I have thousands of coins collected by me and my Grandparents. I have never sold a coin. I got a 2004 proof dime in change. I asked around how this happen. People told me young people do not care about their parents old stuff. So I started through my coins. I culled $1,200 worth of quarters. I found a 2009 Washington D.C. double die reverse. I showed it to experts. one guy told me that error quarter is on the cover of Cherry Pickers guide. It is true the quarter they show is exactly like mine. I showed it to several people and they all said it is rare and worth a lot of money. So I took it and some very valuable diamond and gold jewelry to Heritage Auction. I did not know it is not really an Auction for us the coin and jewelry collectors. Is this common knowledge? Coin expert told me the Ell error was worth $350 at Heritage. A 2.55 yellow Caret diamond ring with 14 K gold was worth $3,500 and on and on. I had taken the ring two days ago. Guy said he would price the ring at $35,000 if he owned it. So they will not let you set the default price of your items. My impression is that they will buy your items for 10% of value or less and then they Auction their coin and jewelry at full price. Does everyone already know this reality? Where do you sell your coins? I have a 1923 Peace with doubling on Liberty. You can see it with naked eye. Heritage said no doubling?
OP post some pics for us to see. Honestly I would trust Heritage over you anyday unless you can back up what you say with some pics. We have so many newbies that come on here, " I found a $50,000 coin!!!" and then post a pic of a normal coin thats only worth face value. Appraisal for jewelry means nothing. I see many people get a ring appraised for like 10k and it only is worth a few hundred.
First, welcome to the neighborhood! I gather that you didn't like the response @Mkman123 gave you. Well, let me put it this way....."If you can't post photos, it doesn't exist." Chris
Welcome to the forum. If you can post clear pictures of some of your coins you will surely get some honest answers here. The most likely scenario is that your stuff just isn't worth as much as you think.
The first error is that RARE does not always equal VALUABLE. There may only be one in the world and if nobody wants to buy it, it's not valuable. There are two DDR varietes for the 2009P DC Quarter at PCGS https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/2009-p-25c-ddr-fs-801-district-columbia/510124 and https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/2009-p-25c-ddr-fs-802-district-columbia/510125 In the top grade, only 5 and 2 have been graded but they are $200 coins (and most of us assume the PCGS price guide is inflated because they love their plastic holders). None have actually sold at auction, but assume one does for $200. With the buyer's premium, it sells for $240 and Heritage also gets a $20 (10%) seller's fee from you. A $240 sale with a $50 fee is not major money to a company that does $900M a year. It sounds like you are confusing the initial price, reserve price, and auction estimate. So you need to learn a lot more about how auctions work. Heritage has materials available to consignors - read it.
Thanks Burton. The two coins you posted is not the doubt die ELL. Reverse. The coin I have is on the cover of Cherry Pickers guide. It has an article on the coin in the guide. I am asking about the process. No one has answered. The coins you sent are not the coin that I have. I can find only one of the 12 that Pcgs has graded has been sold. If you guys do not have the cherry pickers guide you can look it up on the internet. My question is how can I sell the coins that I have. Unless I misunderstood, Heritage is like a Pawn shop. They buy your stuff and sell at a much higher price. That is capitalism. Buy low and sell high. If that is Heritage's business so be it. It was not clear to me until yesterday that you can not enter your coins and end up as the person who gets the high prices that they laud. The only 2009 ELL error coin that any record exists of a sale was in 2014 by Heritage Auction for $3,500. You can even look up the cherry pickers guide article. You can see the error by naked eye. A man named Crawford wrote a detailed article about the coin. These extreme error coins were all found in Houston,Texas. It seems to be a secret about the business model of Heritage. To me it does not seem to earn the title of Auction. If it were a true Auction I could enter my quarter and have a reserve of $3,500 for example. Not $350 as they said yesterday. I will not answer the first guy who attacked and did not answer my questions. I understand Heritage is a huge operation. I suspect they will pay employees to protect their image Now if you guys do not want to look up the cherry's picker guide photos then I ask why not? Thanks for your response Burton. Look it up please
You got the wrong impression when you met with Heritage. Setting a reserve is merely setting the lowest price at which an item will sell at auction. It can sell for a lot more, but auction houses don't want to take consignments with unrealistically high reserves, or nothing sells, and they lose lots of money, while the consignors lose nothing. $350 is actually a very high reserve for either of the DDR varieties of the coin you describe, so they must have thought the coin would attain a high grade. I suggest you submit the coin for professional grading first, and then list it on eBay to maximize your return. If it's really that nice of a coin, then you should get a lot for it. If not, then you won't.
Thanks Tough. Neither coin presented is my coin. Interesting that people on this coin chat have not heard of the ELL double die error and apparently do not own a cherry pickers guide or the ability to use the internet search. I described a very rare coin error and not the one that were presented. I believe cherry pickers described it as the most profound error in decades. However, you have not heard about it. No $350 is pawn shop price.
