As someone who is still rather new to Numista (but who very much likes it!) I have a general question about Numista for which there doesn't appear to be guidance or discussion in the “FAQ” section for “entering my coins”:
For the addition of any coin, there is an entry labeled “buying value” (which the FAQ section indicates is the purchase price for the coin.
First, it might be a good idea to actually change “buying value” to “purchase price”; when I first saw the “buying value” question, I thought it was asking me what I thought the coin was worth - not what I actually paid for it.
Second, since “buying value” actually means “purchase price,” are there any general rules associated with putting in a purchase price for any/all of my coins? I ask this for two main reasons (which are related to each other):
1. Is there a “purchase date" cut-off for entering “purchase price” data about coin entries to the database? I have purchase prices for coins I purchased quite a while ago which are low simply due to time and inflation. Entering the purchase price for these coins into the database would skew the valuations in the valuation table to the low end, which would make it less accurate - right? Since there is no “purchase date” entry to go along with the “purchase price” entry, it is not possible for a site administrator to tell when a low price is entered whether or not it reflects the present-day value of the coin versus the coin's value three decades ago.
2. The recent price increases for precious metals has pushed up the purchase prices for precious metal containing coins significantly during the past year or two. So, even relatively recent purchases of precious metal containing coins could depress the value of that coin in the valuation table to a value below the present-day bullion value of the coin. How is this handled? Would a purchase price value for any given precious metal containing coin automatically be bumped up to its bullion value if the entered value is below the coin's bullion value?
I have not entered any of my coin into the database because I didn't want to adversely affect the values in the valuation tables by entering old “purchase price” data.

