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Message:: [QUOTE="boonefrog, post: 974073, member: 26552"]How does Numismedia calculate their "Fair Market Value" prices?? Their explanation feels a bit wishy-washy. The reason I ask is because I've been using the Red Book (which, in retrospect was a mistake in this particular situation) to price out the low-grade coins that I can afford on my budget. That means I buy a lot of G4 to VF20 Indian Head Cents because they're fun and cheap. When I recently priced out everything in Numismedia via NGC's coin management software, I was surprised to find that many of my lower grade coins were valued at about 1/4 of what I thought in G4 to VG8 and closer to 1/2 in F12 and then converging more closely in the middle grades. So what's the deal here? I know every collector uses different sources and there's no "go-to" or "best" guide but why such an enormous disparity between them? What metrics do Numismedia and others use to compile values and how are different inputs weighted?? .... I'd just hate to think that the entire hobby for me is arbitrarily priced  :desk:[/QUOTE]