay sales in a spread sheet. If you are shopping on Ebay, then this is gonna be the best method for determining bids. I also have PCGS and NGC guide prices in my spreadsheet. On average, sale prices for graded coins on Ebay tend to be 50-75% of the book price, depending on the type. Guide prices represent what dealers are expected to ask for a coin. If you can get it for significantly less on Ebay, then why pay more? Just a matter of being patient.
@tommyc03 , thanks for the post. Your humble opinion is always appreciated. I still use a 2nd Edition Professional Red Book. I don't feel compelled to buy a new one. I also have a small library of other books, but my point is that the Red Book is useful for many things, just like you said, but not for pricing.
The last regular edition I bought was in 2010. I did buy last years Mega Red just out of curiosity to see what all the hub bub was about. Have yet to still read a lot of it. And you are quite welcome.