The more you say, the more you convince me that you don't know squat about coins. You only know half the stories and you think that makes you an expert. You have a condescending attitude toward others here, yet you refuse to comply with their requests about your very rare coin. Yes, I have both volumes of the 5th Edition of the CPG and it does not say that this error is the most profound error in decades. You also throw out Billy Crawford's name to make yourself sound credible. What a crock! You don't know anything about Heritage! You don't know anything about coins! You don't know anything about numismatic authors like Billy Crawford. So, why don't you put up or shut up. Show us some photos of your DDR, and prove to me that it wasn't in circulation for 10 years. By the way, the correct term is doubled die, not double die. Chris
Chris, Did I meet you yesterday at Heritage. I am not an expert. You attack for no reason. I believe I got my answer. Heritage Auction is not what it appears to be. Did you look at my information. I do not know anything about Billy Crawford except he wrote an article about the coin I have. Why would I want to prove anything to a Heritage employee. Your angry answers give you away. Please take a chill
I find that you are correct. The reason I was, and likely the rest of us were thrown off the trail was because you did not describe the coin as having been minted in Denver. Our logical reaction, absent any mention of a mintmark, was to look for the coin under the Philadelphia issue, which yielded nothing of the coin you describe. Yes, the coin apparently is rare, and may deserve a much higher reserve, depending on grade, of course. In MS64 it appears to be worth $200, but escalates a lot in higher grades.
Thanks tough. Can you see if more than one coin has ever been sold on the record? The only one I see was sold at Heritage Auction in 2014. It was ms 64 and sold for $3,500. My question still is how do you sell your coins and not at Pawn shop like prices. In my view the reserve price Heritage places would be the price you get. The offer of $350.00 was I believe 10% of value. Pcgs says they have graded 12 of these coins. I could never find the coin on the Florida coin record. However; somewhere it seems Pcgs says the other company has graded 6. So Tough: 18 coins is "apparently rare" so how many coins does it take in your experience to be "rare" as said in Cherry Picker's article. Cherry Pickers said they must have found the error quickly at the mint. The price you get at a real Auction is highly variable. A coin or jewelry is only worth what someone will pay. I have thousands of coins going back to the Civil War. I really did not collect coins my grand parents did. I never sold any coins back to the bank until I culled my quarters. This rare error was in a shoe box with all of the other quarters. If the ELL was not visible I would have culled it also. The only other quarter i found was a West Virginia reverse. It appears the center of the bridge was blown up. It looks like the bride has a hole in it exactly in the middle. One expert said it appeared to be a "clash". The expert at Heritage said it appeared something was on the die. It looked to him that it was grease and something else. It was not Chris on here that is so angry. It was the older expert. Thanks again. So no one has answered. Is Ebay the way to sell your coin. You said Heritage would not want to waste their time. I left thinking it is all a hoax at Heritage I have photos of my coins however I see Heritage employee will attack for no reason
Tough, There is no listing for the ELL error on PCGS website. Can you look at the front cover of the error on cherry pickers. The experts at Heritage had never heard of this seemingly famous error. Interesting that no one has know about this error except one expert I talked to at a coin show. He said do you have it with you. I said yes and he was excited. The people on the site oddly are not curious or informed
Heritage appears to be the only auction house to have sold this variety. They have sold only one, realizing $3055 for a coin graded MS66 by PCGS. You can find this information at https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/2009-d-25c-ddr-fs-801-district-columbia/510126
Thanks Tough. Do you see now $250 or $350 they offered is Pawn Shop price? So how can they saw the coin sells for so little when only one of the coins has sold and it was in 2014. I will let my kids use it to buy candy after I am dead before I would let fake Auction give me $350. The expert that was so excited to see my coin said if 18 of this coin exists and only one has sold on the record then the coin is selling before real Auctions.
Do you honestly think anybody would sell their stuff for 10% of fair market value ? I believe that the auction price is what the sellers get on HA and HA gets the hammer (the 20% surcharge). They are not buying it from the sellers and then marking it up. Maybe they do with some stuff in certain circumstances, I haven't scoured their website. But if they ARE buying stuff from sellers and then re-selling it FMV via auction, I find that hard to believe that folks would sell cheap and let the gain accrue to HA plus the hammer.
Heritage is one of the most respected coin auction houses in the world. You are a guy who doesn’t know the difference between a reserve price and hammer price. They will only allow you to set a reserve price of $350, but if the coin hammers for $3K, then you get the entire $3K minus any seller’s premium which is typically 5%. And before you accuse me of working for Heritage, I will admit that I am employed by Heritage, and I have already contacted our in house counsel to set up a meeting on Monday to discuss our case for libel against you.