Spink/any Price Guide Figures!

[Coinery 1,153]

Just a simple observation, and I'm guessing this is how the whole machine works????

Elizabeth I 6d...priced in Spink at £xxx, covering a range of 6d's from the most common type to the rarest!

I've noticed good quality, but commoner types falling well below the Spink price guide, yet seen equal grade (but rarer) coins go for £500+

The above factors are the reason Spink's 'guide' valuations sit where they do...at least with the vagarities and rarities of hammered coinage!

Not sure why I haven't had that literary expressive eureka moment before?

[Peckris 579]

Believe it or not, that's how they used to do milled as well, especially early milled. I have the vague idea that the 1968 "Part 2" Guide (from 1816 to date) was the first to do values by date - and even then most varieties were not included apart from the obvious like H and KN and LT etc.

[Coinery 1,153]

It's bizarre to have been applying the price-guide to so many of the decisions I've made, and only just having the penny drop on the true and actual dynamics of it! Reminds me of a moment when a relief maths' teacher turned up at our school and unravelled a great mathematical mystery to me, just from presenting it with a new twist that fitted my wiring...I'll never forget that!

[Nicholas 51]

I'd say Mr Skingley has a fair bit of maths and calculation involved with countless numbers of cross checks from one period to another with a fair whack of market influences and updates as well. It is one of my favourite books to read at bedtime. .

[Coinery 1,153]

I'd say Mr Skingley has a fair bit of maths and calculation involved with countless numbers of cross checks from one period to another with a fair whack of market influences and updates as well. It is one of my favourite books to read at bedtime. .

Yes, I do like it! It just took a while for the penny to drop, and for me to calculate that one hammered Spink ref can cover 50+ varieties of one coin and numerous mint marks, common and rare alike!

Rare mint mark of same S number sells £500

Common mint mark of same S number sells £140

Ref guide so far = £320

Simples!

Edit: moral of the story is don't expect to get £320 for your common mint mark, just because the Spink's guide values it 'group' as such!

Edited February 15, 2014 by Coinery

[Nicholas 51]

I always thought that spink just priced the most common variety. If a rare variety is listed in the catalogue it is priced separately. No blending.

[Accumulator 52]

I'd say Mr Skingley has a fair bit of maths and calculation involved with countless numbers of cross checks from one period to another with a fair whack of market influences and updates as well. It is one of my favourite books to read at bedtime. .

Yes, I do like it! It just took a while for the penny to drop, and for me to calculate that one hammered Spink ref can cover 50+ varieties of one coin and numerous mint marks, common and rare alike!

Rare mint mark of same S number sells £500

Common mint mark of same S number sells £140

Ref guide so far = £320

Simples!

Edit: moral of the story is don't expect to get £320 for your common mint mark, just because the Spink's guide values it 'group' as such!

That doesn't sound right, Stuart. Surely a rarity weighting needs to be included in the algorithm?

Here's a puzzle for the weekend:

If there are two varieties of a coin and the rarer, worth £100, appears 1/10 of the time, while the more common, worth £10, appears 9/10 of the time, show that the weighted average value is £19. :-)

Shouldn't this be the Spink value?

[Nicholas 51]

Id think that Spink would list this coin as £10 if no varieties are listed. They may state that rarer varieties exist.

[Peckris 579]

It's bizarre to have been applying the price-guide to so many of the decisions I've made, and only just having the penny drop on the true and actual dynamics of it! Reminds me of a moment when a relief maths' teacher turned up at our school and unravelled a great mathematical mystery to me, just from presenting it with a new twist that fitted my wiring...I'll never forget that!

It took a foray into dealing to learn this lesson. Before then, I considered Seaby / Spink to be the absolute 'bible' on coin values, and never even queried that if that were so, then why did CMV and the Year Book exist? It was buying and selling that taught me to take even "the bible's" valuations with a certain pinch of salt. A rough guide, certainly, but not to be taken too literally.

I'd say Mr Skingley has a fair bit of maths and calculation involved with countless numbers of cross checks from one period to another with a fair whack of market influences and updates as well. It is one of my favourite books to read at bedtime. .

Yes, I do like it! It just took a while for the penny to drop, and for me to calculate that one hammered Spink ref can cover 50+ varieties of one coin and numerous mint marks, common and rare alike!

Rare mint mark of same S number sells £500

Common mint mark of same S number sells £140

Ref guide so far = £320

Simples!

Edit: moral of the story is don't expect to get £320 for your common mint mark, just because the Spink's guide values it 'group' as such!

That doesn't sound right, Stuart. Surely a rarity weighting needs to be included in the algorithm?

Here's a puzzle for the weekend:

If there are two varieties of a coin and the rarer, worth £100, appears 1/10 of the time, while the more common, worth £10, appears 9/10 of the time, show that the weighted average value is £19. :-)

Shouldn't this be the Spink value?

