Coin valuation can be tricky. Most information from an Internet search is unreliable. This section explains why – and outlines how to find good price info.
This section starts with values for some frequently-requested coins, then outlines a strategy for finding a value for any coin. Various coin price guides are also discussed.
Coin values often depend on rarity, condition, and demand. Also, value is a range, not a set price – e.g., dealers will pay lower to make a profit, and you’ll get the best price selling directly to collectors.
Note that value requests for error coins are no longer allowed. Please post to r/coinerrors instead.
Values for Frequently Acquired Coins #
Values below are for circulated, common-date coins without errors or damage. Rarer dates, uncirculated coins, and coins with rare errors can go for more. Damaged coins often go for less.
US wheat cents (1909-1958): about 5 cents.
Here’s a good resource for rarer Wheat cents and their values.
1943 steel cents: about 10-25 cents. More info.
US Indian head cents (1859-1909): about 50 cents – $1.
US buffalo nickels (1913-1938): readable dates are worth up to $1; dateless specimens are worth up to 25 cents.
US silver coinage is worth its silver value, plus a small collector premium. Silver values can be tracked on Coinflation.com. This includes:
Half dollars, quarters, and dimes from 1964 and earlier, which are 90% silver;
Half dollars from 1965-1970, which are 40% silver; and
Nickels from 1942-1945 that have a large mint mark above Monticello on the reverse, which are 35% silver.
US Morgan dollars (1878-1921) and Peace dollars (1921-1935) are 90% silver and are worth $25-30. There are many rarities in these series that are worth a little or a lot more, so check completed auction listings for comps (more on this below).
Any random US coin from 1965 onward is worth face value (except half dollars from 1965-1970 as noted above).
Bicentennial coinage (dated 1776-1976) is worth face value, unless marked with an “S” mint mark — it could be 40% silver and worth its silver value.
“W” mint mark quarters are worth a premium due to rarity.
UK 50 pence coins from 1997 onwards are worth face value unless rare. This website lists rarer designs and approximate values.
Any random non-US coin from the 1970s onward (this includes all Euro coins) is either worth face value if the particular currency is still used, or has minimal collector value (e.g., around 25 cents).
Value requests for ancient coinage is better answered by our friends at r/AncientCoins.
If you think your coin has an error that might give it value, read FAQ 2 on errors first.
If you need to identify your coin in order to evaluate it, read FAQ 1 on coin identification.
General Strategy for Finding Coin Values #
A coin is worth whatever someone wants to pay for it. Consistent demand for many coin types allows us to give the values in the list above. But for any given coin, the best strategy for finding the market value is to see what people are paying for it.
Which means recent, completed auction listings are the best guide. But it’s not as simple as visiting your favorite auction website and searching for your coin. These websites have varying formats, so the search results often need to be filtered to get good info.
We’ll use eBay as an example. On eBay, follow this strategy:
Search for your coin (same denomination, year, and mint mark).
Filter to see only the SOLD or COMPLETED listings.
Also filter to see only the AUCTION listings.
Disregard listings from sellers with extremely low feedback.
Finally, focus on listings for a coin in similar condition to yours.
These filters are needed because of eBay’s setup. Sellers can ask any price they want – and asking prices are meaningless, since only selling prices show what buyers are paying. And many sellers ask unrealistic prices, e.g. if they’re uninformed or trying to run a scam.
Also, sellers of fixed-price or best-offer items can relist their items, which can “pollute” the search results with asking prices. Finally, unscrupulous sellers can use shill bidders to artificially inflate a selling price. These measures help eliminate these bad results.
Sometimes there’s no results. This often means your coin isn’t valuable enough to sell individually on eBay. Or it could mean that no one has sold your coin recently.
Either way, this example strategy illustrates the importance of understanding the auction website(s) you choose to use for coin values, and being smart about interpreting the results.
Other reliable coin auction websites include Heritage and Stack’s Bowers (for higher-end coins) and Great Collections (for graded coins).
