This series of blogs, to be published over the course of the next few months, is a step-by-step guide to purchasing vintage United States gold coinage with relatively low risk. As with any asset class, rare gold coins have considerable downside risk; there are natural peaks and valleys in the long-term permutations of this (or any) market. Risk can be minimalized by following some basic—and some not-so-basic—steps.

2. Learn How to Price Coins

Many new collectors have no idea how to price coins. They see a common coin—like a generic MS62 Liberty Head half eagle—for sale on a TV shopping network—and buy it without having a clue as to what it trades for.

There is no one source which is perfect for determining a coin’s value. For common issues, the Coin Dealer Newsletter (better known as the Greysheet) is reasonably accurate.

For scarcer issues, the best source of pricing data is found from auction prices realized (typically referred to as APRs).

If a moderately scarce issue has appeared at auction in a specific grade three different times in the last year and the prices realized have been $3,000, 3,500, and 4,000, it can be assumed that the coin is worth between $3,000 and $4,000.

But this is not always the case. Let’s say the same issue in a slightly higher grade has three APRs within the last two years for $3,800, $7,700 and $5,500. That’s a broad range but it might be due to the fact that the $3,800 coin is a low-end, washed-out NGC piece, the $5,500 coin is a nicer-than-average PCGS coin while the $7,800 coin is either in an old holder and it will almost certainly upgrade or it is a very nice PCGS/CAC example.

The best source of auction prices realized can be found on the PCGS website. On this site, you can access prices of virtually every US gold coin in every grade which has sold at auction since the 1990s. I find this information to be invaluable, and I refer to this site literally dozens of times per workday.

What about pricing better date US gold coins in a market such as the one we are seeing in 2021 (and likely in 2022 and beyond) where good coins are bringing extremely strong prices?

In many cases, you have to go with your gut in a market such as this. While the common date MS62 Liberty half eagle mentioned above remains easy to price even in this hot market due to its extreme availability (dozens—if not hundreds—of these trade every day), a coin such as an 1855-O half eagle in PCGS/CAC AU55 becomes extremely difficult to price.

A search of auction records shows just two coins graded in 55 by PCGS; one in March 2021 at $8,400 and another back in February 2012 for $7,475. The PCGS Price Guide, which can be found in PCGS Coinfacts, suggests a value of $10,000, which makes a non-CAC coin worth around what the last one brought (in March 2021). The rarity of this issue in choice AU55 can be confirmed by the fact that CAC has approved just a single coin in this grade along with two finer (one in AU58, the other in MS61). In my opinion, the 1855-O is worth at least $12,500. Would I pay $15,000? Probably not, but I wouldn’t look at this as an overpay by a collector if the coin was extremely high-end for the grade.

One final comment in closing. Published price guides don’t take into account the fact that for every grade there are coins which are nice and which deserve to sell for the full price in this guide—or even more—while there are other coins which are worth significantly less. I see disingenuous pricing all the time where a dealer is offering an NGC coin at a discount to its PCGS Price Guide level, but which fails to mention that an NGC graded example of this issue is valued at 20-30% less based on auction trades.

Featured Inventory