Absolutely not. It would be 100% misleading and would make buyers of the common variety - paying £10 or heaven forfend £12 - think they had got a bargain, when in fact they had not. As Nicholas says, either just publish the standard 'normal' variety and mention there are rarer varieties too, or give separate prices for both. The former method was the early Seaby practice until 1968, and is still the Spink practice for much of the hammered and ancient content.

[TomGoodheart 401]

This is perhaps why I don't feel inclined to rush out and buy the latest edition every year. In fact mine is from 2006. I know from experience that with rare varieties that have their own reference number the price is adjusted when an example sells and then just sits there until next time.

The main reason I keep my own records based on coins that have sold. However, with over 1300 records of just the Tower shillings of Chas I, I can see that might just not be a practical option for those who collect more widely ...

As for pricing, well we all know that, for particularly nice examples of even common coins, guide prices just go out the window.

I presume you use sites like coinarchives.com and mcsearch.info Stuart?

[Rob 3,152]

The wide variety of prices paid on ebay, at coin fairs and at auction makes pricing anything quite difficult. Combine that with collector inertia to price changes (because we all remember such and such selling for x pounds) and arriving at a fair price is extremely difficult. As a seller, you can always get rid of something by pricing it low, but whether this a fair market price is a moot point.

I think the moral of the story is not to get too hung up on any price given and if you like the coin, buy it, within reason.

[Peckris 579]

The wide variety of prices paid on ebay, at coin fairs and at auction makes pricing anything quite difficult. Combine that with collector inertia to price changes (because we all remember such and such selling for x pounds) and arriving at a fair price is extremely difficult. As a seller, you can always get rid of something by pricing it low, but whether this a fair market price is a moot point.

I think the moral of the story is not to get too hung up on any price given and if you like the coin, buy it, within reason.

If the buyer and seller mutually agree that's the price of the transaction, then it's fair. Whether that means it's also 'realistic' or 'normal' or 'what you could expect to pay', is a whole different matter.

[Accumulator 52]

Absolutely not. It would be 100% misleading and would make buyers of the common variety - paying £10 or heaven forfend £12 - think they had got a bargain, when in fact they had not. As Nicholas says, either just publish the standard 'normal' variety and mention there are rarer varieties too, or give separate prices for both. The former method was the early Seaby practice until 1968, and is still the Spink practice for much of the hammered and ancient content.

I completely agree. Was being slightly tongue in cheek.

[Coinery 1,153]

I always thought that spink just priced the most common variety. If a rare variety is listed in the catalogue it is priced separately. No blending.

The rare varieties are certainly not listed separately, at least not in the hammered section! If you look at S2578B which is an Elizabeth I sixpence, singled out in Spink simply for its bust change to 6C. However, there are 12 major obverses and 38 major reverses for this Spink number, separated by PM's, overmarks/over dates/unmarked etc. I really don't think you can mix up tuns, hands, anchors and cyphers in the same Spink number and ever hope to arrive at a standard value?

The Spink guide for the above number 'feels' like it could possible represent the total sale value of coins sold within this category divided by the number of coins included. I don't think there's any algorithm or decision to include only the commonest type?

Using the above number again, I'd typically expect to pay a third less (or even more [less that is]) than the Spink value for a nice pm hand 6d, whereas, for an anchor or a cypher, you could easily double/treble the Spink book value! If I were to guesstimate the ratios of the various PM/overmarks etc. of S2578B that have been sold, and divided it by the number of coins themselves, I reckon you'd be somewhere close to the figure they quote!

As I said, it's one of those silly eureka moments for me!

[Rob 3,152]

Given we are all aware of the impracticalities of a single price in a guide representing a series across the board, surely the best advice has to be research your own little area. If prices have increased by 10% over the past year, add on 10% to what you would have paid a year ago. Whether you use a price guide or not is irrelevant. Buyers presumably will quote the lower ref. value, whilst sellers the highest figure. Somewhere in the middle it should be possible to agree, but any two transactions are still likely to differ.

If you all want fixed prices for a given coin, the TPGs already offer this service by pricing a specific grade at $xxx, otherwise known as roughly twice a raw graded coin's value. All the debate in the world won't change the fact that unless individual varieties are specifically priced, any number has to be plucked out of the air. Just accept it and move on. All this is just un-necessary holding hands.

[Peter 615]

Know your subject and use your knowledge.

99.9% of the time you will have an advantage.

[pokal02 44]

Spink's Dec 13 circular was interesting. They are selling a Henry VI York groat in Fine for £3000. Their own Coins of England published about 2 weeks before gave the value in F as £1350. So either:

* the value of this coin has more than doubled in 2 weeks

* they seriously undervalued it in C of E

* they are taking the **** trying to get a silly price for it.

