This was the title of an interesting article on the CoinWeek web site that was very interesting: http://www.coinweek.com/news/featured-news/where-do-coin-price-guides-get-their-prices/ Author Furguson suggests that computerized valuation models may help improve accuracy in the future. What do you think? Do price guides drive the market, or does the market drive the price guides? What is a coin really worth?
Yes, I was asking the same question about red book prices. It is obvious that they don't use market prices. I'm thinking HSN.
Red Book compiles their prices based off of surveys from dealers nationwide that are run through an editorial/analyst board if I remember right. The rest mostly rely on some variant of auction prices and surveys, or in the case of very rare items that haven't sold in a while, raw guessing. [Edit] I should have read the link in the OP first. Sorry for repeating what it says there. Very informative article. Reminds me of a recent Legends newsletter where they slammed price guides as 'irresponsible, incompetant information peddlers'.
It is a very good article on the methods used by the various pricing guides. I still find ebay the best way to get a market value of a coin throwing out the obvious fakes, etc. from the mix.
Most price guides are found where ? In magazines. What sells magazines ? Information that people want. What information do people want ? What they want to hear. What do people (in this case coin collectors) want to hear ? That the value of the coins in their collection is as high as it can be. So what prices will price guides use ? Do I really need to answer that ?
Books are usually annual, magazines monthly so I would think the newspaper format guides and articles would be more up to date. Then again you have closing bids on EBay.
Besides ebay, you can look up realized prices on Teletrade and Heritage, maybe use a combination of all of them, possibly average them out.
Don't know where they get prices from but does it matter? Most experienced buyers know not to use them. Realized sales are the real value of a coin.
There is a feature article on Coin Update specifically about this topic. I believe the person who wrote it, worked for Coin Value Magazine for a few years researching selling values.
I was sitting in the living room the other night planning my next trip to the local coin shop wondering the same questions. Something tells me that the answer is much more complex than most of the answers posted here. I'd like to think they are based on something with a little reasoning behind it. I use them to try and predict trends. Imagine if the prices are all based on someone's wild guesses...
GD why do you keep asking yourself questions if you already know the answers. looks like my time off has been bad for you as usual
