How To Read The PCGS Price Guide

First off the PCGS price guide is just a marketing tool to get people to submit coins to their grading service. The real value of any coin is actual prices realized at auction. The answer to your question now that I've completed my rant is the bottom row on any given date is the + (plus) grade row which is a designation on the label for coins with exceptional eye appeal for the grade. The reason some grades are blank is that no examples exist. You never see circulated copper with original red surfaces.

For better quality TPG there is no better price guide than the Heritage site offers on sold coins. For raw, ebay is probably the best.

PCGS and NGC have very high prices although they are achieved on rarer pieces.

Thanks everybody that clarifies things completely!

Thanks also for the advice not to trust those prices. I should have figured a grading company cannot be unbiased.

Is there an unbiased source which tracks current auctions and therefore gives more reliable prices? Or do people just look at ebay completed auctions whenever they are trying to price something?

Thanks again, I really appreciate this forum :-)

If you search for "PCGS prices realized" you will be able to get a full history of various auction results for the coin in question. It includes HA, Stacks, Legend, and some ebay auctions so is a very good resource.

Numismedia FMV guide is very good to compare coins on a relative basis. Just deduct 20-25% or so from the FMV price displayed to get close to actual selling prices. You can purchase a subscription and be able to see dealer prices, CAC, PCGS vs. NGC prices.

You can also go to HA.com and search the archives. And don't forget ebay sold listings.

The key thing to remember on any given day is that if there is no demand for a particular coin at that time that you will not be able to sell it at any price close to the guide prices. And if there is huge demand at that time for a coin it will go much higher than any listed price.

Good luck.

I think Dave700x got it right. The PCGS price list is marketing tool meant to mislead (or con) people into thinking a coin they have is worth a lot more than it actually is. That person then is encouraged to submit coins for grading. It's certainly not cheap for average novice collectors and hobbyists to have coins slabbed. How many graded and slabbed coins are on ebay that have a value under the cost of grading and slabbing?

The questions you need to ask is, "Do I want to trust a company that intentionally misleads people into buying their product? If I submit my coins for grading, will the grade be accurate? Will I get the same coin I submitted returned to me? When dealing with money, no one can reasonable trust anyone else. That's especially true for PCGS. I just don't trust what they do.

It may be great for high end collectors, but for most people it's not worth it. The coin market/business is very tricky. Instead of adding stability and trust with honesty and transparency, PCGS has usually lingered in the area of highly suspect when it comes to honesty.

I was told by a coin shop owner who toured PCGS and Heritage that coin grading is like a assembly line job, lot's of graders mowing through coins and grading from cursory glances at breakneck speeds. He showed me a photo and I agreed, it's not what I had imagined.

PCGS has always been a dodgy and sometimes sleazy outfit. I think they were once caught stealing coins and sending slabbed replicas back to customers. They also created the slabbed coin market to serve their business rather than being a business responding to serve the needs of a market.

They promote the "First Strike" designation, which is itself a highly questionable trick used to generate revenue. I agree that looking at their "price list" is much more confusing now than ever, with all the different designations, almost a waste of time even looking at it for any reason. Seriously, since the mint doesn't number coins it's presses, how can one know if coin was among the first one minted, and how does a flawless coin minted firstly have more value than a flawless coin made last? It's just another gimmick PCGS uses to make more profit.

Heritage is more accurate but you need to follow the advice of others for determine a coin grade. As the saying goes, a coin is worth what someone will pay for it. I'm certainly not going to mail a valuable coin to a company with a reputation for misleading people.

If one can't trust their price list, how can one trust them for anything else? Be wary of PCGS.

Gregory, take everything you hear on the internet with a grain of salt. Whether it is the infallibility of coin grading companies or how they are complete thieves.

More importantly don't let a single source,
who may have an axe to grind, decide for you.

I am not attacking or defending the third-party graders. But keep an open mind. Worst case, the TPGs may not be perfect but they are the best we have to keep some minimum level of consistency and reliability in the business.