* it could be a rare variety (I don't think so - it's rare anyway).

That was the worst example, there were many others (Henry 8 Bristol shilling GF for $4,500, 1554 shilling VF £2,400 etc).

Having said that, I do tend to pay attention to C of E more than anything else when assessing how much to pay for a particular coin (although will certainly pay more if I think it's necessary). I think it's probably the most accurate if the many sales of overgraded coins are excluded.

[Coinery 1,153]

Interesting observation that, pokal!

[sound 25]

So what's the bible on mint marks and types? Because if you don't have the info to hand you are stuck with Spink prices.

Regards

Mark

[Rob 3,152]

Spink's Dec 13 circular was interesting. They are selling a Henry VI York groat in Fine for £3000. Their own Coins of England published about 2 weeks before gave the value in F as £1350. So either:

* the value of this coin has more than doubled in 2 weeks

* they seriously undervalued it in C of E

* they are taking the **** trying to get a silly price for it.

* it could be a rare variety (I don't think so - it's rare anyway).

That was the worst example, there were many others (Henry 8 Bristol shilling GF for $4,500, 1554 shilling VF £2,400 etc).

Having said that, I do tend to pay attention to C of E more than anything else when assessing how much to pay for a particular coin (although will certainly pay more if I think it's necessary). I think it's probably the most accurate if the many sales of overgraded coins are excluded.

Several questions need to be taken into consideration when pricing rarities. Where did the coin come from? If purchased privately, then there will have been no sales data to back up the CofE price and may additionally reflect the cost to them in acquiring a coin for which there have not been any recent transactions. As I understand it, there is a furious amount of number crunching done after the September sales, which are then entered into the database to provide a revised figure for December publication.

In the case of the York groat, Jon purchased it out of the Brady sale for a hammer price of £2300 (£2852). For it to return to the market with a price tag of £3500 is not unreasonable. In the case of very rare pieces, it is always a case of how much someone is willing to pay, rather than adhering to the book. They tend to work on the principle of ignoring the prices for those where people with bottomless pockets slug it out to the bitter end, as they tend not to be indicative of prices in general. You can however find that rare pieces will outdo the book as a matter of course, however low the price is.

When discussing the revised prices for the groats post Brady, it was clear that some of the sections which had not been internally revised for a while needed doing so. In the current market, anything decent will do well, anything decent and rare even better. This comes into the latter category. With so little data available, and as described, known from only 15 examples, I think it is a case of the downward adjustment in the price being too severe. The Brady sale had its fair share of chased coins which meant inflated prices over and above the expected price. To compare with another repriced example, I bought one coin in Brady - the Rawlins signed 1644 F2 groat. As far as I am aware there are only two examples - one in the BM and mine. The Oxford groats were all priced around 700 give or take a bit prior to Brady. Mine is now at £1350, but I paid just over £1750 for a coin that's a bit less than VF and it appears to be the only one. Is the book too low? Should prices be double? Clearly I wouldn't sell the coin for around the £1K mark which would be what the book suggests I do. Any relisting would have to be around a minimum of £2500-3000. What cannot be excluded is the ability of the market to produce multiple examples of rarities once a high price is achieved in a sale. Suddenly the unique coin is clearly less than unique, which means it is always better to err on the side of caution. Consequently, in the knowledge that I would have gone a bit higher than I did, the price was set at £1350. In the current climate it is obvious when a coin is being chased. The difficult/impossible bit is to come up with a number which satisfies all trains of thought, as deciding the uncompetitive price requires you to assume that the people who buy the coin don't particularly want it. Sort that one out!!

The number crunching is sub-contracted to some extent.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Rob

[Accumulator 52]

Fascinating, Rob. Sounds like Spink need to find a postgraduate mathematician looking to do a thesis on predictive analytics and regression techniques applicable to the study of numismatic valuation! They should be able to keep them very busy!

[Rob 3,152]

It's just a case of working out what the prices should be for rarities that's the problem. You can easily take an average of common things because everyone is familiar with them and demand is quite easily satisfied. With rarer coins you are always going to operate at a premium to an uncompetitive price because collectors are, well..... competitive beasts.

I think that as a rule, all the guides keep the prices of common things high because they are omnipresent, and people want to maximise their return on something that is essentially easy to obtain. A somewhat greyer area is that of prices determined by desirability. This is amply played out by the penny collectors, yet groats (which also have quite a good following) can be bought for a fraction of the price paid for a 'slim 3' 1863. I know this is only one example, but at the base level things are reasonably balanced where a few hundred will buy a good quality common groat or a nice common bun head penny. The problems come when you have virtually unobtainable (as in the case of the York groat above) or historically desirable pieces. Richard III groats are not rare, though usually touted as such. The usual figure of £1500-3000 is based entirely on demand for the name. The late Henry VI groats are much more difficult to find in both good condition and in total, yet fail to match the former in price by a wide margin.

