Northern Europe Krause pricing

notenovice · November 16, 2009 2:29AM

Good day,
I am a fellow forum member, looking for information on your experiences with Krause’s pricing for coinage of Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Lichtenstein to about the 1925 date and in general 16th to early 19th century European coinage. Is the guides too high or too low, and for what grades and time frames. How much USA and/or Worldwide interest is there in these areas or is it mostly limited to European collectors. I’ve been attracted to the dark side for quite some time and have recently taken a plunge into some of these areas. Your thoughts and advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

JCMhouston · November 16, 2009 5:19AM

It's best to keep in mind Krause is just a guide, it's impossible to accurately reflect the day to day market variations with a once yearly puclication. It is very good at helping you recognize the relative rarety of dates, but the best way to find values is to look at recent auction records, Heritage has pretty good online records, and of course ebay.

Also note that the Krause estimates are for uncertified coins, it is not uncommon to see coins sell for multiples of the Krause value if they are slabbed high grade pieces. In particular, 18th and 19th C. Swiss, in grades above 64/65, tend to sell for 3-5x Krause.

cladking · November 16, 2009 6:44AM

edited to add; D'oh. I misread your question. I'll leave the post anyway rat-
ther than delete it. I don't know too much about many of these pre-'26 coins
other than I've been told recently that circulated copper hasn't moved much
in the last ten years.

As a rule Krause isn't even a good guide for modern base metal coins. There's
doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the pricing. It's almost invariably
too low but it ranges between about 60% of retail value and 5% with more than
a few outliers. A lot of the coins they list as common are almost unavailable.

For northern Europe they seem to tend to be at the higher end of the range and
a very few might even be overpriced. Swiss, Finnish, and Russian may be too low.
Try finding a nice BU Swiss 5F from the '70's to see what I mean. If you can't find
a mint set you can't find one of these. The same applies to some of the $2 and $4
Russian cu/ ni but there are no mint sets for many dates.

The market on a lot of these is still fairly thin compared to the older coins but the
supply tends to be thinner yet. Establishing firm prices will take a little longer and
Krause isn't keeping up with most of these markets. In some they don't even ap-
pear to be trying to keep up though they do a little better with northern Europe
other than those mentioned and Ireland, France, GB, and (probably) Luxembourg/
Lichtenstein.

notenovice · November 17, 2009 11:39AM

Hey guys, thanks for information...I already use ebay, heritage sites to get sense of values...Is there a lot of US interest in these areas? Some coins appear to be just downright scarce to rare, but maybe this is only in US and not as much in Europe. Is there any good dealers in US for Northern Europe items? Does anyone else want to chime in?

JCMhouston · November 17, 2009 11:57AM

northeast numismatics are one of my favorite dealers, although I think my wife is trying to hire someone to hack their web site so I can't look at it any more. I'm told by my local dealer I do a lot of business with that the Finnish.Swedish/Norwegian coins were not moving at all in Baltimore last week. He went up and had a few things on his list for me and found nothing really. He mentioned in particular those 3 countries were being offered by dealers at 60% of Krause.

This week alone I have paid double Krause for three 19th C. British pennies and halfpennies, but they are just tough to find in 65 or better. I think you'll see the same thing in the other countries, any 18th or 19th C. graded 65 or better goes for strong money.

MrEureka · November 17, 2009 1:42PM

I'd suggest that you pick up a copy of Sieg's Montkatalog.

Northern Europe Krause pricing

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