Can someone direct me to an accurate, free coin value guide on the internet anywhere? Thanks for the help.
Try this. Accurate as PCGS value guide .COIN HelpU – Coin Values – Coin Price Guides (coinauctionshelp.com)
Just general values of the coins in my collection. A little of everything, mostly silver, U.S. coins.
@GUNNER63736 I like USA Coinbook https://www.usacoinbook.com/ And Cointrackers http://cointrackers.com/
Plenty of them Gunney. I am not a lover of the internet age and I find the PCGS price guide to be the easiest and most accurate for me.
These are all good suggestions, I usually check Completed and Sold items on eBay for a view on current prices also.
First things first - you need to understand that there is no such thing as an "accurate" coin value guide - not even 1 ! To illustrate what I mean and why I say that please take a look at this - click on the pic to blow it up full size so it's easy to read. Now there's a listing of several price guides, for a given coin, shown to you all at the same time and for free. But look at how much those prices vary ! Which one of those would you say is accurate, for that matter, how could ANY of them be accurate when they vary that much ? Now you can use any and all of the others recommended and when you compare them all to one another you're gonna see basically the same thing - a wide variance in value. And those values are gonna be even different than what you see here - or not. So given that, what's a guy to do ? The best advice I can give you is to look at realized auction prices. And one of the best places to do that is that website I pictured above - Heritage Auctions | World’s #1 Numismatic Dealer & Auctioneer - Rare Coins It's free to join, and when you do you can look up any coin ya want and see pages like this where you can filter the results any way you want - as seen on the right. And when you click on one of the results you'll get a page that shows you what I showed you above and a whole lot more. I should also mention that when you look at realized auction prices you're gonna see a wide variance in prices there as well. Kinda like this - Or some close kinda like this - And when do you do see those variances it's on you to look at the individual coins and figure out and then understand why there is such a price variance, or not. Short and sweet, it's because regardless of grade and TPG, no 2 coins are ever equal - there is just about always going to be differences - sometimes big differences, sometimes small difference. But when you use a web site like this at least you have a chance of seeing what knowledgeable people are paying for coins, both now and in the past, and of figuring out why they paid what they did for that given coin. My opinion, if ya wanna research prices it doesn't get any better than Heritage - bit it can be a whole lot worse !
I kind of like coinworld myself. They tend to be pretty middle of the road, but will show realized prices of auctions on HA.
In the end, values are whatever someone is willing to pay you for it at a given place and time, largely based on how popular, desirable and unique the coin is. Dealers can buy at wholesale, far below the average "deal" a collector sees. This argument goes round and round every year and most certainly you can only hope to nail down a range for a price on most coins. I try to pick conservative values relative to prices paid on my documentation and I will pick a single number for sake of simplicity. In the future, it may be worth more or less but at least a non-collector could look at my spreadsheet and realize something is worth $300 and not $50 or $1k. I think a lot of times people inherit a collection not knowing anything about it and then they have no idea what it's actually worth and they get screwed. Or they think they're rich. The collectors life work is basically thrown away if it gets sold cheap for pennies on the dollar because somebody didn't know what it was worth. Basically expensive coins are GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE because people want to sell a whole set off and be done with it so give me whatever money you want to give me even if I'm getting royally screwed. All they know is "they got some money for it." But you see this happen with everything. Vehicles, guns, all kinds of toys. If you want a true value, list a coin you're wondering about on ebay. Put a high price on it with make an offer. You don't have to sell it. See what offers you get if any. Then take off 12% that goes to "the house". It'll still be more than a dealer will give you but requires work. So the same coin basically has many different values. List it here. Offer to a dealer. List on ebay. Sell at a yard sale. Go to a pawn shop. Pick your best option and go with it. The more common it is the harder it'll be to sell. The more expensive it is the harder it'll be to get all of the money back out of it. You may have a highly desirable coin that's worth $10k that was given to you for free. How large is the available pool of people who not only can buy that coin, but want to buy that coin, AND want to buy it right now. You probably have to end up selling it for less if it needs to be sold right now, just like a house.