Why Googling is a Bad Strategy for Finding Coin Values #
It’s easy to get excited about a coin’s potential value by asking your favorite search engine what it’s worth. This is unfortunate, because the results you’ll get are mostly unrealistic.
Why? The answer depends on the source.
- Selling websites. Internet searches include results from selling websites that try to attract views – eBay, Etsy, etc. Sellers on these platforms can ask any price they want – which often are completely unrealistic. You can pick any coin in your pocket and probably find someone trying to sell it for thousands of dollars. It’s likely the seller isn’t savvy about coin values – or is looking to scam someone. But these results may give the impression that the coin is worth that much – unfortunately, it’s not! As noted above, it’s selling prices that set an item’s value, not asking prices.
- Social media and tabloids. One way that YouTubers, TikTok’ers, and other users of such platforms compete for views is by sharing what people want to see – like, a claim that pocket change can be worth thousands. Online tabloids are similar. Hype about supposedly mega-valuable coins can be based on a kernel of truth – but this type of content often blurs important details in order to get more attention from folks who hope to strike it rich. Treat everything you see online with skepticism until you can verify it.
- User error. Even correct info can be confusing to someone new to coins. Make sure you’re understanding precisely which coin, or version thereof, is supposedly worth a lot. For example, even though a certain common coin may only be worth face value, there may be an extremely rare variant of that same coin worth much more. Also, coins that are in flawless condition can go for a high price, even though circulated versions are worth only face value.
It’s best to use the strategy outlined above for finding coin values, rather than an internet search. But if you’re trying to verify info, ask the sub and we’ll point you in the right direction.
Notes on Certain Price Guides #
There are many coin price guides. Some are good, some are bad, most are a mixture. This section explains why. Spoiler: NGC’s price guides are recommended.
Online grading service price guides are based on auction prices, but PCGS’s skews values by including only graded specimens – whereas NGC’s does not. Either way, they are useful for determining what’s special, and can also establish a common frame of reference – for example, many Numista users use the NGC World Coin Price Guide to assign values to coins being traded.
Online price guides on hobby websites (Spruce Crafts, the Fun Times Guide, CoinTrackers, etc.) tend to hype and/or oversimplify values to attract readers. Other online price guides should be treated with skepticism, as many are authored by bots, or exist only to generate ad revenue, or don’t provide sources for their values.
Coin database websites such as Numista and USACoinBook feature coin values. Those at Numista are user-provided and often are not vetted or updated – so although some may be reliable, there’s no way to determine which. USACoinBook values are based on its own auction listings.
The Greysheet is a fee-based US and World coin price guide used by dealers. Many dealers as well as collectors use this reference as a guide, but not as gospel.
Whitman’s Red Book, which prints a new edition annually, has long been the standard guidebook for US coins. However, it is far more reliable for its coin information rather than its values, which often represent high retail prices – and which are over a year old at publication.
Some coin ID apps (e.g. CoinSnap) provide coin values based on a user’s photo of a coin. These have been found to be wildly inaccurate.
Why are auction sites, like eBay, listing so many different (high) prices for my coin? #
Let’s tackle this question head on, with some examples, and illustrate why using sites like eBay are a bad idea for getting values, unless the coin is listed as “sold”.
Example: Say I have a new, 2022 American Women Quarters Program – Sally Ride quarter. I then proceed to eBay and look up the quarter, using a search term like “2022 sally ride quarter”. I see the following list of eBay items at the time of writing this text:
2022 P DR SALLY RIDE AMERICAN WOMEN QUARTERS NEW WHASHINGTON OBVERSE BU – $100.00+$3.96 shipping, 0 bids (or Best Offer)
2022 P Dr. Sally Ride Quarter MAJOR ERROR Ghost Comet Quarter Tail “No Tail” – $100.00 Buy It Now+$3.96 shipping
2022P M S Sally Ride Quarter/ Ghost Comet / “IN COD WE TRUST”/tons Of DD ERRORS – $100.00 bidding, $250.00 Buy It Now+$4.02 shipping, 0 bids
…you get the point. Now, why on earth are these coins all saying $100 for the price, and some even say “Error” in the title? Well, eBay works on the principle of “asking price”. What does this mean? This means that any person, whomever it may be, can ASK what they want for any item being offered on eBay, but that DOES NOT mean that the item will SELL for that price. So, you may then be asking yourself, “why does eBay do things this way?”
