How accurate is Krause's prices these days?

nwcs

Reasonably close? Reasonably far off? They are basically retail prices if memory serves.

tbirde56

I've found that you can usually find coins for 40-60% of Krause prices except for Uncs or more high demand coins that may possibly/occasionally go for more than what Krause lists.

rhound1977

Pricing for British is useless in Krause in either direction....

But then again pricing is based on the law of supply and demand + how deep the wallet is

It's a good baseline in almost all cases, but British is hot, and allot is underpriced in Krause, and some are over. Most dealers will cut 20%
or so off of Krause unless it's an exceptional piece, rare, or high demand. It varies dealer to dealer.

Here's an example 1937 GB proof set 15 coins (no gold), 2004 Krause price $225.00, 2004 Spink price 275 pounds ($453.00 est), I saw one
go for around $260.00 or so on E-bay recently, and I bought one from a liteside dealer last month for $175.00.

So what's it worth? What you can sell it for I reckon, but for insurance purposes I would go between the high and low, and obviously
condition has some bearing.

OK, I will shut up now.....

cladking

The thing I find most disconcerting about Krause pricing is their unwillingness
to raise the modern prices in increments. They are aware of many of the modern
rarities but keep the prices low in the book for years until they suddenly raise
them to a level which is in the ballpark of the actual market. Many of these don't
often change hands anyway, and few of the collectors are highly motivated, but
this practice tends to hide the difficult coins from collectors and supress demand.
Then the sudden higher price is likely to turn many people away since the coin has
increased so much.

Another thing about their pricing I don't like is that sometimes it seems to have far
more to do with politics than with supply and demand. There are several countries
which seem to be grossly underpriced and some which seem way overpriced.

Modern Italian coins for instance were raised in price to many many multiples of their
old prices several years ago. In this particular case there simply didn't seem to be
any justification for it. Yes some of these coins were relatively difficult to find but the
demand was not high. And while difficult to find they were hardly rare or scarce. It
may have been a mistake in hind sight but I sold off these collections for the best price
I could find- 5% of Krause! It was still a windfall profit.

spoon

I'm still using my library's 1990 edition (if anyone has a pre1996 book for sale, please let me know!) and it works fine. The only thing I use it for concerning prices is to find where the spikes are in certain runs (keys) and maybe use it as a base estimate. All you really need after that is a good sense for inflation/demand and you can't go wrong.

shirohniichan

You really have to know the coins you collect.

I passed on two 1876 Venezuelan 20 centavos pieces because I thought they were "too expensive," but I found that 200% of Krause is the current market.

Other stuff I wouldn't pay 40% of Krause for.

wybrit

Rhound beat me to it. Krause can not keep up with the British coin market. In fact, throw out pretty much all of the price guides for British coins...

Aethelred

I agree with Rhound and Wybrit. There are British coins that I would be happy to pay 300% of Krause for and others I would not pay 50% of Krause for. Spink is far better, and to be fair no annual guide can be expected to be perfect. I'd love to see a new Coincraft issued, I always thought they were pretty good as a price guide.

Askari

Krause is, basically, the single source with worldwide coverage ... but there's lots of room for improvement. It serves as a useful starting place for collecting the coins of any country in the world, but only a starting place. That said, it's often egregiously wrong in two areas -- patterns and proof sets -- and typically on the low side. Unc. silver is often low too.

MacCrimmon

Krause!

I recently had a customer who concluded that my offering of early Swiss silver in MS66 and up was overpiced according to Krause and some other guide they failed to mention. OK, fine. I refuse to argue the price on a page against my experience dealing with these upper-end pieces. Like the UK specimens which occasionally turn up in stratospheric condition, there's no way to guage it except through experience with these types of coins. Even Spinks has no answer for ultra gem quality coins. It's a give and take between 'knowledgeable' parties to find some equilibrium based on many market factors.

Take Krause; it lists a $900 price for a one franc specimen dated 1911. Hey, I've got one of those. NCG has slabbed it as SP67. Would I sell it to anyone for $900? ABSOLUTELY NOT! WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING? I may be buying as close to wholesale as I can, but my cost on such a piece was less than $500. Maybe Liteside dealers revel in a nearly 100% markup ". . . based on this here price guide, by gum . . ." but that's one instance of Krause being out of touch on the high end. As mentioned earlier, the UNC. prices listed are below what I can even hope to secure solid MS65 pieces for...... c'est la vie