Know your local coin market.

Regional auctioneers list coin lots every week. Most of them handle furniture and farm equipment too, and the estimates show it.

Coinsel reads those catalogues every day and works out what each lot is actually worth. Certified coins are priced against recent sold comps. Raw gold and silver are priced against the metal in them, which is a floor rather than a market price, and we say which of the two you are looking at.

You get the lot, the current bid, the value, the spread and the closing date. Bidding happens on the auction site, not here.

Tell us what you collect and we check every lot inside your radius against your want list. When one is listed well under value, you get an email with the lot, the comp and the closing day.

Every few hours we check Buy It Now listings on eBay for PCGS and NGC coins priced under the PCGS guide.

A listing only shows up if it is the same coin as the guide entry. Year, mintmark, designation and grade all have to match, and the holder has to carry a straight grade. Details and Genuine coins are left out.

Guide value is a retail number, and plenty of coins sell below it. Where we have recent sold prices for the coin we show those next to the asking price, so you can tell a real opening from a normal listing.

Two hundred tables and no cell signal. Bring a sheet instead.

Pick a show on your calendar and we build a list of what you are hunting, what it is worth right now, what to pay and when to walk. Print it or keep it on your phone. It works with no signal.

Log what you bought on the way home and slabbed coins land in your portfolio with a real cost basis. Prep sheets are part of Pro.

Everybody knows retail. Nobody publishes the spread.

Coinsel users report what they were offered and what the coin was worth that day. We show the median by category with the sample size attached, so you can see whether a number is solid or thin.

These are reported offers, not quotes. Use them to know what range you are walking into.

Reports are open for shops in the Chicago area so far. Had an offer at one? Find the shop and report it from its page. It takes about a minute.