Help
FAQ & Help Centre
Everything you need to know about MyCoinage.
Getting Started
What is MyCoinage?
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MyCoinage is a free UK coin collection tracker and price guide. Search the catalogue for any British coin, see grade-by-grade realised auction prices, track your own collection, watch coins for price alerts, and compete on the public leaderboard. Coverage spans UK pre-decimal, decimal, and modern commemoratives, plus selected US issues.
Is MyCoinage free?
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Yes. The free plan lets you track up to 25 coins, watchlist 10, view five coin detail pages a day, and access the grading guide and all written guides. Pro (£2.99/mo or £28.99/year) lifts those limits and unlocks unlimited collection size, individual sale records with source links, advanced portfolio analytics, watchlist alerts and insurance-grade PDF exports.
How do I add a coin to my collection?
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Search for your coin on the Browse page or any coin detail page and click ‘Add to Collection’. Choose your grade, purchase price and date. Free accounts get up to 25 coins; Pro accounts are unlimited.
Do I need to create an account to view prices?
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No. Browsing the catalogue, the grade-by-grade realised price for every coin, the price-history charts and all guides are public. An account is only needed to track a personal collection, watchlist or earn leaderboard XP.
Which coins do you cover?
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UK coins across the full historic span: Anglo-Saxon, hammered, milled, pre-decimal, decimal and modern commemoratives. 4,700+ coins in the catalogue. Crown Dependencies (Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Gibraltar) and Commonwealth coins are added on request. To request a coin not in the catalogue, use the contact page.
Pricing & Data
Where do your prices come from?
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How often are prices updated?
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eBay sold listings are scraped multiple times a day. Auction-house results are added weekly when new sales are published. The price-aggregator job runs nightly to recompute grade summaries, 30-day percentage change and rolling averages.
What is the difference between asking price and realised price?
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Asking prices are what sellers list a coin at; realised prices are what someone actually paid for it. The two can differ by 30–60% on rare-date coins because aspirational listings rarely clear at the asking number. MyCoinage publishes only realised prices because they reflect what the market will genuinely pay. For a coin you intend to sell, only realised prices matter.
What does ‘Market Value’ mean?
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Market Value is a volume-weighted average of all verified realised sale prices for a coin, computed across grades and weighted by recency. It represents what the coin is actually selling for in the current market — not a list price, not an estimate.
Why do prices vary so much between grades?
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Grade has a non-linear effect on price. A 1933 sovereign in F-12 might trade at £400; the same coin in MS-65 can clear £3,000+. The price-jumps cluster at recognised grade thresholds (VF, EF, MS-63, MS-65, MS-67) where collector demand and slabbed-grade attestations stack up. Our grade tables show every step.
Are your prices in pounds, dollars or euros?
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Default currency is GBP (pounds sterling). The site has a currency switcher in the top nav that converts every price on the page to USD or EUR using daily mid-market FX rates. Conversion is display-only — the underlying realised-sale data is stored in the original sale currency.
Coin Identification & Grading
How do I identify an unknown coin?
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Five fields will identify almost any British coin: (1) denomination (50p, £1, sovereign, etc.), (2) year, (3) monarch portrait, (4) mintmark if any, and (5) condition. Use our free UK coin identifier for a step-by-step walkthrough, or paste the year and denomination into the catalogue search.
How are coins graded?
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UK coins use the descriptive scale: Poor, Fair, AG, G, VG, F, VF, EF, aUNC, UNC, BU, FDC. The Sheldon numerical scale (1–70) is also widely used internationally, particularly on slabs from PCGS, NGC and CGS UK. The two map roughly — e.g. UK aUNC is around MS-60, BU around MS-63, FDC around MS-67+. See our full Grading Guide with reference photos for every grade.
Should I get my coin professionally graded?
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For coins worth £200+, third-party grading from PCGS, NGC or CGS UK is usually worth the £25–£50 fee. A graded slab commands a 10–25% price premium, removes counterfeit risk, and dramatically improves auction realisations on rare dates. Below £100 the fee exceeds the uplift — just grade it informally yourself.
Should I clean my coin before checking its value?
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No. Cleaning a coin destroys most of its numismatic value. Patina and original surfaces are part of the grade. Abrasive or chemical cleaning leaves microscratches that grading services detect and assign a "Cleaned" details grade to — which can halve the realisable price. The only acceptable handling is a careful warm-water-and-mild-soap rinse to remove loose dirt; nothing more.
How can I tell if my coin is a fake?
