Anyone familiar with current prices for Guineas?

DaveG · January 18, 2004 11:00AM

A buddy and I went to the NY INTL yesterday to look for Guineas, but saw very few of them (many fewer than even a few years ago). I talked to Davisson and he suggested that Guineas had recently jumped in price.

Today we went to a small show and my friend bought a 1772 Guinea in a PCGS XF-45 slab (surely an English VF) for what I thought was too much.

Anyone care to offer an opinion as to a fair price to pay for that coin? I'd really like to hear from our UK posters, too.

Aethelred · January 18, 2004 11:17AM

A 1772 should run about $600 in the grade you describe. They are getting hard to find and I suspect many are making their way back to England.

DaveG · January 18, 2004 1:03PM

Aethelred,

Thanks for the info. My friend paid just a little bit over that. Am I correct in thinking that prices for Guineas are much higher than they were a few years ago?

(I bought a not-quite-English VF 1714 Guinea for $600 a year and a half ago, and I thought that was somewhat overpriced then!)

lordmarcovan · January 18, 2004 4:03PM

Aethelred has personally driven up the market on guineas. That's all he was hunting for at the FUN show.

Gone are the days when I could buy a VF 1790 Spade guinea for $150! (That particular piece was overgraded as an EF, but at the price, I didn't care. Only the bottom line matters.)

I got a little sticker shock on Liteside gold at the FUN show. Saw somebody with a PCGS AU58 1908 No Motto $20 Saint- they wanted $600! Geez! Just in the last 2 years, I can remember buying and selling at least two PCGS MS63's in the $400 range!

I'm sure bullion price jumps affected the Saint (and maybe a little dealer greed), but in the case of guineas, it might just be a case of the elusive becoming more elusive. Certainly the days of buying guineas at anything remotely approaching their melt value are long gone. I did get an 1800 1/3 guinea for melt, once, but it had been soldered for jewelry.

DaveG · January 19, 2004 12:14AM

Lordmarcovan,

I've never been able to buy Guineas for that little. Even when I first started looking for them in late 1995, you couldn't get them for the prices listed in Seaby/Spink.

Now, it's so bad that there wasn't even one spade guinea at the NY INTL show! Usually there are five to ten on the floor, but not this year!

Anyone familiar with current prices for Guineas?

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