When you decide to sell some coins, whether it be online, at an LCS, at a Coin Show, or wherever, which source(s) do you use to determine your anticipated sale value? Also, do you bring a list of your coins with your purchase price and expected sale price on it to the LCS or Coin Show, and use it as your guide when you're haggling prices with the prospective buyer? I took just one coin as an example (1881-S Morgan Dollar from MS-62 to MS-67) and checked a few different sites (and my coin software: Exact Change), and the prices seem to be all over the place. * Does everyone just use Greysheet Wholesale as their guide to what they should expect to get? If so, how do I get values from Greysheet for free? LOL! * What's the difference between Greysheet (for gumba's like me?) and Bluesheet (for Dealers?), and are there even more "sheets" than these two? * Do people use ebay to search for completed auctions to get recent realized prices? * I remember back in the early 2000's, when I was looking at coin prices, I would just look at pcgs.com and multiply their price by 0.8, and I thought that would be a fair price to buy at. Not to sell. Of course, I wanted to sell at pcgs.com prices or higher, even if my coins were raw! So, what do you do?
Guess it depends if you're selling raw or certified coins. @JoshuaP's comment above is a good way to find the public's willingness to pay for the coin. Raw coins, either your LCS or fleeceBay, certified I would recommend an auction house.
I use price guides to get a rough retail value but I base my sell price on as many completed auctions as I can find. The tough coins to price are those that don't have any auction history for many years. Sometimes you just have to guess. Just to be clear, I only need an insurance value to use when sending coins to auction. I let the auction service do the work.
You use wholesale when selling into a dealer and retail when selling into consumers. Just try to get a fix on the retail price, this isn't a science, and it doesn't require any particular skill. Look over the auctions, apply your grading skills, settle on something in the ballpark, and be prepared to negotiate in that range. This really isn't difficult. If you're not getting action, you're too high. Learn from it, make the adjustment, try it, again.
Well, all must remember that it's what "a willing buyer will offer to a willing seller" or "a willing seller accepts from a willing buyer."
This for buying. eBay is somewhat a litmus test that falls between retail and wholesale prices. I'm also seeing a whole lot more auctions with reserves than a year ago, and prices have crept up. I also use the online NGC suggested retail guide because it's easy and somewhat up to date, but even that isn't always updated with ever increasing prices.
Completed sales on Heritage Auctions and maybe Great Collections. Ebay for more common stuff, as a backup, sure.
Eric, I think the grid you show actually shows PRETTY ACCURATE pricing. Most of the coins are within a respectable range for a software program, if you ask me. To really nail it, you need to goto a recent sale or auction site and get a few prices within recent weeks. So to me...seeing prices vary by 20-30% or so (maybe less if you throw out the High and Low Outliers)...isn't being that far off. Not for an illiquid tangible asset that can change price substantially in a day. Remember....you get only 1 bidder for a coin, what's the price ? You get 2 bidders who MUST have it, what's the price ?
Good points! Maybe throw out high/low outliers and take the average. And, then go to recent auctions, like you and others have mentioned, and see where things fall. I'm guessing dealers will tend toward Greysheet Wholesale or lower (try to say my MS-64 is really only an MS-63 or AU-50). I'm also guessing I'll have to take a list with me, if I go to a dealer or coin show to sell. If I bring 20 coins, there's no way I'll remember the amount I'd like for each coin separately, in the stress of the moment! LOL!
With a smartphone and a few coin apps, you should have recent prices at your fingertips. Look...if I overpay 20% on a Morgan Dollar that costs $75 or even $150 it's not going to break me if I really like the coin. But if I am bidding on a 1908 NM Saint with a MS-66 grade and CAC and/or OGH....I want to know where the price is as it can vary up to $1,000 or more. That's real $$$. For trophy coins that cost more, the presence of even a 2nd strong bidder can totally change the price structure. It's not a coin, but my experience with Ebay when it first came out is instructive. I saw a Sports Illustrated issue from my youth that I had to have....there were 1 or 2 others who also wanted it....I ended up paying $85. Not big $$$ but alot for a magazine that sold for $1 when I got it 25 years earlier. A few weeks later, an identical SI issue goes up for sale....$15 final price !! So always take into account the frequencey of the item you are considering buying. If it comes up for sale every few weeks or months, and you REALLY don't like the price you are seeing now, wait a bit. If on the other hand it's something that you must have and rarely see, then paying up is probably the best strategy.
