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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Publius2, post: 8077409, member: 105571&quot;]I use a number of sources for deciding what I think a coin is &quot;worth&quot; in the market.&nbsp; And what I use and how much weight I give to the various sources depends almost exclusively on what the specific coin is.&nbsp; My thoughts below don&#039;t pretend to be the end-all, be-all for how to price the market and I speak only as a collector and only for myself.</p><p><br /></p><p>For slabbed, common, vigorously traded US coins I find the Greysheet is useful as an approximate floor supplemented by information from CDN Retail, CDN CAC, and PCGS price data.&nbsp; IMHO, it is pretty much pointless to search auction results for low-priced, common coins in easy-to-find conditions.&nbsp; For example, why search auction records for a 1938-D Buffalo Nickel in MS-65 if the actual coin in question is a common-as-dirt MS-65.&nbsp; It would only pay for your time if this coin is an uncommon super sharp strike, luster-bomb with attractive toning in which case the price guides make no pretensions to represent this coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>Also, common but high-priced coins such as 1877 IHC, 1909-S VDB, 1916-D Mercs and the like are pretty well represented in the price guides, at least in circulated grades.&nbsp; They trade often, everyone knows how the TPGs grade these keys in the mid-circulated grades so the price guides can treat these agglomerated prices in the markets as a generic pricing and you can use that data to inform your decisions.&nbsp; Of course, these coins in high AU and MS are so pricey and can be of such quality variability that I would not recommend the use of just the price guides in the higher grades.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you are in the raw coin market, then the only price guides of any value that I am aware of are probably eBay auction results.&nbsp; If there are other raw coin markets that provide pricing signals then I am not aware of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Auctions are particularly good and may be the only decent pricing source for coins that meet one or more of the following criteria:</p><p><br /></p><p>1)&nbsp; Coins that don&#039;t trade often enough to allow the creation of a valid database.</p><p>2)&nbsp; Common but conditionally rare,</p><p>3)&nbsp; Rare date and mm but conditionally rare or with other unique attributes that the price guides cannot capture,</p><p>4)&nbsp; Rare die marriages and/or die states.</p><p>5)&nbsp; Details coins, particularly those that are rare or unique in some other manner.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, I would say the primary pricing source my die-attributing friends in the Bust Half Nut Club use is Sheridan Downey&#039;s auction results, since he focuses pretty much exclusively on the Bust Half Dollar.&nbsp; While Heritage, et. al. could be useful to these guys for the more common die marriages and Red Book varieties, anything rarer than about R-5 is probably best priced from Downey&#039;s auctions.</p><p><br /></p><p>OK, the boiled-down gist of what I am saying is that we should be sophisticated consumers that know how and where to gather the best information possible on pricing commensurate with how much time and effort the coin merits to us individually.&nbsp; That resource dedication tolerance will be different for each of us depending upon our goals and limitations.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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