Determining a coin's value, should we use ebay or PCGS/NGC?

What is the preferred way to determine valuation of a coin? Is it Ebay, where you can see actual bid activity, or the PCGS/NGC website that shows what think believe is a coin's valuation? Sometimes I notice a large discrepancy between PCGS values and Ebay completed transactions.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I'd say ebay. PCGS has the full market retail value (ie what a dealer would probably sell it for). Ebay gives you the real world value (ie what YOU could probably sell it for).

 

Check the bidding history on Great Collections and Heritage Auctions, too.

 

There's an awful lot of noise in eBay sale "data". Even after you learn to search for Sold listings (as opposed to active "asking price" BIN listings or completed-with-no-bids listings), it's very difficult to weed out the ones that were returned, never mind the ones that were mis-classified, poorly described, under/over-flattered in photographs...

 

Will check Great Coll./Heritage, thanks. And some of the PCGS graded coins on ebay will be sold for $30-40... it's costs that much just to get the coin graded. A lot of my Cherrypicker silver quarters I'm finding seem of no real value if I have to get them graded. I have no membership so I'd have to sign up for that, plus pay the $20-30 per-coin grading fee.

 

That's right. Getting a common circulated clad quarter slabbed does not raise its value to 25 cents plus the cost of grading.

 

ANACS has a deal going this month for $ 8.00 a coin up to fifteen coins gold or silver.

 

Nice. With the limited Google research I've done, I was given the impression that PCGS is the only way to go when it comes to accurate grading. But for $8 I will research ANACS more.

 

For many coins valued at less than, say, $150, it is difficult to recapture PCGS/NGC grading fees. Anacs is a cheaper option, I have used them some and I'm not down on them for lower value coins, but their slabs do get less respect.

 

Wow, wonder how I missed that one?

Ah. I hadn't checked that email address today.

That's quite a deal, but if I'm reading it correctly, it's for at least 15 coins, not up to 15 coins. That makes it a bit more challenging for me.

I wonder if they'll consider a certain line of restrikes eligible for the deal...

Edit: Up to $2K valuation per coin! The highest limit I'd seen previously was $500...

 

There's no real justification - aside authenticity questions - for slabbing a coin whose value doesn't exceed $100, and even then only if you can incorporate the cost of slabbing and still sell at a profit.