I was in coin shop yesterday and they had a PCGS MS 64 walking liberty Short set 1941-1947. I have wanted a short set of walking liberties halves for a while but felt his asking price of $1,700 was a bit of the high side. He told me to make him and offer but I was really unsure of what to bid. I would have been unable to get it that day anyhow but I told him I would think about it and may call him next week with an offer. I know about what a similar set in a MS 63 set and a MS 65 would go far but was not sure of the MS 64 value. My best guess right now is somewhere in the $1,300 range. I do not believe the price should be significantly higher than for the MS 63 set. Any suggestions?
Go to the Heritage site, look up recent sales for the appropriate coins, average them, and you'll have a ball park figure.
I assume you're talking about about the 1941P-1947D (20 coins). $1300 seems like a fair price to me...but I don't collect Walkers. He likely has about $600-$800 into the set (the price of silver and grading fees alone is around $400). I would offer $1200 to give myself some wiggle room to come up a little...and might settle at $1400, if I REALLY wanted the set. One point to consider...if you have a long standing relationship with this Dealer, you may not want to make an offer that he might consider "insulting". Dealers have bills to pay, too...and you don't want this to affect your future dealings. :thumb: NOTE: This is just my opinion...not ever having been a Dealer myself. I'm usually successful in about 20% of my negotiations...and I never negotiate if I'm not willing to walk away.
yakpoo there is something you need to realize - grading fees never, ever, ever have any impact on the price of a coin at all - 0 ! They do not add 1 cent to the cost of a coin. Why ? Because the odds are about 100 to 1 that the person you are buying the coins from bought them already slabbed. So he did not spend anything on grading fees. There are roughly 50 miilion coin out there that are already slabbed. And that's just those slabbed by NGC and PCGS. And that number grows by roughly 3 million each and every year.
I think a good acceptable offer for both parties would be $1,450 the seller,s Price of $1,700 is really on the the extreme high side, If he wants to move It make that offer!!
True! :thumb: Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I might have been. My point was that if he was going to try to put together this set of PCGS graded MS64 coins himself...from raw coins, he would have to spend a minimum of $400 in silver and grading fees to reach the point that this set is at currently. That doesn't cover his time, postage, risk, etc. That's how I assign a base value to a graded set. I feel Third Party Grading protects the coin nicely and makes it more easily marketed...which has some non-zero value (to me, anyway). I then consider factors such as rarity, availability, grade within the grade, etc to come to a reasonable offer above the base. I'm not saying I'm right...that's just how I do it because (apparently) I don't know any better.
$1700 is way too high unless you KNOW for sure that all of them are very high end for the grade. This 20-coin set should be in the $1200-$1500 range max. Last I checked Greysheet bid was around $1200 and ask was around $1300, but I'd pay a little over $1300 for a well matched set that has great looking coins for the MS64 grade. MS64 Walkers can be near-gem beauties or they can be marked up and weakly struck dogs. For reference, last year I bought this PCGS MS64 Walker set which I feel the coins are towards the upper end of the scale for MS64 coins, with many of them in early PCGS holders. Plus the set came with custom made display cases to hold the slabs. I think I paid just under $1300 for the set. Sorry for the poor photos:
