We hear it all the time “I’ve done research…” and “It’s selling for….”
The internet is a good tool for getting a sense of value if you know how to use it. Auction sites like Heritage are good for high end items like gold and truly rare coins. Much of what people contact us about is more common – items you’ll find on eBay or Etsy.
What does it mean to do research?
Asking an AI tool what something is worth is a start to your research but not sufficient in and of itself. AI scrapes the internet and the results will provide listing prices for items. Many sites don’t provide sold prices unless you are a paying member, eBay is one exception.
It’s selling for or it sold for?
Asking price is not the sold price. A seller can ask whatever they want but that doesn’t mean someone will pay that.
So how do you get a sense of value?
Since you are on our site reading this on our blog page, you can look at our other blogs. You can also search our extensive database of Appraisals and Questions.
Using eBay – asking versus sold prices
We aren’t offended if you want some other source for validation. Check eBay. Search for the item you want to know more about and under Show only select Sold items and see what things actually sold for. However, you still need to use a little thought and common sense and do a little more research.
For example, we get a lot of calls about Presidential Dollars. They are gold in color and can be confusing if you have never seen one. The prominent dates on the obverse are the years the President served and not when the coin was minted. A simple search of the U.S. Mint website and you can learn all about them.
Recently someone called about their James Madison dollar, selling for thousands of dollars on eBay so I did a search and found a lot of high asking prices. Even after clicking sold, there are some very high sold prices that are clear outliers. We suggest you sort the search results from low to high. I looked at some of these sales in more detail. One seller said the coin was made of .999 gold. I know they are not made of gold but not everyone does. A quick query of the U.S. Mint will tell you Presidential dollar coins were made of mostly copper. If this was a legit sale, I hope the unsuspecting buyer got their money back!
Another thing to check is to look at the feedback the seller has and what else they are selling or have sold. I once found a Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Dollar listed as being certified and the seller was asking tens of thousands of dollars. The photos showed a raw coin and the seller’s other items were adult diapers, no other coins. Would you buy that coin from them?
You can message sellers and ask what is so special about the coin that makes it worth the price they are asking. In the example above, I asked the seller for the certification information and never heard back. Eventually, the SBA listing was gone.
What about all those YouTube vidoes?
A gentleman came into our office with his bicentennial quarter collection. He insisted that one quarter was worth a million dollars because someone in a video on YouTube said it was. We asked if he reached out to that person about his coin. Apparently, in the video, the person says to go to a local coin dealer if you think you found the million dollar quarter. There is no contact information to reach him. When we explained to the gentleman that his quarter was just a quarter, we were at the receiving end of his anger while the YouTuber is making money getting clicks on his videos that provide misleading information. Ask yourself, if someone is putting information out there but isn’t open to questions, what is their motivation?
In my past life, I did some social science research and have a few publications. Marc spent his career teaching science and authoring some books. So please don’t tell us you did your research if you all you did was ask Gemini, or Claude, or Chat GPT, or CoPilot…….
Hope you enjoyed my first blog installment and that this information is helpful to get a sense of how to, and how not to, value your items.
Diane