New British coin market report on my website

wybrit

Please review and comment (for errors, too!).

Link

syraq

Very informative, short, and well written.















But it was all about grades and TPGs.

Teg

Good work,
For a Brit all this slabbing is a bit off-putting. I seem to see some really ugly coins with very high grades. I had assumed that slabbing would eventually take off here. However, the dealers that I have spoken to recently think there is no chance. Just as well for me - I have about 350 farthings in my main collection - all raw, I hate to think the cost of slabbing them!

Back to your stats, I agree that the state of other coins in a sale / on a list makes a huge difference - this makes it difficult to take prices in isolation.

One large dealer told me, that if he has more than one of the same date on a list, the highest graded always sells; the next highest never does. ie 5 people ring up for the BU light toning, when they are told it has sold none want the next best - Good UNC much lustre. Next list if the same coin is the highest grade it sells - almost regardless of the price!

Dealers here all seem to say that the market is at a peak. They also say that they can not afford new stock.

The slowest bit of the market here is probably 17th - 18th century copper varieties. Big prices asked for rare - but not very flashy coins. There has been a lot of material put on the market recently - too much for a small collector base.

Nice to see a good site constantly updated - Thanks

Teg

wybrit

But it was all about grades and TPGs.

Most of the raw coins were sold as sets. It's pretty difficult to draw any conclusions from such sales or to estimate comparative worth, expecially not knowing the true quality of each coin.

I also think auctioning raw coins on the internet is somewhat of a crapshoot for the selller as much as it is for the buyer, whether it's ebay or Heritage. If I am sitting at my copmputer and not in the auction house with coin in hand, I am at a real disadvantage and I will bid less.

The few data I did have on raw individual coins showed worse performance for them than either TPG. The cost of slabbing a British coin appeared to have paid for itself or in some cases made the coin realize a larger take.

As much as I prefer raw coins for a number of reasons, I prefer buying slabbed coins now because I am usually not disappointed when it arrives.

spinaker2000

I received three slabbed coppers this week, and all three looked better in hand than the auction pics. Two from Heritage and one from this thread's author. I paid more for these, but i'm very happy with them. I also got in a group of 6 raw unc 1930 1/2d's from the UK. These were "cheap"!! and beautiful!! Plans are to keep one for my raw set, slab the others for resale.

wybrit

Those 1930s looked to be a great buy, Terry.

MacCrimmon

Nice job. You may also want to report that data as a percentage over or under Spink as a frequency, and relative to a specific TPG grade; for instance, the PCGS MS65 population and it's relative price percentages to Spink. Of course, these could also be broken out by denomination, too.

Hey, I could create all kinds of work for you!!


It is also difficult to draw conclusions on just the slab grade because one 65 which might be a knockout and will bring a huge price while a "so-so" 65 (low end) from the same TPG might barely garner any decent bids. The floor bidders general know which coins are super and bid accordingly.

Re: your comments on NGC coins being lacklustre, etc, and bringing low money is interesting in light of the Cheshire Collection decision to have NGC grade all 1500+ Brit. coins......

Aethelred

Nice looking, are you going to be updating this on a regular basis?

wybrit

Re: your comments on NGC coins being lacklustre, etc, and bringing low money is interesting in light of the Cheshire Collection decision to have NGC grade all 1500+ Brit. coins......

In the Heritage auction there were two distinct Victorian hordes for sale. One grouping consisted of a large number of sixpences and shillings graded mostly by PCGS (some exceptions). Many of these were given prominent space in the catalogue and higher quality photgraphs. The other group "from a nice sixpence collection" had no fanfare yet there were some really nice coins to be had there. The prices reflected the quality of the advertising as much as anything, which is why I can't conclude one TPG was "better" than the other, in spite of what the data might infer.

wybrit

are you going to be updating this on a regular basis?

It really depends on the regularity of information coming in. I thought this auction made a statement about where prices are going - mostly flat to down. Further updates will probably coincide with the big internet auctions over the course of the year.

coinkat

Great idea... you did a nice job condensing information into something that can be read quickly. Wybrit, the Victorian coinage is of interest to me and I tend to agree that the high end grades are moving up in value quickly. I just do not have your level of expertise in this area. Most of my Victorian shillings grade in the AU55-MS62 range and I am satisfied with that range if they are original.