Why can't we all just stick to the book ?

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The #1 reason for someone to oversell or underbuy a note is "the book is not the bible". Of course it is the bible, there is a price listing for a reason!

When you try to sell a note and ask for book value minus a small percentage, they tell you the book is "overvalued" or when you try to buy someone like a 1988 $1000 in EF, even though the book value is only a little over face value, the seller wants something like $1250 for it because you can "try to find it and you won't" or "my time is not just worth $50". Unbelievable.

I use the book as a guide......i can't put all my faith into information that is only issued 1 time  per year.  Alot can happen in 1 year..things do go up and down.  Just my opinion....

I use the price catalogues as guides to indicate common items from rarer items. I've bought and sold below and above book prices. It depends on the buyer's or seller's reasons for selling or buying a particular item. One of the bills I've sold went for a lot more than what the catalogue quoted for it because I didn't really want to part with the bill but the collector kept upping the price until I couldn't refuse the offer. He's happy to be the owner of the bill and I was happy with what I received for it.

At auction, especially for rarer bills (or coins or stamps for that matter), book value means nothing. Take a look at the results from a recent auction:


http://www.cdnpapermoney.com/forum/index.php?topic=10004.0


Geography has a lot to do with prices as well. Local interest would potentially raise a price of a particular item more than book value than if the same item was sold in another area.

I feel a price "guide" is just as the name implies.

Try selling multicolour notes right now at "bible" prices.
It's a guide.....

The market is the ultimate bible for the prices of notes. If the book says x, you may be willing to pay x plus if you really want it, x - if it's common. Personally "try to find it and you won't" makes me walk away and say thank you for your time. Unless it's really rare, I don't believe for a minute in that nonsense.

The bible would have an impossible time keeping up with actual market fluctuations. Every year certain notes would go up due to popularity, then go back down when the fad cooled, which ultimately would not be good for the market in general.
 The Bible's editors have done a good job the last 20 years showing a small but steady increase in most notes even when market demand could have dictated larger increases. Remember the days when certain sellers automatically charged over catalog as soon as it came out?
 In recent years a few notes have  shown large increases, example *R/A, *N/Y probably due to pressure from contributors, but I'm not convinced sellers  are realizing those prices.
 The end user of the bible needs to know availability of every note. Right now, alot of notes sell for below book, making the book appear too high.
Some rarely found notes or certain issues in gem unc would sell at a premium over book, making it look too low.
If a note rarely ever is seen in gem how could it only be priced at 30-50% higher than unc?

The 3-tiered uncirculated pricing range is  still in its infancy. In the future,  the gem column should really rise exponentially  for  rare notes, and drop in the unc column for common notes.

Well isn't eBay a good indicator of the market?

Last week an 1870 $1 note was seling for $425 US, it is a VG grade. Book value for VG is $1100 and the seller described it as a VG+. I have seen many notes that are much uglie graded Fine-12 by the PMG.

So I wait until there is 3 seconds left in the auction. I bid $751 US. I get it for $510 US because someone else had also bid in the last second, but for $500 US. He wasn't sincere. He was only trying to win it. Had he known I was right there with a $751 bid, he would have bid $751.01.

Sometimes when I really want a note, I just bid a ridiculously high amount thinking that I will only end up paying one increment higher than the 2nd highest bidder in the market. I usually end up getting it at much less because the seller did not know how to advertise his auction properly.

Cliffs: I got an 1870 $1 note for $510 US. Now is that not hard to find? It is a very rare note! If anyone wants to give me feedback, let me know and I will post the scans.

I do that all the time. I've also paid more for something because someone else is doing the same thing. Most of the time it is a good strategy. However for this post, it's not the same thing as having a face to face transaction, where one side is using "the bible" too literal.

EBay is a market of its own, and does not completely represent the Canadian paper money market.  There are certainly price disparities between the catalogues, eBay, and live auctions.  That doesn't mean eBay is inherently more correct.  I have seen identical listings go for far different amounts at different times.  It all depends who sees your items and who bids.  Recently, I saw an error note listed at $260 failed to sell, then it was relisted  at $250 and it gained several bids and went for over $330 as I recall.  No use trying to make sense of it.

So you can get bargains on eBay, but just because an item looks like a bargain compared to book, doesn't mean it is.  A bargain is only a bargain if you can resell it for more.  Some dealers and auctioneers are known to poach cheap items on eBay and then include them in their sales.  If you buy an item on eBay at a low price and then resell it for the same price, well, it wasn't really a bargain then, was it?