I am an amateur coin collector, though I've been at this since the mid-sixties. I like to value my collection each year, and I've always used the Red Book to do that. Does the Red Book give an accurate measure of coins? Are there better publications for this purpose? Are there websites that do a good job valuing coins? (I've been using Numismedia. I'm also aware of the PCGS coin valuing pages, but I suspect they value coins a bit too high.)
The two I use are PCGS Coinfacts and look at recent sales as well as numismedia. Seems you are tracking both. Other option is to look at eBay SOLD items (not what they're listed for, but actually sold for). That and buying a grey sheet are really the only ones. Keeping in mind, these are all for graded coins.
The Red Book is a great book but the values are not really helpful with current value. As said above auction values are a better guide.
The reason I like the Red Book and Numismedia is that I can value the collection rather quickly. The collection is rather large, and looking up auction prices for all the coins, a lot of which aren't worth much, would be very time-consuming.
Like Larry said, the Red Book is a poor source for valuation. You will never sell your coins for those prices. You would overpay for insurance riders, and you would never get an insurance company to pay those amounts for any claim should you sustain a loss. Chris
The Red Book contains lots of valuable information. However it is a guidebook. The guide for prices it's not really based on current prices but rather general overall pricing. This causes the prices in the Redbook to be inflated. Use some of the TPG's sold for prices to get a better evaluation and more realistic value of your collection.
I've read the information about the inflated Red Book prices for several years. But I see @centsdimes problem with a large collection. Here are two suggestions (take what you like, leave the rest): 1. Value as you have in the past using the Red Book, but then use a percentage of that as your "true" value, what you could get in the open market. Perhaps someone on CT could give a guideline as to what percentage to use. 2. Use the Blue Book; at least you won't be overvaluing your collection. 3. Use auction results, but research on a rotating basis: e.g., each month do a small portion of your collection, say 5%. By the time you get through (approximately 20 months) you could go through the process again. Your collection's value should never be more than about 10 month's old. Steve
For NGC and PCGS certified coins, recent auction prices from PCGS auctions prices realized website is the real world for the minimum price for what collectors can expect to pay. Collectors can expect to pay more when buying from dealers. PCGS prices realized are hammer plus premium. If you're selling, you'll get only hammer, roughly 80% of the price realized value. Raw coins? If (big IF) they're accurately graded, the auction prices realized can still be used. However, the seller will be getting hammer minus certification costs. Most price guides have prices higher than auction prices realized which means they are significantly higher than hammer prices. If you want to know what you'll get for your collection, use hammer prices. Main exception is if you're willing to do the work and have the knack for online selling at venues like eBay, you can get more for your coins than selling to a dealer or via auction houses. Cal
Your question is somewhat similar to what you asked here - https://www.cointalk.com/threads/coin-imperfections.342987/ And the answer I'm going to give you is somewhat similar to the answer I gave you there, but also different. This is what makes it different - no price guide is accurate, none of them are. The absolute best you can hope to do is to use all the price guides to help you determine a price range for any coin in any grade. Another way of saying it would be this - there is no such thing as a set price for any coin. Here are examples of what I'm talking about. And for these examples I picked a coin that is not exactly the most common, not even truly scarce, and definitely not rare. It's kind of a middle of the road coin. I picked an 1881-CC Morgan MS65. And if you use Heritage and search their auction archives, this is what you see regarding the values listed by the price guides. And you can also see the pop reports. As you can see, values vary greatly between all the price guides. And this is what the coin actually sold for. And the actual sales price is different than any of the price guides. Not much for some but different all the same. Here's another example, same coin/date/mint, but again different. And here's the price guides/pops for this example. Now that's just 2 examples that I chose from near the top of this list - https://coins.ha.com/c/search-resul...90+231+382&Ntt=1881-CC+MS65&ic4=SortBy-071515 If you look at it and sign in you'll see about 30 examples that sold just this year alone. Some will be the same basic coin, others may have the PL designation, some a plus grade, some NGC some PCGS. If you go through the entire list you'll find hundreds of examples, going back over a period of many years. And when you back, you'll see another change, the change that time makes. Ya see, the coin market is not a static thing, it is fluid, constantly changing. The market goes up, it goes down, all the time. And values can fluctuate wildly, much like I explained in the other thread. And at times, as I said in that other thread, same coin/date/mint/grade/TPG by as much as 100% or more. But primarily what I'm trying to show you here is what the price guides say - just how different they can be - and all at the same time. The point of course is that you can't put any trust or confidence in ANY PRICE GUIDE ! The absolute best you can do is to establish a price range for any given coin.
I use the red book and online grey sheet prices to give me a ballpark. I also watch eBay to watch coins and see what people are asking and what they sell for. Here is the grey sheet link. https://www.greysheet.com/coin-prices
