How to sell PVC-ridden collection of largely odd metal world coins

Sorry for the long post, but to to make a long story as short as possible, as a new collector I took a bit of a risk and spent a decent amount of money to buy a (semi-)mystery set of coins at auction. As a result, I am now the proud owner of roughly 500 coins from (mostly) occupied areas during the World War II years. Think Vichy France, Japanese Puppet States, etc. On the plus side, after researching them, the coins are worth much much more than what I paid. On the negative side I’m interested in very few of them, so I’d like to sell most off and many of the coins suffer from being coated in gunk from long term storage in PVC. Some have actual PVC damage.

With all that in mind, I was hoping to get some advice on best sale tactics under the circumstances. As far as I see it, I have two sets of decisions to make: A) sell to a dealer OR try to sell myself on ebay, B) try to remove the PVC using acetone and repackage the coins before selling them OR sell as is.

I am heavily leaning towards selling to a dealer. I know I won’t get as much as if I sold individually over time, but I also am relatively new to the hobby (so I’m not the best at grading), have no ebay presence, and selling this volume individually or in small groups sounds like a real hassle. But I’m open to arguments to the contrary.

The real thing I’m questioning is how to handle the PVC. I assume that bringing in a whole bunch of coins that are coated in green to a dealer would significantly reduce offer price, but by that same token so would my attempting to fix each one on my own and messing some up some percentage of the collection in the process. So all things considered what should I do? I’ve read countless threads where people say 100% acetone is harmless to metals. But in my experience while most coins do fine after getting a quick bath, copper can turn purple and I’ve had some selective bronze coins develop what looks to be bronze disease that wasn’t there at all before very quickly after plopping them in a bath, with increased exposure making things worse. If the answer is to take a risk with an acetone bath, given that I am dealing with lots of off-metals (aluminum, zinc, tin, iron, lead, brass) is there a list of rules for which metals/alloys are truly acetone safe, which are a risk, and which truly aren’t? If a coin is plagued by PVC and not acetone safe are there other options? The one upside here is that I do have a lot of coins from the same series, so I could always test some out and discard if there are issues, but I was hoping to sell the set as intact as possible.

 

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I hesitate to think you'd get much of anything for the coin even if they didn't have PVC damage. Most dealers I know of don't pay much for world coins unless they are silver or something. Have you even spoken to a dealer about selling?

 

Aluminum and zinc are very chemically active. I believe I've seen reports here that acetone can damage them. For those, I'd use only distilled water or xylene, but I'm not sure what would be best to remove any corrosion already present.

Welcome aboard!

 

As Furryfrog said, most dealers treat world coins as "something for the kids" and will offer you a few dollars per pound or 25 cents for a handful or something thereabouts. So if you do indeed have more valuable coins, you might want to consider eBay. Especially the Japanese occupation coins you mentioned might generate interest. Other things like coins from occupied France or Belgium don't have a ton of value. People buy them but they're not scrambling to get at them because there are plenty out there. I can't speak for the PVC damage part of your question.

 

Acetone is fine. Some war issues of reactive metals may have coatings applied by the mint that may be harmed though, but you also can't leave the PVC residue on there. For that many coins you'll need a lot of acetone.

 

Can you post some photos so we know what you have and what sort of straits it is in?

 

Was just going to suggest pictures of some of these coins to see what you are working with but @Mark Metzger beat me to it.

 

I also had a lot of my stuff in those older flips. But, there was NO PCV damage, coins where 100 percent perfect. Now, I have them all (except TPG slabbed ones) in SAFLIPS. I have seen cases where the coins are damaged. But, it was a case of them being stored in a hot environment/ plastic flips looked like they suffered heat damage.

 

You can try Conserv I heard that it is good to use on coins

 

I concur with the above, pls post some pictures of what you believe are the more valuable coins.

For example, a 199x whatever Lincoln cent is worth $0.01. Unless it's graded MS70 in which case it's worth much more than one cent. Condition matters

 

Don't buy things you aren't interested in, or have no knowledge of. How do you even know if you got a good deal or not?

 

I'd sell as is. Some of us like coins from those exact locations and eras .

My answer is other. Offer as a lot on CT first, eBay second. Divide out by country and leave them in the condition they are currently in. List and describe with good photos and full disclosure.

Most likely not worth the time or effort for you to figure out exactly which metal and which solvent.

Someone who likes these types of coins (me) can spend some time sorting them out to the worthwhile ones and conserve (if needed) what they want. I generally go for higher grade stuff of this type, but once in awhile have a bunch of fun with lots like this. Consequently I have piles of rejects and coins I need to 'get rid of'. Maybe I should take my own advice!

 

If the PVC residue is sticky and odiferous, I would not ship them to someone without treating them first.

 

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I tried taking some pictures last night, but was having a hard time capturing the damage. Today I went to a couple of local dealers. Both suggested that if going the dealer route I not try to get rid of the PVC gunk. I also asked the second dealer (who seems to do a decent business in modern world coins) for an offer on the 15 best from the lot. The offer was just about double what I paid for all 500 and while I didn't have him look through the whole box, based on some other information he gave me on some of the lesser ones my guess is that all told the offer would be roughly 5 to 6 times purchase price which would be a nice profit. He also confirmed I'm dealing with PVC.

At this point, based on all the advice here and what I heard today, I think what I am going to do is pull a few of the higher value items out of the lot and submit to NGC plus the 10% of the rest of the content I'm personally more interested in. Then after doing an acetone soak for the silver pieces and reholdering the off metals with damage (on closer look, most of the flips look much worse than the coins themselves) I'm going to try to find someone within a few hours drive who is a dealer but also is more world oriented for a quote. Depending on what I hear then I may or may try to take @Stork 's advice and divide up/sell here. I may also just try to sell a subset and make back the initial investment.

Also wanted to address a couple things. Saying that I'm new is a bit of a misnomer but I said it because while I've been collecting for a few years my grading skills are subpar overall and I really am having some trouble grading some of these coins given the designs/metals used. That plus the fact that I'm dealing with so many is why I want to go the dealer route. Many of these coins command more than the typical premium in moderate to high uncirculated grades given wartime status and that looks to be what I have in quite a number of cases, so while a dealer will give a lesser offer it would be at a higher grade than I feel I could comfortably say in a listing. So when I factor that plus time savings in it kind of comes out as a wash to me.

@TheFinn - I completely agree with you about not buying stuff you're not interested in or don't know about. This was the kind of rare situation where I knew just enough to take a risk based on context clues in the picture. I'm glad I did.

 

Can you shoot us a clear photo or two of the lot?

 

A collector after my own heart.

 

This is correct. Don't use acetone on aluminum coins. Based on my experience, pitting is almost certain to occur.

 

For those interested in pictures, here are a few. In most cases the gunk was hard to get in a photo. It's also not always bad at all, but a little is present on a decent chunk of the coins:

Albania - 1941 .10 Lek, Alum-Bronze:

Here's the holder it came out of:


Norway - 10 Ore 1943 (Iron) before and after acetone soak. I figured this one was worth the risk of testing:



Serbia - 10 Dinara 1943 - Zinc


Manchukuo - 1 Fen 1936 - Copper:

 

I'm not seeing the PVC you mentioned... I would love to see more coins