World Gold Coin Values 1983 to Present???

GOLDSAINT

Going through my old World coins after so many years has me looking at this area again. In particular
since U.S. material has gotten so expensive. The last World book I had was the 1983 edition of Krause
1750-1982. As many of you know from my posts a couple of weeks ago, I bought about 300 World coins in the mid to late 80's. I recently paid the big bucks at Amazon and bought Krause's World Gold book, and Friedbergs Gold Coins of the World. There is real good news, and bad news, in researching these coins in the old and new books. Out of my 300 World coins 42 where gold, and before the new books arrived today I looked all of these gold coins up in the old Krause 1983 book, and priced them out. Today my wife and I re-priced everything with the two new books. These gold coins run from 1729 to 1950 and are from all over the World, Saudi Arabia to the Netherlands. Most are quarter ounce to half ounce coins in Au to MS 67. The good news is that except for 3 of the coins all of these can be bought today at nearly the exact same price as in 1983 so it is not to late to build a great looking World gold collection at two decade old prices.The bad news is of course that as an investment these have been just terrible, you could have made more investment money in a regular bank savings account.
The two new books are full of valueable information except for mintages in most cases, which is the whole game.
Some of these coins have great designs , where only made for one of two years, and since they are Gold they could not have been minted in great amounts. There just seems to be no Worldwide, or even counrty of origin, interest in these great pieces of history. I have not decided as yet to continue adding to this Gold collection, any suggestions?

cladking

Don't take Krause pricing on coins too seriously and this goes for the gold too.

The '83 edition is an excellent one but the gold coin prices are still up in it from
the reevaluation they did as a result of the run-up in 1980 of bullion.

My sense of the gold coin market is that the rare and desirable pieces have had
a steady yet very small increase in the last thirty years, and the later date scarcer
issues languished until about three years ago when they firmed considerably.
Common and circulated gold has not had much move at all except to track bullion
at various premiums to it.

SYRACUSIAN

I agree with cladking Goldsaint: do not take Krause gold prices too seriously, except for modern NCLTs that are (thankfully) not included in Friedberg.The only real way to follow active prices of European gold and silver coins, like the ones you bought , is to get some auction catalogues from major European firms, such as Kuenker, Spink, UBS, that are wonderful numismatic references in themselves, superbly illustrated and often with rarities that do not show up very often, or are not priced in the catalogues. A one year subscription to any of them would be a good start, without neglecting the international sales of big US firms, like Heritage , Stack's , Superior etc.

GOLDSAINT

Thanks for your suggestions, I guess I am spoiled collecting U.S. for so long and having info. at my fingertips at all times. I thought these new books would contain pretty current World priceing, I guess not, although they do seem to mirror Ebay priceing. I have not giving up, but am going to look for coins that have more published information before buying. I did buy my first Chinese coin this week at 2 times melt. A proof that only had 500 minted. It is a little modern for my taste, but at least I know the rarity. If this was a U.S.proof coin that only had 500 minted in 1992 the price would already be $20,000. This half ounce Gold coin was around $400, a good and perhaps bad sign again.