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Price Guides Slow Down Business
Coinosaurus
Posts: 9,615 ✭✭✭✭✭
You go to a coin show with a coin to sell, and most dealers have to look it up first.
Can you name a dealer capable of operating without a price guide? I remember Jim O'Donnell could do this.
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I've seen lots of them but it is not nice to name names. They were not buying a slab either.
Depends on what it is.
Do you want a fair offer or not?
I could buy any coin from any country in the world at any period in history without a price guide. But I would be low a lot of the time because I would be sticking to the "safe price". Especially for silly things like condition rarities, why would I bother keeping all that information in my head?
If you can remember all of those numbers for every denomination, date and mint mark combination in every grade, you are a lot brighter than I am. Furthermore your brain needs to absorb every price change as it occurs. Are you up for that challenge?
I think I'm doing pretty well if I know which date, mint marks and major varieties are better than others.
On the flip side price guides that have not been updated in years also slow down business with those who are not aware of the market!
R U serious? Price guides change so much every time they are published dealers have to look at then. I can remember a motl of my bids, but we always check to make sure.
Todays price guides are killers for rarer items in higher grades. Its seems very little is current.
I could guess at prices, but you're probably much better off if I look it up first! HA!
But yeah, for some things I don't need a guide and it is a little quicker. But it really doesn't take that long to look up a coin. If it does take a long time, it's either a very odd piece or the dealer doesn't know what they are doing.
Michael Kittle Rare Coins --- 1908-S Indian Head Cent Grading Set --- No. 1 1909 Mint Set --- Kittlecoins on Facebook --- Long Beach Table 448
Business people use resources....silly not to apply sources of information. In coins, unless specializing, the incredible scope of pricing demands support of such things. Cheers, RickO
For specific individual coins carrying a bit more value, probably the biggest dealer in my local show circuit (Happens to be at the table next to mine, so I get to learn a lot watching him) knows about 1/3 of the coins out there off the top of his head, but the other 2/3 he looks up.
And... to take this one step further, for coins not classified as "Common" not only do I see them lookup the price in greysheet, but then there is a 2nd step of looking at actual sales on GreatCollections (or perhaps eBay). You don't know how many times a GS price is say $500, but the last 25 sales on GC were all in the $420-$480 range.
"You Suck Award" - February, 2015
Discoverer of 1919 Mercury Dime DDO - FS-101
The numbers are in my head.
Takes less than a second to price each unique coin.
I would never let a potential buyer see how I priced a coin (it's mostly based on the wholesale value and how "hot" it is currently). I rarely budge from a quoted price unless it's someone who is buying multiple items.
Many coins are worth multiples or tiny fractions of price guides. Guides do a terrible job of reflecting values for most moderns and any "special' coin. Even in heavily traded coins they can lag far behind the markets.
One should certainly use all resources at hand. But some folks are sharp enough to keep it all in their head and not constantly reference the printed (or digital) copy. To me it is the sign of a dealer that is super engaged.