The Business of Numismatics: April 2025 Greysheet Editor's Letter

The S&P 500 index was minus 1.42% in the month of February, and forward guidance is impacted by negative consumer sentiment. While always difficult to generalize, the various metrics that measure consumer spending and employment play important roles in the market action of securities. The recent rounds of increased tariffs on imports, and the reciprocal tariffs on U.S. exports will contribute to stubborn inflation, which has caused the Federal Reserve to change their tune on interest rate policy. Should the economy weaken significantly we would see a return to interest rate cuts, which will boost equities but would not necessarily be a positive thing for Main Street.

On the wholesale side of the U.S. coin market, all major dealers have adjusted to the price levels that started to come into play back in October-November and this has increased the flow of sales. Numerous dealers I’ve spoken with are finding it easier to buy and sell, because those with retail operations can readily move material at today’s prices. This also follows through to the many weekly—and even daily—auction venues that are selling coins to retail collectors. As I write this in the first week of March, I am able to take a look at sales in our database for the first five days of the month. We have 1,464 public transactions that yielded a total of $1,835,752. Comparing that sales total to the total sum of the Greysheet Bids for those items, we have a +11.5% difference, meaning the coins sold for that percentage over Bid. Ideally, we’d like that number to be closer to 15%, but this is a great way to quickly evaluate where prices are ending up on a rolling seven-day basis. Looking at series with more than one coin sold, among the best performers are NGC-graded Trade Dollars, with five coins sold for a total of $13,620 versus Bid at $8,100 and PCGS-graded Classic Silver Commemoratives, with 17 coins sold for a total of $18,242 versus $10,195 in Bid totals. Using a longer time period and a heavily collected series as an example, since January 1 we have 409 PCGS-graded Walking Liberty halves sold for a total of $667,443, good for 10.5% over Greysheet Bid.

Restricting this report to CAC-only coins, there were 117 coins sold for a total of $236,406. The spread is a little surprising, with a 5% delta between prices realized and Greysheet Bid. Digging a little deeper provides ample explanation, however. Many of our CAC bid prices are formula-based, and this type of reporting informs when we need to adjust the formula on specific coins or series. Secondly, even if a coin has a CAC sticker, if it is darkly or irregularly toned it will not be strongly bid. This has long been a caveat for CAC coins; while technically all there, the emphasis on originality will sometimes result in darker toning. While this ensures that the coin has never been dipped, it can turn off retail buyers.
Although five days’ worth of data is a very small sample size, it provides a solid and quick snapshot of the market and provides insight into what we are looking at when we go to update pricing. There are certainly positives for the rare coin market after the first quarter of 2025.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ian Perez, patrick@whitmanbrands.com