Good morning, Isn't it nice when friends and neighbors come to you for Numismatic advice? Richie who is the Superintendent of the building next to the one I work at and who I have known for 6 years asked me last week.. "Hey Eddie I know you're a coin collector, can I bring you some of my coins for you to look at? I know absolutely nothing about coin collecting!" This morning he dropped off these.. Unfortunately most are face value. The Churchill and the 1969 40% Silver have a small premium. Share your stories of people you have helped!
This is a bit of a unusual story . My friend Mike at work one day brought in some coins to sell in order to buy a train that he liked. He had rolls 1963 and '64 Quarters, Benjamin's,1964 Kennedy's a few Ikes . I bought some of the Quarters, a few Benjamin's , 2 Kennedy's, 2 Ike's / all for $10 !!!
How long ago was this? Did you tell him that most of them were 90% silver? Is Mike still your friend?
@cpm9ball . That was about 2005 and yes he knew . Just a good friend helping out another . He got them from his Grandfather's Estate including the House ,so the Silver was just "Icing on the Cake".
I’ve evaluated accumulations/collections for work colleagues over the years. Most were the usual 90% silver, Ikes, wheats, $2 notes, and the like. One guy had a decent 1797 Large Cent (I gave him a Saf-flip to use for storage). Another guy had a couple horse blanket notes (1914 red and blue seal FRN $10s and some 1923 silver certs). I gave him a rough estimate of value. A few months later he asked me if I wanted to buy them. Apparently, he wasn’t happy with the LCS offers, so we struck a deal that was beneficial to both of us. In HS, a kid who used to collect with his dad got into drugs after his father passed away. Every once in a while he would offer me something. He had a ballpark idea what things were worth but wanted cash and didn’t want to go to the LCS. Got a good deal on some nice local national bank notes and a couple G-F bust halves. Sad story, the kid was pretty smart, but failed out of college, followed the Grateful Dead for a few years, and last I heard was scraping by at jobs well below his potential.
Been a member at the same church for 25 years. One of the older gentleman had been a friend that entire time and I had no clue that he was a coin collector. He passed several years back and his son who knows I am a collector asked if I would help him liquidate his dad's collection.... Now, I was expecting a cigar box of coins or something.... Oh no... He had an entire walk in closet devoted to his coins. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes of walkers, merc dimes, etc. A glass jug of wheat cents that took a hand truck to move.... It was Shangri-La..... As I recall, it took me three weeks of weekends and after work inventorying and price checking.... And of all the piles of coins he had... Everything was quite average really. We did get the family a rather nice payday when all was said and done though. And in return they gifted me with one of their dad's proof sets.
I had a very attractive lady that I worked with ask me about coins. She was recently divorced at the time and was very skeptical about my seeing them. Over the next few months she talked about them and wanted to sell them. She really needed the money. After another month she finally left me come to her house and showed me the coins. Mostly halves and Silver Dollars in uncirculated condition. Took me about half an hour to view a few hundred of them. Most were common dates. I told her it would be best if you didn’t sell them but hang onto them for about 20 years or so. I also told her if she really wanted to sell them I would give her $600 for all of them. The last thing I said was where to take them and why. I also said I would give her $50 more than their offer. That was to the local LCS. A couple of weeks later she told me she took the coins up to them and they said $650 for all of them. She asked if I would give her $700 to which I said yes but told her if she could do without the money and keep them she would be better off in the long be run. She replied that the LCS said the same thing and that she decided to keep them for the time being. Then she handed me a silver dollar and thank me for being honest with her. The last I heard was 10 years later and she still had them.
View attachment 1299384 My only 'big-Deal', I had an older friend withwhom I metal detected occasionally. He had a rather eclectic coin collection, so when he died, his widow had me do an appraisal. At the time the value of his U.S & foreign coins, Franklin Mint silver, etc. came to about $12K. His best coin being a 3-legged Buffalo nickel XF-45... & next were 3 more common CC Morgans in the GSA Holders.. Otherwise rather common coins. I advised her that she might expect 50%-65% of my appraisal amount if selling to a local LCS. (I also asked her to let me make an offer when she decided to sell.) She called about 4 months later and told me she had an offer of $7000...I offered $8500 & we both were happy. I've long since sold off the collection but kept my friend's Dansco Lincoln cent album spending probably another $300 investment in filling uncirculated cents in holes. The beat goes on.... J.T.
I had to chuckle thinking about my experience. A good friend had purchased a pile of wheaties at a garage sale, and knowing I was a collector he asked if I'd go through them. He said he planned on giving them to his grandson to start a collection. Wanting to do right by my friend, I spent time examining each and every coin closely, hoping to find the "jackpot" for my friend. I laboriously made up an excel sheet, and even put a couple that were worth more than face value, in flips with labels. When all was said and done, I told him I was finished with them and would return them to him. He said, "Oh, you can keep them." Turns out he had no real interest in them and his grandson was only 4 years old. LOL I still have them separate from my other coins and will probably give them to his grandson in a few years and hope he will appreciate them.
Reading the foregoing posts reminded me of the time I helped someone liquidate a coin "collection". A co worker retired and in less than 2 years dropped dead at home. First the new widow called me asking for help with the guns he had laying all over the house, some loaded. Later she called and said she found a steel tool box in the closet with a pad lock on it, and it was so heavy she could not lift it. She said she thought it was full of coins. I went over there with my 24" bolt cutters ("master key") and snipped the lock off. Yep, sure enough, box was full of mostly silver coins. She agreed that I could take to the one big coin shop in Seattle where I was known and a regular. I had to use a hand truck to move that heavy tool box. The 2 brothers who ran the shop spent a few hours sorting through all the coins, looking for rare dates (none found), and removing bent coins, which would jam up their automatic coin counting machine. I guess the whole lot was "junk silver", and they made an offer a bit over $5000. I asked how much of that was for the Morgans, and he said $300. I took the Morgans for myself and gave the widow woman 3 honeybees ($100 bills) plus the check from the coin shop. Everyone was happy.
