While that might help avoid the problem of your coins getting dumped at the bank, it's also a great way to open yourself up to theft. I believe a well crafted will and detailed written instructions on specifically how to liquidate the collection are a much better, and safer way to protect your collection. My wife obvious knows I collect, and she knows where my collection is stored as well as where the instructions are. Those instructions include contact information of trusted coin dealers she should call to help handle the sale of my coins should I die. Otherwise, almost no one else in my personal life knows I collect. Limiting that information is the first step in securing my collection. Further reading on security: https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/777954/coins-and-home-security-the-col-steve-ellsworth-way
the sound of this happening makes me sick. you better have a plan for the care takers of your coins in your will when we die so they will know what your coins are worth. I have that plan in motion now.
My daughter has a friend whose husband passed away. The husband was a coin collector (read coin hoarder). Apparently he cashed in his better coins before his passing and didn't tell his family. I spoke to a coin dealer he had dealt with and the dealer told me he has purchased quite a few expensive coins from him. My daughter asked me if I would look through his collection and help dispose of the coins. The next thing I know a car pulls up in front of my home and drops off five cartons of coins. There were a few good ones there, but the majority where common coins and a lot of Lincoln cents. I spent a month, off and on, going through the collection and trying to organize it. I rented a table at my coin clubs semi-annual coin show. Word spread on why and whose coins I was selling, so a good deal of people just stopped by the table and handed me twenty bucks and moved on without taking any coins. By the end of the show I had close to $3,000 for a collection that really should have brought in less than $1,000. I called the wife and told her to stop by, I kicked in another $500 for what was left and when she arrived I told her I had sold the collection for $3,500. She was upset, she felt that I should have been able to sell the collection for more money. I told her it was worth a lot less than what I got, but club members were just giving me money without even taking any coins. She walked out upset over the "little" money she got for her husbands collection. Moral of the story? No good deed goes unpunished.
That illustrates a corollary , that many collectors tell their family things like "gee honey , I bought this $500 coin for $50!! SO she thinks wow what a real dealer I have. So when he dies, she only remembers what he told her, and thinks the truth is really a scam on her. Tell your closest family the truth.
This is double sorry. I feel terrible for the husband, but sorry, the woman' labor was to no avail. I try to explain values to my wife, grandsons, and kids. I slab, in cheap plastic slabs, the coins of value, but not graded. I write on them the reason for value. I try to explain the value to all. The biggest problem is with the younger grandsons. The coins that I have given them, they have spent. I am giving my older grandson a silver proof set that has some value. I will have to see what he does with it.
I fully understand. I have 3 surviving children and 8 grandchildren. Only one of my grandchildren shows a respect for collecting, and she collects world coins. My collection is almost completely American issues. I have it in my will to sell the collection and split it among my daughters. I will enjoy both the collection and collecting in general till the day I die and I don't care how cheated they will be when they sell it.
