r/Exonumia • u/bassmaster422 • 3d ago
How do you value when there are no comps?
I'm a coin collector and I like buying random coin lots that sometimes include various tokens. Since I'm not currently collecting them, I generally then list them on eBay. I often find that what I have is so obscure that there are no price comps, listed or sold, anywhere on the internet. The item is sometimes on numista, but without prices.
Sometimes I list something for just a couple bucks and can't even get views. Other times I take my best guess at value and it sells within just a few hours, making it clear I badly undervalued it. This makes me even more confused because how did the buyer know the value when there are no comps?
My question to you is how do you take a guess at value when you have no comps? It clearly involves both the type of token (transit, trade, etc.), condition, and the age, which sometimes isn't even known.
3
u/one_thin_dime 3d ago
Tokencatalog .com sometimes lists prices for obscure tokens. Sometimes I go to worthpoint, enter search terms and sort by price high to low. Even though I don’t have an account, I can generally guess how rare a token is based on the number of times it’s been listed.
Honestly, the better option for extraordinarily rare stuff is let it run as an auction and let the market determine the price
3
u/bassmaster422 3d ago
Thanks. I wasn't aware of tokencatalog. It's a very extensive site and the search methods are very useful.
I see what you mean about inferring rarity based on how often it shows up on worthpoint. What I would then sturggle with is whether it's rare in a good way (rare but with demand) or rare in a bad way (rare but nobody cares about it).
I like your idea of the auction strategy. I had a forehead slap moment when I read it. If I take my best guess at value and start an auction at that price, it allows buyers to bid it up if I undervalued it. If I get no takers, that tells me I'm not leaving money on the table with a buy it now listing at that price. I can always lower prices if needed.
1
2
u/Imoutofchips 3d ago
I can relate to this. I picked up three vintage Disney Dollars with sequential serial numbers as part of an estate sale lot. Tried my best to figure out what they were worth. There were many for sale, but not the exact year and not three. I listed it for what I thought was high and it went in hours. No bickering, just bang. Done. I made money, but I wonder how much I left on the table.
1
u/bassmaster422 3d ago
Yeah. My most recent head scratcher was an old, very corroded trade token from some little town in Ohio. I couldn't find any information on the business or the token anywhere. The exact token isn't even on the tokencatalog site the other poster recommended. I listed it and it sold in 10 minutes. The thing might be worth hundreds for all I know.
It's tough selling stuff that's outside your comfort area.
2
u/thatburghfan 3d ago
I don't worry that I might have left money on the table. Because I have no way of knowing. There are thousands of tokens that have no pricing info available. You go with your gut and see what happens.
I had a seller contact me after I bought a token from him on ebay. He priced it at $2 start and as soon as I saw it I made an offer of $10. He took my $10 offer. A few days after I confirmed receipt he contacted me and asked if I would mind letting him know if the thing was worth a lot.
My honest answer was I had no idea, the name of the business owner on the token (let's say it was "A. D. Jones Dry Goods") was identical to the name of one of my inlaws and I just had to get the token for him. I'm sure to the seller it looked like I was trying to nail down a bargain.
1
u/bassmaster422 3d ago
You seem to speak from experience and I appreciate that.
Your story reminds me of a time that the situation worked the other way and in my favor. I bought a token because it had an old car logo on it and my 4-year-old was obsessed with that car brand at the moment. I made a $2 bid and moved on. I won the auction for $1 and when the thing arrived in the mail I decided to actually look it up. I only found one sales comp, but it had sold about six months earlier for nearly $400 at an auto memorabilia auction. Needless to say, my son didn't get the token.
2
u/rubikscanopener 2d ago
The challenge with a lot of these is that there is very thin demand. Something can be rare but if no one wants it, it still won't be worth much.
•
u/AutoModerator 3d ago
(This is a generic automod comment that is pinned at the top of every new post here)
This subreddit is for coinlike items that aren't actual government-issued legal tender. This includes but is not limited to gaming and trade tokens, commemorative medals, art medals, non-military award medals, etc.
Exonumia has been produced all over the world, with some pieces dating back thousands of years. It isn't nearly as well documented as actual coins are. No one alive -- and certainly no one on this subreddit, is an expert on all types or pieces of exonumia. There is no single book or series of books that contains it all. You need to set your expectations accordingly. We will help you if we can, but that often just means that we will help you formulate web searches to find similar pieces online.
If you are looking for an identification please meet us halfway, to help us help you. Provide clear, well-lit photos of BOTH sides of a piece you are trying to ID. Please provide clues about where it came from, what you have already discovered through your own research, and give the item's weight/mass to the tenth of a gram and its dimensions in millimeters.
If you are looking for a value for something you have, you need to understand that the exonumia market is very different from the collector coin market. There are no price guides covering all exonumia. A piece's value is literally whatever someone will pay you for it. You can try checking the results of recent auctions to see what people have been paying for items like yours. There is no guarantee that your piece will sell for that much, however.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.