CoinTalk Members Discuss Whether NGC and Other Coin Price Guides Are Outdated

This article is based on posts in a thread on the U.S. collectors' forum CoinTalk titled "Anyone else notice NGC Coin grade values are seriously outdated?" The date of the posts cannot be confirmed from the source. The views below are the posters' own opinions and experiences, not verified facts or price data.

Barney McRae, who started the thread, wrote that while looking at Morgan dollars, it looked as if NGC had not updated its coin values in eight years or more. The post said this was not limited to low-grade circulated coins and was even more noticeable in MS (mint state) grades.

"Guide prices are lower than reality"

Member geekpryde wrote that all the price guides, not only NGC's, seem very outdated. Around 2014, the member said, they would have described guide prices as higher than street prices. Now they think guide prices are 10 or 20% lower than reality, at least compared with eBay prices, coin dealer prices and GreatCollections.

Member ddddd wrote that they still see coins where the price guide is higher. They said they think the biggest contributor, at least at the lower end, has been the rapid rise in gold and silver prices. A few weeks earlier, they wrote, nearly all common-date Morgans up to MS 63 had more melt value than guide value.

According to ddddd, the market temporarily bottomed out in late 2019 and early 2020, which was probably the last time price guides were consistently high. They wrote that the MS 65 Morgans they were tracking fell to about $85 in the Greysheet, with sales on GreatCollections concluding in the $70-$95 range.

Could AI update the guides?

Member Lehigh96 asked whether AI should make it easy to update the price guides.

ddddd replied that it should be easy for items based on melt prices, but not necessarily for items that use an average of sales, because human intervention is still needed to toss out wrong results. They wrote that PCGS CoinFacts still sometimes links to sales of the wrong coin because an eBay description was incorrect.

geekpryde wrote that AI is not needed; a basic algorithm that takes current metal prices into account would be easy.

Metal value and numismatic premium

geekpryde wrote that, in their experience, for items whose prices depend mainly on the spot price of silver or gold, the numismatic premium tends to shrink for a while when metal prices rise, so the coin's overall price does not change much. The member asked to be corrected if wrong.

Member johnmilton wrote that for lower-grade material that has lost its numismatic value to its bullion value, the number changes daily, "actually by the second." If the Grey Sheet shows little or no difference between EF-40 and MS-62, johnmilton said, one should look at spot prices for gold and silver.

For truly scarce material, johnmilton wrote, the price guides cannot keep up, and the price is whatever bidders in the big auctions pay. johnmilton said they recently bid more than the catalog and more than recent auction results on two 1793 Chain AMERI. cents and came in third both times.

NGC's world coin prices

Member mlov43 wrote that they believe NGC's world coin pricing comes from Krause, and that if the Krause (numismaster.com) listings for certain countries are not updated, they will look outdated.

Calls for comps

geekpryde wrote that the problem applies to all the guides, not just NGC. geekpryde noted that "comps" (recent comparable sales) have taken over sports card pricing and said recent comps with photos need to be built into coin price guides.

geekpryde also wrote of being surprised that no API-based pricing guide pulling data from every major auction house, eBay and select major dealers has appeared yet, pointing to Card Ladder and Market Movers as sports card examples.

Source: CoinTalk, "Anyone else notice NGC Coin grade values are seriously outdated?"