Greysheet: Rare Coin Pricing

I subscribed to this app on a monthly basis to see if it was worth the cost. This is my experience so far. First, as a collector of mostly foreign coins, the app is essentially useless. I pay for the higher price sub that is supposed to include world coins. Very rarely does it have the numerous categories populated. So, I end up just searching the internet. Second, the app is sluggish, buffers a lot, and the search function rarely returns anything remotely close to what I enter (unless it’s a US coin). Further, both Greysheet and Red Book are now owned by the same person. That means one company chooses what I get paid from a coin shop when I sell, as well as what I pay when I buy. I have no understanding about how these numbers are reached but the prices favor the industry, not the collector. Now that there’s no competition, I’m very wary of using it as a price guide at all. This, coupled with the lack of world coin info, renders this app, and unfortunately the Red Book, obsolete in my opinion. It just feels like a huge money grab to have to have an expensive subscription to get so little in return, and a monopolized market to boot. I’ve listened to the companion podcast as well. That just solidified it for me. Regarding the Red Book, I can’t stand that the KM#’s were removed. And I don’t even want to know what made someone think it was a good idea to list the classic commemoratives alphabetically rather than by date. I makes zero sense to me that the previous owners of Whitman would have sold their reputation to the only competitor. Now there’s no one to keep anyone honest. What a shame. I’m going back to the, “what I’m willing to pay/sell for” pricing. This app is for the birds.

I’ve been using this app for years. It’s the premier (read: basically only) professional pricing program. It’s useful as a vast database with its relative pricing of US and World coins and bullion, and they expand content periodically. Downsides: You have little choice as it’s essentially a monopoly, and correspondingly expensive. Values tend to be somewhat higher than what coins actually trade at in public venues. It is fast but buggy. When you look up individual items it’s somewhat hit or miss, as they come up quickly about 70% of the time. With time you’ll get better at figuring out what to enter. Searches are complicated by the fact that dozens of unrelated entries can come up at the same time. Customer support is fairly responsive, but be careful about saying the wrong thing, lest you offend the sensitivities of the publisher and they vindictively cut you off (please don’t, I’m trying to be completely honest and fair here).

I have been using the Greysheet App ever since it came out a few years ago. It provides a world of coin pricing literally at your fingertips. Much faster than flipping through magazine pages, you can zip from type to type in seconds and this new version has eliminated some bugs in the previous version. Clicking on any price takes you to a price history that shows and links to real life auction results. Great app!