Using the PCGS Shop Feature to Scout Your Next Set

If you participate in the PCGS Set Registry, I’m sure you’ve already seen our fun new shop feature that can help you fill your sets.

Today I want to show you how to use the shop feature to investigate other sets. You can use it to get a quick picture of how difficult a set is to collect in various grades.

We’ll be starting from here: http://www.pcgs.com/shop/sets. You don’t need to have a registry set to use this link, but you do need to login with a free PCGS account.

At the top of this page, you’ll see all of your existing set registry sets, and you can of course click any of them to get a personalized picture of coins available for sale from 200+ dealers and websites.

But for now, let’s scroll past this area and look at the listings under "Browse composites available." This is the place you can look at all of the sets available in set registry to collect, and you can see coins available for all of them.

For this example, I’ll pick Half Dollars > Barber Half Dollars – Major Sets > Barber Half Dollars Date Set, Circulation Strikes (1892-1915).

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Click to Enlarge

Ah, good news! There are 2,383 coins available that match this set, and it looks like all of the dates are available.

Let’s assume I’d like to collect the set in AU58, and that I’m only interested in coins I can buy right away. I check "Buy It Now" to hide the auctions, and I set the grade filters to AU58 to AU58+. When I do, I see that all but 3 of the 24 coins are currently available.

Now if I want to see how much this set is going to cost me, I can put some filters in the price column. I started with $500, but it turns out there are zero AU58 Barber Halves available for under $500. I think I need to reevaluate this AU58 idea, but I’ll start inching up the prices to see what this set is going to cost me. If I go up to $1000 per coin, it looks like I can buy about half of them.

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Click to Enlarge

If I could go up further to $2,500 per coin, it looks like I could buy most of them, with holes only for the 1899, the 1904, and the 1912. I can then check the PCGS Population Report or the PCGS Price Guide to find out if these are going to be a lot more rare and expensive, or if they just don’t happen to be available right now. It turns out that as long as I avoid the 1904-S, I can probably find these years within that same $2,500-per-coin budget as the rest of the set.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at how to use the shop feature to explore a set. Give it a try with your favorite set, or one you’ve been thinking about giving a go. It is a great way to get a feel for the market.