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Three core checks: weight (compare against the Royal Mint specification ± 0.1 g), diameter (use a digital calliper), and design detail (cast counterfeits show flat lustreless surfaces and faint horizontal seams). For high-value coins, professional authentication via PCGS / NGC / CGS UK is the safest route. See our how to spot fake British coins guide for a full walkthrough.
Account & Pro
What’s included in Pro?
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Pro (£2.99/month or £28.99/year, or a one-off £79 lifetime deal for the first 100 buyers) includes unlimited collection tracking, unlimited watchlist, individual sale-record access with source links, advanced portfolio analytics, watchlist alerts via email, insurance-grade PDF exports of your collection, and priority support. The recurring plans include a 7-day free trial.
Can I try Pro before paying?
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Yes — the monthly and annual Pro plans both come with a 7-day free trial. You enter card details to start the trial; you can cancel anytime within those 7 days and you won't be charged. The lifetime plan is direct-purchase, no trial.
How do I cancel my subscription?
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Go to Account → Subscription and click ‘Manage Subscription’. You can cancel any time and keep Pro until the end of your current billing period. No retention calls; cancellation is one click.
Can I get a refund?
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Trials are free, so cancelling within 7 days never charges you. After that, monthly subscribers can cancel at any time to stop the next charge. Annual subscribers can request a pro-rated refund on the unused portion within 30 days of renewal — contact us if you need this.
Can I delete my account?
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Yes. Go to Account Settings, scroll to ‘Delete Account’, type DELETE to confirm, and enter your password. Personally identifiable data is removed; collection entries are anonymised (not deleted) to preserve aggregate community statistics.
Collection & Tracking
How does the watchlist work?
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Add any coin to your watchlist from its detail page. The watchlist tracks realised-price changes daily; Pro users receive email alerts when a coin's 30-day realised price moves more than a threshold you set. Free users can watch up to 10 coins; Pro users have no cap.
Can I export my collection?
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Yes. Free users can CSV-export their collection. Pro users additionally get insurance-grade PDF exports with photos, grade-by-grade values and a signed methodology statement — suitable for insurance, probate or HMRC valuations.
Is my collection private?
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Yes by default. New collections are private and only visible to you. You can opt-in to make your collection public via the privacy settings — this places it on your public profile and qualifies you for the leaderboard. You can switch back to private at any time.
How does the leaderboard work?
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The leaderboard ranks public collections by total realised value across all coins, refreshed nightly. There are also boards for collection-completeness (a percentage of a series owned), longest streak and most coins added in the past week. Private collections are excluded.
Selling Coins
Where should I sell my coin?
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For coins worth £5–£200, eBay UK's sold-listings benchmark is the practical floor. For coins worth £200–£2,000, a BNTA-member dealer or a slabbed eBay UK listing is usually best. For coins worth £2,000+, consign to a UK auction house (Spink, Baldwin's, Noonans or London Coins) — their hammer prices typically beat private sale by 15–25%. Avoid Westminster-style direct-mail buyers and pawn shops; both consistently undervalue collector coins.
Does MyCoinage buy or sell coins?
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No. We are a data and tracking platform; we don't buy, sell or appraise coins commercially. Our role is to publish the realised-price data so collectors and dealers can negotiate from accurate numbers.
How do I work out fair value when selling?
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Open the coin's page, find your grade in the price table, and use the recent realised range as the negotiating window. Net auction-house fees of 15–25% (commission + buyer's premium) and eBay fees of around 12% off the headline. For private dealer sales, expect 70–80% of the realised range; for outright cash buyers (pawn / postal), expect 50–60%.
Are eBay sold listings reliable?
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For most British coins, yes — provided you filter to "Sold listings", "Completed", "Best Offer accepted" included, and ignore obvious shill-bid patterns (single-buyer multiple wins on small accounts). The realised-price data on every MyCoinage coin page already filters those out. As a sanity check, look for at least 3–5 separate buyers across the last 90 days.
Privacy & Security
How is my data protected?
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Account passwords are hashed with bcrypt (work factor 12). Sessions are stored server-side with a SHA-256-hashed token; the cookie itself is HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax. Stripe handles all card data; MyCoinage never sees a card number. The full policy is on our privacy page.
Do you sell my data?
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No. We don't sell or rent personal data to third parties. Aggregate, anonymised statistics (e.g. "the average free user owns 12 coins") may be published in blog posts, but never anything that could identify an individual.
Do you use cookies?
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Yes — a session cookie for login, plus optional analytics cookies (Google Analytics) which you can opt out of via the cookie banner. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party tracking pixels. Full breakdown on our cookie policy page.
Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us and we'll help.