At the ANA World’s Fair of Money, we were able to engage in a number of conversations about the state of the rare coin market. It was clear that many market participants, at all levels, were struggling to reconcile multiple issues. Dealers spend their hours buying and selling coins, and the fulcrum of each decision comes down to price in most cases. Regardless of the rarity or beauty of an individual item, everything has a price.

Here at CDN, we spend most of our waking hours thinking about this idea of price, and each day we look at a wide swath of disparate data points to reach a price for a given coin. We have written numerous times about the multi-tiered market that we have today, but something that we haven’t talked as much about is the idea of value. The job of CDN is to report a price of a coin at a given point of time based on recent trading performance. While we often spot trends-whether in a specific series or the overall market-we do not in any way try and anticipate what the price of an item will be in the future. It is the job of the dealer or collector to value their inventory or collection. Coin market pundits have often said that price guides are inaccurate when it comes to certain coins-ones with spectacular toning for example-but that is based on their idea of the value of that coin, not the price. The difference is that anyone can have a value of their coin in their mind, but the number that matters in the one that the coin is bought or sold for, which is the price. We intend for the Greysheet price to be the primary wholesale guide for dealers and have the most accurate prices for United States coins, and we feel comfortable standing behind our numbers.

THIS WEEK’S MARKET

Gold Type:

Lively bidding has returned to this market, and the premiums for generic gold in MS63 and higher are starting to climb.

Morgan Dollars:

Some additional minor adjustments to follow up with last week’s pricing updates.

Eagles:

The climb of precious metals prices has brought back some bidding to this segment, in particular proof Platinum eagles. We also remind readers that MS69-70 and PR69-70 for Silver Eagles can be found in the Bluesheet, which have also shown some bidding activity lately.