Grey Sheet Vs. Numismedia Weekly

The excellent thread started by terry8835 titled Gray Sheet: Is it worth the expense? reminded me of a question I meant to ask a while back.

For those of you who have subscribed to CDN Publishing's Coin Dealer Newsletter (Greysheet) and NumisMedia's Weekly Wholesale Market Price Guide (also known as NumisMedia Weekly), which do you like better? I'm thinking in terms of:

* Accuracy
* Usability (ease-of-use)
* Customer service
* Value (bang for the buck)

I subscribed to NumisMedia Weekly for a few months simply for the education (I'm not a coin dealer or frequent buyer/seller). Their subscription options as described on their website are a bit confusing, but the publication itself (the print version) always arrived on time, was easy to read, and the wholesale prices for U.S. coins (1860 to present which is the range with which I am most familiar) were closer to actual sales prices (realized auction sales - mostly on ebay) than other price guides. I also found their online price guide easy to use (you simply type in an easy-to-remember code that changes once a month to access the 'market' [wholesale] prices), and I like their price trend graphs.

Note that I'm saying the wholesale prices were closer to actual sales prices. Although I find the NumisMedia Fair Market Value (FMV) price guide to be more realistic than the Red Book, PCGS, NGC, and other price guides, it still quotes "What coin dealers hope they can sell at retail" prices, which are higher than actual sales prices (realized auction prices), sometimes significantly so.

~ Mark

P.S. There are two online price guides that try to determine actual sales prices (auction prices realized):

* Coin Help {actual URL not allowed by CCF - I'm sure for good reasons} - "Coin Help used the average value that coins have sold for, in the last few months or the last two or three years, at ebay, Heritage Coin Auctions and other online coin sales. ... Only a few raw coin auctions were consulted for the guide's values, with the majority of the values being compiled from the final bid value of coins graded by PCGS, NGC, ANACS and ICG only."

* CoinSociety - {actual URL not allowed by CCF - I'm sure for good reasons} - "We have tracked 8,141,153 PCGS, NGC, and ANACS graded U.S. coins to build the price guide. ... Coin Society is the only PCGS, NGC, and ANACS U.S. coin price guide that is continuously updated in real time with actual completed transactions. Coin Society prices are not edited or modified and represent the most current prices paid for U.S. coins. ... Coin Society provides the most comprehensive and detailed graded U.S. coin price guide available. We support pricing for all U.S. coins graded by PCGS, NGC and ANACS with all known variations. We also support OGH, CAC, VAM and GSA variations for the appropriate coins."

Mark's Comment: I applaud both websites for their effort to create realistic price guides. However, my impression so far is that they often publish unreliable data, which results in some strange prices, e.g., an AU-55 value three times as high as an MS-65 value. These errors probably result from not reviewing the price (value) lists generated by their computer programs. They also do not indicate whether they report average (mean) sales prices or median prices; and they do not indicate the standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis of price distributions--all of which are important in order to understand the basis and accuracy of their published prices.