The simple answer is, eBay, and most other auction sites, work on an “ask high, reduce price if no sale for initial price, keep reducing price until sold” model.
Meaning, that you will see as high of a price as the seller wants to possibly get, until the item has not sold for several months (if it does at all) and then the price plummets as the seller realizes what they have is not worth what they are asking for. So, all those listing titles you see up there?
They are NOT “sold” prices. They are ONLY “asking” prices. None of the above listings have sold at all.
So now, as an exercise, let’s see what listings have SOLD and for what price. To do this on eBay is simple, go to the left-hand side of the search results on desktop (or swipe in from the right/click the “Filter” button on mobile), and look for the toggle that says “Sold Items”.
Once you do that, you can see some different listings, all that have ended, and have the sold price listed in green font. Let’s see what we can find for sold “2022 sally ride quarter” listings…
RARE 2022-D Dr. Sally Ride First Strike Graded Coin Money PCGS MS66 Quarter USA – $6.50 (6 bids) +$4.99 shipping
2022 S “Sally Ride” American Women Quarter Series Brilliant Uncirculated BU! – $6.98 (Buy It Now)+Free shipping
2022-S San Francisco Brilliant Uncirculated American Women Sally Ride 25C Coin! – $3.95 (Buy It Now)+$1.50 shipping
Much better! And way different (much lower) prices! If I look for a listing that has a price of over $100, sold, then I see a roll of 40 and a mint sealed (in original government packaging, or OGP) set of 3 quarters from each mint (Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco). So, as you can see, it’s not easy to get these “attractive” prices for something as common as a Sally Ride quarter, with a mintage of 278 million coins.
But I saw this specific listing go for ${a really big dollar amount}! What gives? #
The most likely possibility is that someone got fleeced. They were not a collector, and they got taken for a ride. An expensive ride. There are, of course, other possibilities, but they will not be mentioned here for brevity reasons.
How can I tell if a listing/seller should be trusted? #
We’ll keep this question’s answer brief because there are whole books waiting to be written about this topic, but in summary:
Check feedback. Every time you sell or buy on eBay, you get points called feedback. The more feedback you have, the more likely you’re to be trustworthy and not a scammer. The feedback is the number next to the seller’s username. The higher the number, the higher the trust, most of the time. Feedback is not a “be all, end all” situation, however, as some people can have extremely high feedback and still rip you off potentially. Do your own due diligence, research the seller, and if they are a larger entity, see online reviews on other sites for their storefront on eBay.
Check the price of the listing you see against other sold listings for the same (or similar) coins. Say I see a listing for $1000 for a coin and the other sold listings for that same (or similar) coins are saying sold for $900. This might be a situation where the seller is looking to earn a small premium on top of the “fair price” for that coin. If the other listings are sold for lower than that, say, $600 instead, then it might be someone looking to profit off the ignorant. If the sold listings are even lower, like, less than $50, and they’re still asking for $1000? Most likely, it’s a scam.
Check the listing’s photos. Make sure you can see the coin you’re actually buying! If all you see is a generic photo or one photo on many other listings, more than likely the seller is hiding something they’d rather not mention in the photos/listing. But also, keep Occam’s Razor in mind. If the seller is selling a 2022 Sally Ride quarter and they’re using a generic photo, that’s probably because they have hundreds of that same coin and just want to get them all out of there. But if it’s a one of a kind coin or one that has a high price tag, make sure the coin you see is the coin you get.