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By Laura Sperber on Monday, June 29, 2009
Filed Under: Market Reports & Prices, Commentary and Opinion

The Following  is from Legend Numismatics Hot Topics, A Commentary by Laura Sperber – Editor

There are so many issues that need work on. Coin pricing guides are in my sights right now. Before I begin this article, I must make sure everyone realizes the value of a coin is determined by its QUALITY,RARITY, DEMAND, AND SUPPLY-NOT whats written in a price guide.

A RECENT EXPEREIENCE ON MIS-INFORMATION

Recently we had a very rare coin for sale. The CDN (gray sheet WHOLESALE bid/ask) on the coin was $121,000/$131,000.00. We were offered $130,000.00 for the coin by a collector. Sounds reasonable-but it was far from what the coin was worth. The collector had no other information to go on. We missed placing the coin with him, and he most likely will never buy one because they all will be too expensive.

The last example of this type of coin that sold in major public auction was for $161,000.00 only a year ago (prior to that one sold for $230,000.00). You can never find one of these coins at a show-or even in auction. Buying one for less than $150,000.00 is pretty much impossible-even with the markets off. We did end up WHOLESALING the coin immediately for much more than the $130,000.00 we were offered! An FYI: this is just one small incident. We have had MANY situations similar to this happen just about every other day.

My point is-this was irresponsible price reporting. Obviously, the bids were never updated for at least a year. I get angered when its suggested its up to me to report a sale/purchase. If these people put out information and sell subscrptions for that service, then they should have reporters gathering it who understand the market. Do you do the reporting for your local newspaper? Its was clearly obvious they didn’t even have the resolve to check auction records. The prices they had for this coin clearly were NOT reliable, nor were they meaningful as a “starting point”.

Another fav of mine is when they are publish bids for coins with LESS then 5 graded. So when a junky specimen sells for a cheap price and that gets noted, then a great specimen comes up for sale, numerous buyers are priced out from the start because of MIS-information. Any knowledgable dealer will tell you that just about ALL the prices they have published for coins with pops of 5 or less are wrong. Why even have a price when the last coin may have sold 10 years ago? Continued

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