Valuing My Collection for Insurance Purposes - Suggestions

I'm in the process of bringing my collection inventory up to date.
Part of that will be assigning a value to each coin.
And I want to be consistent, i.e., I want to use one source of catalog values as much as possible.
And I intend to use retail values since that would likely be easier.

For the time being I will be covering ONLY U.S. material.
That will be difficult enough without including non-U.S. items.
And to make it easier, virtually all my coins are slabbed; I will consider the TPG grading as correct.

QUESTION 1: What one pricing source would best cover pre-20th century US coins?
In hardcopy I have available:
-- Coin World
-- PCGS Rare Coin Market Report
-- The Numismatist
I'm not particularly familiar with online sites.

QUESTION 2: As a general rule what would you consider reasonable for ''in between" grades?
For instance what would you value an XF-45 coin when a catalog lists only XF-40 and AU-50 values.
Add 40% of the difference between XF-40 and AU-50?
Or one-third?
Or?

I'm trying to keep this as simple as reasonable.

Depending on your responses I may have further questions.

 

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I use numismedia fmv.

http://www.numismedia.com/rarecoinprices/fmv.shtml

At any given time I will make spot comparisons between their price and the most recent auction prices and make approriate adjustments (e.g. take 85% of the listed numismedia value and try to buy for no more than that, or if I am selling, expect no more than that).

 

Any of them would work, since none of them is entirely accurate.

 

To follow up on numismedia...you can plot the price for any given coin vs grade and time...

This will tell you what to do for "between grades".

 

Thanks.
I know about Numismedia.
Looks like it'll handle what I want to do.

True, but they will put me in the ballpark as long as I keep in mind they are retail.

 

I’d refer to NGC’s price guide for NGC graded coins and to the PCGS price guide for PCGS certified coins. As grading standards vary and any other guide may be even less accurate, I wouldn’t even consider other sources.

 

Thanks.
I'll take a look at them.
I've got both an NGC and PCGS account so I'm halfway there.

 

I would also use the Redbook as it tends to be higher on many coins, if it were me I would use as many resources that I could looking for the highest evaluations possible, insurance companies will always try and low ball so keep everything as high as possible. I hope you never need to use it, outside the obvious there are some things money just can't replace.

 

I look up sold listings in HA archives and Ebay archives and compare mine to the quality of the items sold. Then I assign the value for which I think I can sell the coin for. I've been selling some pieces lately and find I've been pretty darn close on most of them and usually get slightly more for them then I thought I would.

 

As you update your inventory be sure to have a column or columns indicating the SOURCE(s) for your $ valuations. Makes things so much easier for any who might eventually become involved with estate distributions.

 

Since you are just talking about values for insurance purchases:

Red Book for US stuff
Standard Catalog of World Coins for the world coins
If it's not in either of those I use auction records on ACsearch if available.
Everything else I just wing it.

If you are insuring with someone like Hugh Wood they don't ask how you came up with your figure. They won't even recommend a method of coming up with a figure. It is entirely up to the collector. I use what I anticipate replacement value would be.

 

Yep, I've been a Hugh Wood customer on the order of 10 years.
I want to make sure I'm carrying enough insurance with them.

 

Next time we get together, let's chat about this. I've done a fair number of appraisals. I can tell you how I do it.

 

You don't necessarily need a price guide to do it though those can be a good starting point. The big thing is to just have a value you can justify with data if your claim gets challenged. Actual sales can be a good thing to rely on as can guides. Every insurance company will look at it differently, you just need to do the homework and make sure you can justify things with data

 

Tom, anything significant in my collection is slabbed.
In fact now that I think of it I'm pretty sure I do not have a raw US coin.

As I told Tom, everything significant is slabbed.
And much of it has been pictured.
By the time I finish it should all be imaged.

Ooooo, wait.
I just remembered, most of my Capped Bust Half Dimes are raw.
But mainly they don't merit being slabbed because of lower value or damage.

 

I would discuss it with my insurance agent.

 

And hopefully you will never need to use your insurance

 

I don't know that a lot of 20th Century U.S. coins are worth a great deal in circulated condition, unless you have Barber Halves in VF and up.

Is the insurance cost effective?

 

Remember, my first question stated "pre-20th century US coins".

As for the insurance being cost effective, I put it up there with auto and home insurance.