Are Book Prices Too High?

Book prices are NORMALLY too high and with Krause World coins, are occasionally way out, both too high or too low.

From my exprience, in a VERY general sense, the actual retail price of a numismatic item can be anywhere from about half of the book value to the full book value.

You MUST do a price / value search of any numismatric item of considerable value that you may be considering to buy.

This has always been my approach to justifying the acquisition of any new item of any real value into my collection.
I also consider it prudent to keep all of the paper records of purchases to help with provenance and authenticty.

Price lists are always looking backwards in time. Many prices have been dropping significantly over the last few years so the price lists lag noticeably behind. Think of it like the stock market. It's nice to know what the stock sold for last month/year and sometimes that will get you in the ballpark today; but sometimes it won't. Dealers tend to stick closer to price list value. ebay auctions frequently undervalue coins and are where you'll pick up your 40-60% deals. But you won't find everything going for that price range. There are three (debatable) main price lists available for Canadian coins; Trends, Charlton & http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php. I find it worthwhile checking at least two of them for any given coin to even out some of the discrepancies. But it's a small market (IE relative to US coins) and that means greater price volatility. Remember, price lists are for TPG'd coins and (personal opinion) raw coins sell for an even greater discount.

As with any other collectibles coins can be trendy, by country or denomination or both. For Canadian coins the small penny has done fairly well over the past few moths. As an example I had a run on ebay of 1985 pointed 5 pennies in brown and I would say most fetched trends or close. A 1925 AU50 ICCS sold for $125, etc...Opposite is true right now for the Canadian silver dollars which are price depressed across the board with the rest of the keys and denominations being all over the map. I think book values are going through an adjustment for three reasons. The first is the explosion of online sales and much greater visibility of coins around the country and also around the world giving buyers more coins and more choice. The UK for example is a great source of Canadian coins which only a few years ago would not have been known. The second is the last run of silver to $47. With all the coin and bullion dealers hungry to buy, everyone and their grandma was digging up Canadian silver coinage to sell or see if they have a key coin. Through that process, many and more key year coins were found and saturated the market over the last 4 years. The last of course is the economic uncertainty which always puts the breaks on all collectibles. Interestingly enough I find Russian coins have always done "book" best through thick and thin as it's one of the most widely collected countries world wide.