Total Newbie Question...help! - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 7 / Views: 1,195
inchworm1999 New Member United States 2 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 1:23 pm I just started collecting coins very recently. I live in a small town north of Houston, Texas and there's no coin shop for miles. I started out buying a few coins on ebay and Littleton Coin. I'm sort of a general US coin collector I guess...though I'm starting to favor Morgan dollars and 20th century pennies. I bought a lot of 10 mixed, slabbed coins on ebay as one of my first purchases, which I purchased for around $65, I think. It is a pretty varied assortment of US coins. About the same time I bought a nice software program to organize my slowly growing coin collection. The software program, Coin Manage by Liberty Street, assigns coin values when you inventory a coin. It's a great program, I think (though I have nothing to compare it to) - however, I'm not sure where they get their data - how they come up with assigning coin values. I was stunned when one of the slabbed coins, a 1999D Connecticut described as "MS69", was assigned by the software program as having a "value" of $6,500. I noticed the seller had scribbled 6500 in sharpie pen on the back of the slab, too, so this figure must be legitimate (?!!!) There is a nice penny in this lot...a 1957 graded as a MS67RD. It is, indeed shiny and red...WITH AN ASSIGNED "VALUE" OF $9,250!!! Then I came across a 1999P Delaware State Quarter in the same lot, with a stated condition of MS69. This one was assigned a "value" of $7,500, and sure enough, when I turned the slab over, the seller had scribbled this number too on the back of the slab in Sharpie. OK...this just isn't sitting well with me. The State Quarters are very recent coins. MILLIONS upon millions of them were minted, I want to say over 800 million. And so this is my million dollar question. WHERE DO THESE VALUES COME FROM? Does some guy just pick this number out of the air? HOW could this (what I would think) VERY COMMON quarter, be "worth" more than my car? And more than, say, a good condition 1909 S VDB penny? Because I'm PRETTY darn sure if I listed either of these quarters on ebay I couldn't get more than a buck or two for them. Is coin valuing a total fraud? Someone help me, this question is keeping me up at night. Any help is really appreciated. Report this Post to the Staff

TLS5933 Pillar of the Community United States 1703 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 1:36 pm inchworm, First let me say welcome to the CC forums. I guess the first question I would ask is what grading company certified the slabbed coins you won.You will find a lot of slabbed coins on ebay and if their not certified by a reputable grading company such as PCGS,NGC,ANACS or ICG,then the grading might mean almost nothing as there are some very shady people putting coins in slabs and calling them "Graded". Second,I would suggest you get a RedBook of U.S.Coins by R.S.Yeoman. This will give you a baseline to value your coins. I buy and sell coins on ebay all the time and you can find great coins and great deals but you need to be armed with good information on what your buying and be sure who you buy from has exellent feedback and a good return policy. Terry Report this Post to the Staff
inchworm1999 New Member United States 2 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 1:54 pm The slabbing is suspicious. The only identifier is "UNC" the words "guaranteed authentic" and a meaningless serial number. Hologram and bar code are suspiciously absent. The coins are nice looking and don't seem over-graded. But, how could the Coin Manage software AND the seller both agree exactly upon the same figures? They MUST be getting these figures from somewhere. How did they both arrive at the valued figure, I wonder? Seriously, I doubt those quarters are that valuable. I don't know what's going on here. I'll look them up in my 2007 RedBook: 1999D Connecticut quarter: MS65 is $2. 1999P Delaware quarter: MS65 is $3. 1957 MS67RD Penny THIS grade IS NOT LISTED. It does list MS65 valued at fifty cents. Ok, that sounds a lot more like it. But it still doesn't answer my question entirely...where did those inflated values come from? Report this Post to the Staff
Metalman Pillar of the Community United States 7123 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 2:03 pm quote: Is coin valuing a total fraud? Someone help me, this question is keeping me up at night. Any help is really appreciated. Its not so much the values ,, but the grades which determine the value,, and then a step further the population(How many of any particular coin has been graded) at any particular grading point. We need more info ,, Seller and Grading company. Your also welcome to post pics in the grading forum for opinions on the grade of your coins. Metalman Edited by Metalman 01/20/2007 3:22 pm Report this Post to the Staff
SsuperDdave Moderator United States 23522 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 2:19 pm Welcome to the ranks, inchworm1999. The advice you've already heard is accurate; I'll address the price question. PCGS publishes a price guide which, in their own estimation, reflects common retail asking prices by established dealers for the con in question. This number is usually rather inflated over what actually ends up being paid for the coin. Most other "price guides," whether they say so or not, tend to base themselves on PCGS' numbers. Part and parcel of PCGS' prices is the concept of accurate grading according to established grading standards. By that qualification, the coins you list are, indeed, worth significant money due to their rarity in the grade given. However, I don't consider it an even remote possibility that the coins you're holding would stand up to those grading standards at PCGS. Realistically, would the seller let the stuff go for $65 if it were worth thousands? I don't think so. I do not believe that you've been taken. Generally, these alphabet slabs tend to go for prices which reflect their real-world grade value. Yours seems like such a case. The first thing to learn here is, at least in my opinion, a grade of MS69 cannot be assigned without bringing serious magnification onto the graded coin. I wouldn't assign MS67 to a coin without magnifying it. If you can find more than one mark on the coin under 8-10x magnification, it isn't a 69. Report this Post to the Staff
friedmiker New Member United States 13 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 2:37 pm Greetings inchworm from south of Houston.I havent heard of the software your using but I dont see how it could be very accurate since values change all the time. Report this Post to the Staff
Metalman Pillar of the Community United States 7123 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 3:32 pm PCGS price guide is more than a little high !! Without pics of the coins there is no way that a determination of value -VS- the amount you paid ,, to determine if you got your moneys worth,, from your description of the slabs I would say the odds are not in your favor. The price you paid more than likely exceeded market value by about 10X ,actual value. Metalman Report this Post to the Staff
cladking Pillar of the Community United States 2271 Posts	Posted 01/20/2007 5:32 pm It's not impossible you got an excellent deal on these coins, it's merely unlikely. Usually the best coins of this sort will go to Pcgs or even Ngc for grading but some good coins will go to the other slabbers. The P DE doesn't need to be all that great to be worth $65 but the others will need to be very clean and have a good strike. Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps. Report this Post to the Staff
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