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Is This a Fair Price for My Coin?

Updated 1 October 2026 · CoinsNearMe

Where do you find what a coin actually sold for?

Three places show you what real buyers paid, and all three are free.

1. eBay sold listings. Search the coin, then filter to Sold Items. That's the closest thing the hobby has to a live retail ticker for common and mid-range coins. Look at several sales, and note whether each one was slabbed and by whom.
2. Heritage Auctions' archive at coins.ha.com. Decades of realized prices, searchable by date, grade and certification number. For anything scarce, this is the record.
3. GreatCollections' price archive. The same idea for its own sales, weighted toward certified coins.

The PCGS and NGC price guides are useful for one thing: relative value. Is the 1885-CC worth more than the 1884-CC? The guide will tell you. As an absolute number, treat a guide price as a ceiling. Coins often sell below it.

Dealers price off a different sheet. Since 1963 the dealer-to-dealer market has run on the CDN Greysheet, which lists a Bid (what dealers pay each other sight-unseen for a properly graded coin) and an Ask. When a dealer at a show offers you "back of bid," that's the sheet he means.

How do you price a coin in about four minutes?

1. Identify it exactly. Date, mintmark and variety. A missing mintmark can be the whole value.
2. Pin down the grade. If it's slabbed, the label is your grade. If it's raw, make a conservative estimate. Sellers round up, and buyers know it.
3. Pull the comps. eBay solds and auction records for that issue, in that grade, in that brand of slab.
4. Position for the venue. Selling? Expect somewhere between wholesale and mid-retail, depending on where you sell and your track record. Buying? Anything at or under recent solds is fair.

That last step is where most people get surprised. The same coin has two honest prices: what a collector pays and what a dealer pays. Neither one is a lie.

What share of value should a dealer pay you?

For bullion and silver coins, think in percentages of the metal, because the dollar figures move with spot every day. These are posted dealer bids from September 2, 2026, when gold closed at $4,336.30 and silver at $63.87.

If an offer sits below the bottom of the range for your coin, that dealer doesn't want it. Don't argue. Take it to someone who does.

For bullion the math is quick. A dealer paying "spot minus $62" on a Gold Eagle at $4,336 spot is paying about 98.6%, and that's a good bid.

What makes the same coin sell for more or less?

Grade does most of the work. On the 70-point scale the biggest single price step is from AU-58 to MS-60, the line between a coin with a trace of wear and one with none.

The slab matters less than people think. The 2026 Guide's Grader Comparison Chart matched 579 sold sales of common-date, mid-grade coins in PCGS and NGC slabs. The median gap was under 5%, and PCGS sold higher on half of the eight coins. ICG slabs of classic Morgan dollars sold about 26–27% below the same coin in PCGS.

A CAC sticker moved the price more than the slab brand did. Across 20 matched GreatCollections pairs, a stickered coin sold at a median of 41% more, though the range ran from 31% less to 126% more. One sticker is not a guarantee.

Problem coins sell at a steep discount. Cleaning, scratches and rim damage push a coin into "details" territory, which often halves its value. Never clean a coin before you sell it.

When is a low price a warning sign?

If you're buying and the price is well under recent solds, it's either an opportunity or a trap. Two questions sort most of them out.

First, is it raw when it shouldn't be? Most key dates are presumed fake until a slab says otherwise. When a valuable coin is offered raw, ask why. Sometimes the seller doesn't know what they have. More often they do, and the coin already failed to earn a slab.

Second, is the slab real? Counterfeit slabs exist. Look up the certification number on the grader's own site and compare the photo there to the coin in front of you. Chapter 4 of the guide covers both checks in detail.

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