What are some hard coins to sell?

I thought this might be a fun discussion, especially if some folks who deal will chime in.

To stay within forum rules, this thread is not intended to be an offer to buy or sell anything - this is meant to be a hypothetical discussion.

Of course we should all collect what we want and like, but later on what is hard to get rid of (assuming a reasonable offer is made)? Stuff that dealers either just really don't like to buy, or maybe stuff that has such a niche market it takes forever to move?

I'll start. As I've brought things in and out of my collection, here are a few categories of coins I have found difficult to sell:

-Problem / details coins in slabs
-Clad proof sets
-Modern slabbed common dates, eg. MS67 dimes from the sixties. I had a handful of these in NGC slabs and tried to sell them at a show and couldn't find anyone to buy them. I remember one dealer just looked at them, handed them back to me, and said, "no one wants these." He was right


If you have a story to share about trying to sell (or your experiences as a dealer), please share.

Mike

 

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Minor errors

 

I can't answer this question TBH. I have not tried to sell any. But I can say this, 99% of the garbage on eBay is hard to buy, and it's getting worse. It used to be fun, but the trash that used to be on most curbs is now on full display. I've started using filters to just look for what I'm looking for, not much else. It's like sifting through Fred Sanfords backyard.

 

For me, proof sets are utterly the hardest to get rid of, especially 1971 through 1998 that do not contain an Eisenhower dollar. The majority of these sets will sell for more outside of the packaging, simply because most people want individual pieces and not the whole set. Silver sets often sell like hotcakes, specifically the mid-2000s quarters.

I've been dealing for a little over a year and 1 month, and while proof sets are the hardest to get rid of, another thing that can be hard to sell is type coins. The problem with the older ones is that they target a specific area of collectors, while cheaper items target all kinds of people. Something for $100 may sit for 6 months while $100 worth of a cheap item may sell in 3 months.

Unless I can bulk them out, I split a number of these up.

 

Perhaps common base metal coins and silly price items. Of course some sellers may chose to do unethical stuff by pedaling counterfeit stuff...

 

I am not much of a seller, but I find that higher priced coins are harder to sell. I agree with @The Half Dime on that. Easy to buy, harder to sell. I have a ton of English pennies to get rid of soon. I'll see how easy it is to sell them!

 

Quality has a great deal to do with how fast a coin sells.
Problem coins don't sell very fast unless the problem is really minor.
Coins that have lost their luster because of cleaning don't do well.
Ugly coins are probably the hardest to sell.

 

Anything you overpaid for is hard to sell. (I know as I've been there)

In general, I have noticed it is the same items as some people mentioned: problem coins (unless they are discounted enough below non-problem examples), ugly/unappealing straight graded coins (unless they are enough below greysheet to tempt someone), and non-silver proof/mint sets (1971 to date).

 

40% silver halves and dollars. And probably even quarters.

Even when silver was at its lowest, I never had any trouble finding dealers ready to buy 90% at the local shows. But there was a stretch where nobody wanted 40%.

 

if I could go back to when I first started collecting I would have bought a lot more silver then. 20/20 hindsight.

 

I hadn’t thought of type coins as being hard to sell. Makes sense though.

 

Coins with a problem.
Expensive coins.
Coins with dates that are known to be counterfeited.

 

Somebody needs to explain this "sell coins" thing to me.

 

I believe Weird Al can help me here. I'm just gonna combine 2 of his songs and
parody the 3rd line.

It's a big hit, isn't it
Even if it's a piece of junk
It's still pricey coins to me
.....'cuz I bought on eBay!

I can't complain, I've gotten some good deals on eBay before, but depending on the coin series, they can be very hard to come by.

I don't know why, but this response was pure gold.

I guess you don't remember when you sold all those silver proof sets on the site?

 

I would have to answer with holders rather than coins. The current market in my opinion is well established and offers several options to sell coins that are in holders from PCGS, NGC, ANAC, and slightly less ICG.
Raw coins appear to have a market on E-Bay and I understand new sites such as Numismy are trying to create a stronger collector to collector market.
Having said that anything in a holder from an old or defunct grading service. DGS, SEGS, a dozen more; most sites won't list them. Roll of the dice as to what they will or will not grade to put the coin in a market acceptable holder.
People always say buy the coin not the holder but I have seen just about everything and anything under the sun put up for sale but the true bias i see involves the holder not the coin. just my opinion. James

 

I just got a great deal (I think) this morning in the very weirdest of ways. Look for it in new acquistions, US coin forum in a little while.

 

I have a big collection of Brazilian coins. When I started collecting them, one idea in my head was that Brazil was a rising nation and it's coins should go up in value. Well, I decided to break up my set recently and sell some off. Many of the coins are fairly rare - I'd see a lot fewer of them on eBay when I was trying to determine market value than I see of a lot of other coins I sell - but no one is buying them. I sold a few right away but most of them are just sitting there and every once in awhile I lower the prices more but it doesn't help. It's strange honestly because I can generally sell coins from any country.

Many people also mentioned higher priced coins, and that's a good answer. I sell coins all the time for $20 or less but the ones higher than that tend to sit there with 10 people watching them but no one buying.

 

I ran into a guy who was trying to talk me into buying something called Silver Canadian Maple leafs in tubes. I'm not a get-rich-quick/easy type of person so I passed on the deal. He said he gets them from a broker who gets them from some place called Lear Capital. Does any of this sound legit?

I don't know, it sort of rubbed me the same way the guy in the flashy car and fingers to elbows covered in various jewelry pulled up alongside me in a flashy car while I was walking, offering me this deal to buy his $20K solid gold ring for $500 so he could get some gas.

 

@VistaCruiser69 . Unless it is a person or company known to me I always come back with the same question. If it is such a good deal for me why don't you jump at the chance yourself? James