Valuations are off and Numista should remove them

I propose Numista needs to consider more sources for price estimations. Right now, from what I understand, is that they are using average of reported prices from users. I see many problems with it. Let me iterate a few that comes to my mind. First, this system is fair as long as members are maintaining the honor code and are not purposefully skewing the prices. Another problem is that most of these reported prices were reported in the past. They are not true indicative of current price points. Say someone who bought a Morgan Dollar for $20 a few years ago is now paying upwards of $70 for the same coin. Many factors have changed like USD inflation and increasing value of precious metals. Not to mention more and more people are getting into collecting coin because we are all are bored during covid times (maybe). I get it that Numista encourages to use these valuations as estimations only. But let’s be honest here. We have run into buyers who cites Numista “low” prices all the time at Ebay or whatever platform you’re selling on. My suggestion is that either Numista factor in other streams of data to get fresh price points so that they can start keeping an historical record or they simple remove this feature altogether. Some information is incomplete information and it is wrong information. Thoughts?

It's worth recalling that the only real "value" of a coin is whatever the last buyer paid for it. Value or worth are not inherent properties of anything; they're created by human action. If I buy a coin for $50, that is its value. If I sell that same coin one hour later for $5000 or $0.05, that then is its value. Every other assigned value is a guess. Those guesses might be based on decades of relevant experience and sales data, offered prices for metal content, or they might be based on nothing more than a gut feeling. The former two types of guesses are probably more likely to be useful than the latter, but all are guesses. You might agree or disagree with a guess, but that doesn't give either an absolute authority over the "value" of a coin. Many collectors trust established pricing guides, but that trust is just the product of collective belief in their authority rather than any real ability to impart or preserve value. The only thing that has that authority is a transaction.

I don't disagree that a reliable resource that aggregates real historical price data could be useful in estimating values. However, Numista explicitly states that the values on coin pages are not that kind of resource nor are they intended to be. From the text on the coin pages: "They serve as a measure, but they are not intended to be relied upon for buying, selling or exchanging." I have no doubt that some misguided individuals have seen those values and tried to use them as an authoritative estimate of "value," but I don't see why their mistake would mean that Numista should change itself. If someone insists on using a screwdriver as a hammer, you don't demand that the screwdriver be redesigned.

Values on Numista are not perfect but get better and better as time progresses.

The lowest and highest prices added by members are not taken into account and disregarded so this is not really affected (honor code and are not purposefully skewing the prices)

Prices only exist since a year or so on numista so you will not find terribly old prices.

The values indicated on Numista do not have to be seen as exact value of a certain coin, year, grade etc. but is a rough indicator which gets slowly better as time progresses.

Some issues still exist which I believe have not been fixed yet, one being that some values are lower than melt value which should not be the case as then melt value would be the value.
Other issue is that many people just add a coin as VF no matter what grade their coin is, this results sometimes in coins in VF showing higher value than XF, that is of course also completely not correct and should not be made possible.

You show no collection and no swap list. Your argument sounds to me like somebody more interested in sales than a true collector or somebody interested in swapping.. Collectors like me use a variety of resources to value coins of interest to us. Wholesale prices such as Blue Book or Greysheet, retail prices such as Red Book and Ebay sold prices, Numista reported and estimated values, among many others. We do our DUE DILIGENCE. For SWAPPING purposes, I have found that most of coins I have particular interest in are quite accurately valued on Numista as roughly between wholesale and retail. I find the vast majority of Numista members have great integrity and are willing to negotiate values if anything is clearly way off target value wise in a swap. I also trust the "honor code" that the members use when they enter their valuations.

Quote: "apuking"​​Some issues still exist which I believe have not been fixed yet, one being that some values are lower than melt value which should not be the case as then melt value would be the value.

​This could be easily fixable by automatically assigning the highest of <<Melt value | Numista value>> to any precious metal coin in F+ condition (noting that coins in G/VG may have lost enough material to sell for less than the melt value of the original coin).