[Peckris 579]

It's just a case of working out what the prices should be for rarities that's the problem. You can easily take an average of common things because everyone is familiar with them and demand is quite easily satisfied. With rarer coins you are always going to operate at a premium to an uncompetitive price because collectors are, well..... competitive beasts.

I think that as a rule, all the guides keep the prices of common things high because they are omnipresent, and people want to maximise their return on something that is essentially easy to obtain. A somewhat greyer area is that of prices determined by desirability. This is amply played out by the penny collectors, yet groats (which also have quite a good following) can be bought for a fraction of the price paid for a 'slim 3' 1863. I know this is only one example, but at the base level things are reasonably balanced where a few hundred will buy a good quality common groat or a nice common bun head penny. The problems come when you have virtually unobtainable (as in the case of the York groat above) or historically desirable pieces. Richard III groats are not rare, though usually touted as such. The usual figure of £1500-3000 is based entirely on demand for the name. The late Henry VI groats are much more difficult to find in both good condition and in total, yet fail to match the former in price by a wide margin.

I could only accept this argument where the publishers are also dealers (qua Spink). Where there is no axe to grind - CCGB, CMV, The Year Book - what's in it for them? I presume the sales of neither CMV nor Seabys suffered during the long stagnation of the mid-80s to mid-90s, even though collectors must have been buying those guides more in hope than expectation.

Also, don't ignore the distorting effect of type collectors, who will keep the values of - e.g. - 1902 coins higher than perhaps they merit, simply because most type collectors know that's the most cost-effective date when collecting Ed VII. On the other hand, if you're only discussing hammered I'll back out, as I have little interest in or knowledge about that area of collecting.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Peckris

[Rob 3,152]

I think we will have to agree that there is no simple answer to any of the prices quoted. I don't know how CCGB, CMV or CYB compile their data, other than I suspect, to take a rough average of the data supplied by the people who collect the numbers. Where do people do their sampling? Do they all adjust a bit based on gut feeling? I don't think any of them have an axe to grind as collectors are not forced to buy at any price. It has been quite obvious that alongside the highly priced pieces are a considerable number of bargains in coins of average quality. The market focusses on different qualities that vary with time, but only a crystal ball could forecast these in advance. As most collections are made up of coins of average quality, a little patience when buying will not result in a huge uplift in prices paid as long as you don't expect to always find the rarity at the price of the common variety instantly. (Instant gratification)

Spink will almost certainly exclude data from eBay, whereas I think it likely that there will be some contribution from this source for the others. eBay can distort figures lower for the higher value items, just as the prestige sales can do the opposite. In the case of common or low value items, eBay is probably closer to the mark - if you are prepared to risk bidding on the basis of dodgy photos and descriptions and assume that most people will underbid on principle. As a source, eBay is too inconsistent in prices obtained to give a good indication of where the market is at for any item in a given grade.

A bigger influence than the guides on pricing is the collector. Most people have a list of things they need, resulting in a tendency to pay a bit more when the opportunity arises to fill a gap. The longer the gap has existed, the more inclined they will be to pay more. The specialist collector will exacerbate this price differential, seeing a die combination that is known to be rare for example is likely to result in a willingness to push the boat out. Another factor in recent times is the volume of money held in non-interest bearing accounts that has been desperately searching for a new home. Since the banks went tits up 5 years ago, there has been a marked increase across the board in the prices paid for any asset as people scramble to diversify. At the end of the day, price guides are no more or less dysfunctional than coin collectors, TPGs, vendors of the finest tulips or any of the Ponzi schemes that have existed. Know your area and work within your budget relative to your aims. Knowledge is the key to pricing.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Rob

[Gary D 76]

Spink's Dec 13 circular was interesting. They are selling a Henry VI York groat in Fine for £3000. Their own Coins of England published about 2 weeks before gave the value in F as £1350. So either:

* the value of this coin has more than doubled in 2 weeks

* they seriously undervalued it in C of E

* they are taking the **** trying to get a silly price for it.

* it could be a rare variety (I don't think so - it's rare anyway).

That was the worst example, there were many others (Henry 8 Bristol shilling GF for $4,500, 1554 shilling VF £2,400 etc).

Having said that, I do tend to pay attention to C of E more than anything else when assessing how much to pay for a particular coin (although will certainly pay more if I think it's necessary). I think it's probably the most accurate if the many sales of overgraded coins are excluded.

Some time ago Spinks had a 1965 Satin proof crown for sale, I missed it at the time but that was also at twice their book value.