DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 15, October 23, 2025

The Retail Price Guide Debate

Desertmoonnm.com

desertmoonnm@yahoo.com

Hi Folks,

            Pricing coins for resale is always a challenge.  In a perfect world, the dealer buys the coin at wholesale, meaning 30% below published retail values. Then the coin is listed for retail on the website for 30% more than what they paid and sells for 20% more.  The seller is happy making 20%.  The buyer is happy because their price was 10% below the retail guide price.  Okay, maybe that works for the kinds of coins that retail guides are created for (or from?).  But, as discussed frequently on coin forums, there are a lot of concerns with such guides, especially for coins that are on the high end of a grade for a given type and that are not traded frequently.   This brings me back to an article about a decade ago by Richard Snow in the Fly-in Club journal – the Longacre’s Ledger, 2016 Vol. 26.2 Issue #97:

‘Systematic Overgrading And How It Affects Coin Values’

https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/578224

Now recall that Mr. Snow was a key originator of putting a sticker on a coin slab and was doing this before CAC began stickering slabs.  In this case, he called it the Photo Seal and it applied to Flying Eagle and Indian Cents.  Mr. Snow points out that not all certified coins are equal.  To get a Photo Seal sticker, Mr. Snow notes that it means that he agrees with the grade on the slab and by inference, those that he has viewed that don’t sticker, he does not agree with the grade on the slab.  It is kind of like, but not quite, the CAC green sticker which is supposed to solely be coins that are strong for the grade.  But the gist for both is that they say they don’t sticker overgraded coins (by their definition) and that includes those with problems that some would say should be in a ‘Details’ holder. 

            The Snow article eloquently discussed this with respect to pricing the key date Indian Cent, the 1877 issue.  He remarked that published retail price guides are primarily based on auction results.  Because not always the most accurately graded coins are going to auction, the coins sell at a discount to ‘market prices’.  Hence, his argument a decade ago was essentially that the overgraded coins were holding back pricing on the correctly graded coins.  And certainly for the high eye appeal, uber pq coins, the pricing in the retail guides are likely far below what they sell for.

            The idea put forth for both the Photo Seal and the CAC stickers was to correct this issue.  However, it does not quite do that.  If one peruses the PCGS retail guide, and the CAC retail guide, both published on their respective websites, the prices listed for a given coin in a given grade can be very different between the 2 guides.  Now in theory, the CAC stickered coins represent the best 30% or so of the coins within a grade.  So the CAC price guide should be higher for retail values than the PCGS guide right?  After all, both guides are largely pricing from auction results.  But no, this is not always the case as frequently the prices in the PCGS guide are higher.  And PCGS presumably takes in pricing from both non-CAC and CACed PCGS coins, while CAC is only taking in pricing of green stickered coins. So how good are these price guides?

            My experience is that the CAC retail guide (created by Greysheet) on their website is a “good estimate” (their words) for some series, but woefully out of line (mostly lower) with the prices on others.  They seem to be very slow to update the upward trending prices for some series. The PCGS guide oft times does not really price in correctly what CACed coins are going for because they are pricing in both non-CAC and CAC stickered coins.  So pricing a strong for the grade coin, and/or one with super eye appeal and/or uber pq, is still like going into the mosh pit and testing your luck.  “Good estimate” at best.  Suffice to say, that almost all of the CACed coins in the market place (i.e. dealer websites), are priced above what the retail guides say they should be priced at.  This reflects what the dealers had to pay for the coins, and based on my experience, we would not be able to maintain Desert Moon Numismatics if we were listing coins at or below the retail price guide prices because we would be losing money.  Hence, what really are the ‘retail’ price guides for? 

            I have gone over auction examples in the past that reflect this issue.  Here are 2 more examples that exemplify the problem with retail price guides.  They are from a Great Collections Auction last week.  They generally keep their auction results proprietary so I won’t link them here, but one can go to their auction archives to verify. 

First up:

1857 Flying Eagle Cent FS-402, Obverse Die Clash with 50C, PCGS MS-64 (CAC Green)

This is a no problem coin, no large hits, no carbon spots, just a very lovely MS64 with a special die clash.  A non-CAC MS64 went for $1560 at Heritage in July, 2025.  A CACed coin went for $2640 in June 2025 at Stacks-Bowers, but IMO not as nice as this GC coin.  This GC coin went for $3494 with BP.  PCGS retail guide is at $2400, the CAC retail guide is at $2700.  So PCGS is I guess taking both the non-CACed and the CACed coins from 2025 (and earlier?) into account, the CAC guide appears to be using the result of the ‘lesser’ CACed coin in the July auction to arrive at a price(?).  Now will PCGS and CAC adjust their pricing upwards to account for the GC auction result? (Probably not because these are proprietary) Bottom line, 3 different coins in terms of quality in the same grade.  3 widely different prices.  So how can the retail guides reflect the pricing of any of these?

Second up:

1870 Indian Cent Pick-Axe FS-303 PCGS MS-65 RB (CAC Green)

This is a coin with no detractions and has a lot of red for an RB copper coin.  A few minute carbon spots but generally a gorgeous coin, and an interesting variety.  I was bidding on it, but as usual was woefully short in my bid on a cool coin. It went for $4204 with the BP.  PCGS retail guide is at $2550, CAC retail guide at $3600.  Again, the large discrepancy I pointed out between values in guides.  But even the higher CAC retail price was 17% lower than what this strong for the grade coin went for.  There are no auction records for this coin in MS65RB PCGS in Coinfacts since 2019, which was at $1680 from Heritage.  So how did they arrive at a retail price of $2550?  Where is the CAC retail guide number coming from?

            So sure, retail price guides for say, an 1883-CC Morgan in MS64 are probably fairly good as this is a coin that trades frequently.  But when it comes to coins that don’t trade often, and/or are super strong for the grade, and/or have super eye appeal, they tend to mostly and highly underestimate their prices.  I see this over and over again.  This at least explains to me why we can’t buy cool coins at price levels below stated retail prices.   In either case Mr. Snow’s article back in 2016, was bang on about this value issue for the better, or accurately graded coins and how the price guides do not account well for these. 

We have 5 cool NEWPS, that are now listed on this website.  Images of some of the newly listed are shown below, and of course you can view them with all of our other offerings at desertmoonnm.com.

Please email us at desertmoonnm@yahoo.com if you are interested in any of our offerings.

Thanks for reading!

Best, DM