Let's say you have a 1907 St. Gaudens $20 gold coin in PCGS MS63 condition. You're thinking about putting it up for auction, but first you want to find out the auction history for that particular coin over the last ten years, so you'll have an idea about what to expect.

Until now, a coin collector in this situation has had to look at several different sources to get the background information he or she needs. First, the collector must find out when and where the gold coin has been offered at auction. Then, he or she has to find the "prices realized" reports for every significant auction to learn how much it went for in each case. If the collector can get all this information, and there's no guarantee of that (especially if the auction was held nearly ten years ago), he or she still faces the tedious task of assembling it in one place to get a complete picture of the coin's auction history. Those are a lot of steps to go through and a lot of hours consumed - and the process has to be repeated for each individual gold coin being researched.

But not any more!

Now there's an online reference guide that does all the legwork for you: in one place, the collector can find all the data on when, where and for how much any U.S. gold coin has been sold in significant auctions over the last decade.

How It Happened
Well-known numismatists John Dannreuther and Jeff Garrett have spent the last five years compiling facts, figures and dates from the most significant coin auctions over the last decade to create the guide. United States Gold Coinage Significant Auction Records is a comprehensive reference work for everything you always wanted to know about U.S. gold coin auctions in the 1990s. The project was an offshoot of a series on US gold coinage that Dannreuther and Garrett are writing for The Encyclopedia of United States Numismatics. The authors found this information so useful when writing analyses for each series that they decided to compile it into one all-inclusive compendium. The authors made every attempt to include prices-realized information from every important public auction from 1990 to 1999. The two attended many of these auctions personally, and collected data from the other sales when they couldn't attend in person.

When asked what this guide offers that the others don't besides the sheer volume of facts, Garrett said, "The information is much easier to use and [the online version] is regularly updated. One can also get an instant handle on relative rarity. Some similarly-priced coins have been offered only a few times over the decade, while others have been sold hundreds of times."

The spiral-bound edition will be updated at least twice a year, Garrett says. Additionally, custom versions will also be available for those who want the data sorted by special methods or otherwise tailored to fit their needs.

He added, "This project is a result of hard work and the harnessing of new information technologies. John and I have developed a unique system for gathering and publishing large amounts of data. We are excited about finding new ways to increase productivity and volume with this important project." The sheer amount of data involved would have been unmanageable without the expansion of computer capacities and technologies over the last decade.

The Authors
John Dannreuther has been involved in coin collecting from an early age. In 1973 he established John Dannreuther Rare Coins in Memphis, which he continues to manage. Dannreuther, along with David Hall, Gordon Wrubel, Bruce Amspacher and Silvano DiGenova, founded Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) in 1985. The first PCGS-graded coins appeared the following year, and the company (now a division of Collectors Universe) became the first and foremost authority on third-party coin authentication. He was the principal author of the 1997 PCGS book The Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection, an industry standard. Currently he is working on two new coin books, continuing research for PCGS and editing the CU3000 and Daily Price Guide for the Coin Universe website.

Co-compiler Jeff Garrett is widely renowned as one of the foremost rare coin experts in the nation. President of Mid-American Rare Coin Gallery, over the past 25 years Garrett has handled a vast array of U.S. rare coins. Mid-American has bought and sold many of the greatest rarities of American Numismatics. Like Dannreuther, Garrett has been a coin collector since boyhood; in 1984 he founded Mid-American Rare Coin Galleries in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the editor for Professional Numismatic Guild's brochure The Change of Time, which introduces readers to the historical allure of collecting coins and currency.

Trying It Out
To see how easy United States Gold Coinage Significant Auction Records is to use, consider the hypothetical 1907 St. Gaudens $20 mentioned above. On the Coin Universe home page we see there's a link on the left side of the screen called "Auction Prices" (under "Resources"). That link leads to a page that introduces the guide and explains how it's organized. Another link at the bottom of the page goes to the guide's Table Of Contents. We click on the category "Twenty Dollar Gold (Double Eagles)", then scroll down the list till we find the coin's year and variation ("1907 Saint"). One last click on the PCGS number assigned to that coin, and there it is: a whole page devoted to nothing but the most significant auction history for that particular coin over the past ten years!

All the time-consuming research has been done for you (isn't that a relief!), and now all that remains is to scroll down the page to the listing(s) for a 1907 St. Gaudens $20 in PCGS MS63 condition.

In this case, the guide explains that there were three significant auctions involving that coin since 1990. It describes when the auction was held, who held it and, most importantly, what the coin went for in each case. All those hours of work you would have done before have been replaced by four mouse clicks and a "scroll-down", and now you have all the information you need to get a good idea of your own gold coin's auction value. What could be easier?