Pricing best practices 0

[early_large]

Hello- what are the best guides for pricing coins? A dealer I met with last week used book and eBay as guides but the spreads were wide and inconsistent. For reference the coins were 1904 $20 liberty head and a sweet 1928 Oregon Trail commemorative. 

[Greenstang]

Most books are usually on the high side. What I do is check the ebay SOLD prices and average them out to get an idea of what a certain coin is selling for. There is no foolproof system for pricing coins except what people are currently paying for them and even that can vary from time to time, depending on demand for that coin.

[Big Nub numismatics]

Another place to look at, depending on what coins you are looking for, is auction prices realized. I don't know if NGC has a similar feature, but PCGS, in their price guide, has past auctions for a certain coin, as well as anyone selling one on the internet at the time. 

[kbbpll]

I use Numismedia, check auction results here and that other place, check Heritage, Great Collections and occasionally Stacks. If a price is abnormally high or low, I’ll check the coin images and description to see why. I don’t trust eBay as much but I’ll check there too. 

[Coinbuf]

I start with the Heritage and great collections past auction results, this is the best indication of what coins are actually selling for.  Ebay sold auctions used to be a good source but in recent years those results are not always accurate due to best offers.  Looking at those past auction results as an average sets the floor, then I use the price guides to set the celling and figure somewhere in the middle is a good retail price, then up or down depending on my assessment of the quality of the coin in question.  This works well for coins where there is a decent level of activity, much harder to pinpoint a price for coins that are thinly traded or truly rare.

[early_large]

Thank you so much for the advice. I’ll get studying