Hello. My mother has a rather large coin collection she inherited from her grandfather. I've recently begun pawing through it and "catalogued" all of her Mercury dimes this evening. They are only a portion of the collection, she has other coins. She has 135 Mercury dimes, most in good condition. The oldest is a S1917. She has 34 1925 coins and a number of 1918s. There are many more and I have them organized in a notebook. I was dismayed to look up the value of these coins and found that most are not going for much nowadays. I looked on ebay, however, and found that people are asking QUITE a bit of money for some of the coins. I know the D1916 is valuable and the 41/42 coin, as well as two others, but these people are listing other coins. Could someone offer some advice on the following: 1. Some ebay sellers are selling collections of Mercury dimes. Would this be a good idea to put all the coins up in a listing, and what kind of price should we put to them? 2. What is the next step in assessing the value of all of her coins (not just the Mercury) and the way to get the best price for them, if any are valuable? Auction? Private collector? Thank you for any and all help. I'd be happy to transfer my notebook catalogue into this thread if anyone would like to see what Mercury dimes she has. -Ren
A few more from her collection: Franklin Half-Dollar S1951 S1953 D1953 Liberty HD 1917 S1927 S1943 S1935 S1935 1935 S1945 S1935 D1934 D1939 S1944 D1936 Indian Cent 1897 Liberty 1907 Barber 1910 Barber Quarter 1908 Barber HD 1912 Morgan HD 1882 Peace Liberty HD 1925
I suppose you could sell the group as one 90% silver lot on eBay. I think the going rate is about 23x face with the price of silver the way it is, maybe someone can clarify this for me. You just have to keep in mind, by the time your lot sells, you have to back off the auction fees. It will be a little better than selling them to a dealer or throwing up a classified ad. Welcome to Cointalk!
Welcome to CoinTalk! In answer to your questions: 1. If you are going to list the coins on eBay, you'll probably make a little more money listing them individually. But since it sounds like most of them are going to sell for melt anyways, it will be much less work to sell them as a lot. You can set a minimum bid or reserve, but with a group of coins that are going to sell for their silver melt anyways, I'd recommend you start the bidding at .99 cents and let the market determine what they will sell for. As long as you list them correctly, they will go for very close to spot on the day the auction ends. Right now that means you should get around $300 total for the lot of 135 merc dimes or $2.25 ea with silver at $30.90. Here's the link to my favorite silver coin melt value calculator: http://www.silvercoinstoday.com/silver-calculators/us-silver-coin-calculator/ This link gives the silver melt price for US silver coins on any given day based on current spot price. 2. Accurately assess the value of your coins. You should probably do this step before you decide to sell any of your coins. The easiest and most fun way to do this is to buy a 2012 RedBook "Guidebook to United States Coins". For around $12.00 this handy guide will help you identify your coins and give you retail prices for all your coins based on grade. It makes cataloging your coins easy. Two things about the RedBook; 1. the values you will see listed for your coins are estimated retail values, so they are a bit higher than the actual sale prices you will probably realize for your coins should you sell them. Probably a more accurate assessment of real price of your coins is to check eBay for the actual ending price on auctions for coins similiar to yours. 2. You will need to learn to accurately grade your coins in order to assess their value. By going through your coins individually and cataloging their value using the RedBook, you will ensure that you don't accidentally put a rare or valuable coin up for sale at melt prices. But therein lies the fun, you're searching your collection for that potential treasure hidden among the common coins. Good Luck!
Thanks so much for the advice! I am definitely going to advise her to hold onto the coins so I can get the Redbook guide. She's SO hoping she has something rare and valuable. Now I'm desperately studying all of them trying to find something for her. I also wanted to ask about pennies. There are a bunch of pennies. Some definitely uncirculated pennies from the 1960's (though I know those won't mean much to anyone), but there are also quite a few from 1940's that do NOT stick to a magnet. No 1943's, but there's at least one 1944. Could anyone tell me about these? I've been doing my own research, of course, but I've also been getting some conflicting info from the internet. I asked about this in another thread, but thought I'd go ahead and put it here as well. Again, thank you for the help and the warm welcome. I just got into this yesterday to help my mother and am already recognizing that I'm becoming QUITE obsessed and fanatical about these coins!
Post some pictures, and I'll make you an offer. You won't even have to go through the trouble of ebay.
135 Mercury dimes is 9.45 troy oz of silver give or take a little for wear. I dont know what you were expecting for value but at $32 an oz that's $300. That's not bad. Although you will lose 12% selling on ebay after their fees and paypal's fees. They're at least worth that minimum. Maybe a bit more. That's alot more than they were worth 10 years ago. You can usually tell if something is rarer or more valuable by how it is stored. If all the Mercs are worn and thrown in a bag or a tube together, then they're probably all common. A collector would not throw a rare, valuable coin in with the commons. Generally, they would store it in it's own special plastic holder of some sort at minimum. Then usually it would be labeled, if it wasn't in a grading company slab to begin with.
