Whether you are a new or experienced coin collector or someone who has recently stumbled upon a rare find, knowing the accurate market value of your coins is key to evaluating your items’ worth to a coin dealer.
What factors actually influence turning a regular, circulated coin, into a valuable coin? One might answer that the simple laws of supply and demand, as usual, are applied. However, what makes a coin more sought-after than others? And which ones are rare enough that supply scarcity creates a surplus in their prices?
Rarity is definitely one of the most contributing factors to a coin’s inflation, but other elements can be impactful as well. The condition of the specimen, in other words, how visible are the details on its design (which is, on its own, another factor), existing mint errors and mintmark, the mint year, and the bullion value (the precious metal content within), all of those can provide increasing or decreasing conditions to a coin’s pricing.
Many numismatic institutions in the United States and across the world have taken up the service of authenticating, grading, certifying, and valuing coins and created their own comprehensive coin price guide to help collectors, investors, numismatists and coin dealers identify their pieces’ worth.
Below you will find a thorough list of the most popular coin price guides from the aforementioned coin grading services, along with other independent numismatists from coin collecting communities.
- NGC - The Numismatic Guaranty Corporation is a world-renowned grading service for coins, tokens, and medals. Since 1995, they have been the official grading service for the American Numismatic Association, and since 2004, for the Professional Numismatists Guild. They have graded over 49 million items from virtually every present and past country in the world and created extensive guides for US Coins and for World Gold Coins;
- PCGS - The Professional Coin Grading Service was founded in 1985 and is based in California. It is part of the Collectors Universe Incorporation and has graded over 40 million coins, medals, and tokens since its installment. PCGS also has divisions in Europe and Asia;
- Coin World - This is an American numismatic magazine, with weekly and monthly issues covering coins, medals, tokens, and paper money. Their website has curated a list of the retail prices of US coins, world coins, and paper money;
- Heritage Price Guides - Heritage Auctions has composed two guides listing the wholesales and auction prices for both NGC and PCGS graded coins, one coin price guide for beginners, and one price guide for numismatists;
- Coinflation - A guide for knowing how much the precious metal bullion content within a coin is worth (melt value) in relation to its face value, according to the denomination, coin size, and the troy ounce price for each coin's precious metal. It lists the bullion content value for a copper, nickel, gold, or silver coin;
- Greysheet - Also known as the Coin Dealer Newsletter, the company has been providing unbiased wholesale and retail price listings since its first issue in 1963. Their guide includes both rare coin and paper money from around the world. Any coin collector looking for a comprehensive and well-categorized coin price guide for any collectible coin should pay their website a visit and get to know their services;
- NumisMaster - This online search tool is based on decades of the Standard Catalog of World Coin books from Krause Publications. Basic information, such as metal content, weight, and description can be accessed for free, although a subscription is needed to unlock access to coin pricing. They also carry a guide for paper money;
- NumisMedia - NumisMedia is an online community for rare coin dealers and collectors. Their Online Fair Market Value Price Guide is free to any website visitors and is based on reports from all over the numismatic market. They also offer monthly subscriptions for CAC (Certified Acceptance Corporation) and Plus online guides;
- The Red Books - If you are one to prefer physical books, rather than reading on a computer screen, Whitman Publishing has been printing numismatic reference books since 1934. “A Guide Book to United States Coins”, also known as the Red Book, can help you build a great collection of old coins;
- Values of Coins of England and Great Britain by Tony Clayton - This is an index to coin value pages by the denomination of milled coins (produced on a machine press) used in the United Kingdom whose prices are taken from Coin News publications. All price listings are in UK pounds;
- British Coin Price Guide - Another guide for British coins. They have a guide for milled coins (from the middle of the 17th century and forward) and also for hammered coins (prior to the 17th century). Hammered coins are called as much due to the process of hand hammering for the production of coins, before the use of machine presses became standard during the reign of Charles II;
- Swiss Coin Price Guide - A guide to Swiss coins dating back to 1850 mintage. All prices are in Swiss Francs;
- Coin Archives - An archive of over 15 years of auction content from ancient and world coins. It is divided into Ancient Coins from Roman, Greek, Byzantine, and other ancient civilizations, and World Coins, including items from medieval to modern times, from Europe, Asia, Islam, and the New World;
- U.S. Coins Value Advisor - This website compiles historical trends on U.S. coins’ values on a table of information in order to help collectors and coin buyers make informed decisions when purchasing coins they believe might have a better chance of increasing in value over time. The tables are arranged in denominations (dollar coin, half dollar, quarter, dime, cent, half-cent, etc) and mint years. See a sample of the Coin Value Table here.
Check also our blog post on the Top 8 Best Coins to Collect
SD Bullion
If you are willing to start a coin collection or invest in bullion coins, at SD Bullion you can find a range of silver dollar coins, pre 1933 gold coins, ancient coins, and other historical gold foreign coins for sale in a variety of conditions, including Brilliant Uncirculated and certified coins.
Make sure to get in touch with our customer support service in case you have any questions related to our products. Our customer support representatives are available over the phone at 1(800)294-8732 or through our live web chat feature on the lower right hand of your screen.
