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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2880000, member: 112&quot;]Quite true, but then you also have to consider the source, or perhaps I should say sources. This is what I mean by that.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let&#039;s start off with the price guides. Do you what they base their listed prices on ? Almost all of them tell you if you take the time to look. And almost all of them will list what they refer to as &quot;dealer asking prices&quot; as at least 1 of their sources. But they don&#039;t tell you what dealer or dealers they are quoting.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s why that&#039;s important. Pick any coin you want, in any given grade, slabbed by any given TPG. Then search for them and you&#039;ll probably find at least a half a dozen different dealers offering to sell that same coin, all in the same grade, same TPG. But the prices will vary, sometimes greatly. It is not at all uncommon for dealer A to ask X dollars, and another, dealer B, to ask double that amount. And the rest will asking anywhere in between. Same kind of thing happens on the electronic dealer networks - you have high Asks and low Asks. </p><p><br /></p><p>So when the price guide decides on what number they want to use - from whom did they get that number ? We don&#039;t ever know, and no they don&#039;t ask everybody. So if they are using the number from the guy who is asking double what another is asking - then how accurate, how reliable, is that number ? And that&#039;s my point it isn&#039;t because you can go elsewhere and buy it for half that much.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now the price guide might also say that we use a mix, dealer asking prices and realized auction prices. But again they don&#039;t tell you exactly where they got those prices. They might be using the highest asking price they can find - including those on ebay - and the highest realized auction price they can find anywhere - including those on ebay. And no, you cannot assume that they take averages because they don&#039;t. And if you dig in and do the work you can prove that they don&#039;t because their listed price will quite often match the highest realized auction price ever recorded. Even if it occurred years previously before the market dropped for 10 years running.</p><p><br /></p><p>You might say - they wouldn&#039;t do that. But some of them do do that ! They do exactly that ! And they do it all because they stand to gain as a result of doing that. They are not out to help you, they don&#039;t do what they do for the good of the hobby. They do what they do because it is their BUSINESS ! And the nature of a business is to make money. And the best thing they can do to make money is to make you think that your coins are worth more than they really are.</p><p><br /></p><p>And then you have the vicious circle. Some of the asking prices that price guides use come from ebay. And some of the asking prices on ebay come from the price guides. Same thing happens with some dealers. Their asking price comes from the price guides, and the price guides get their numbers from the dealer&#039;s asking prices. Does anybody <u>not</u> see a problem with this ? </p><p><br /></p><p>This is why you should take price guides and throw &#039;em out the window - all of &#039;em ![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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