You kick the bucket? As of now I have none. But I think I should. My family knows nothing and would probably spend or sell off at what ever first offers they got! I would surely roll over in my grave. Any horror stories out there or prudent ideas??
I don't have any family worth even thinking about, so if I kick the bucket, it is all going to Shane. I think he knows what he is doing. Chris
There's a book called The Rare Coin Estate Handbook by James Halperin, it discusses this issue and offers several suggestions on how to deal with it. You should be able to find a copy for just a few dollars.
My wife and I was talking about this just the other day. It is a little scary when your spouse starts asking about things she has no interest in and me kicking the bucket. But when you get up in years having a good game plan will help when she is taking over something that she knows nothing about, and not giving it away to strangers for near nothing. I have all my coins and paper money cataloged with pictures. I have current market value listed with grades that are low if anything. And she knows to take everything to a certain person and have them help with selling my collection. I believe it will be the hardest investment to have someone help with, but lucky for me I have another relative that knows about coins, tokens, and paper money. Thanks Biged
As of now, since my kisd are young, (one unborn), I have no idea if they would want them. I know my wife doesn't. So I have a list of three firms to pack up the stuff and submit for auction. One for ancients/world, one for US, and a third for coin books. If an accident happens, I told her to follow this, maybe keeping a few coins for the kids, or any lots that go unsold keep for them. Best way I know of handling it, and maximizing value. If someone has a better suggestion I am all ears. Hopefully my sons will bail me out of this, and at least one will become a collector.
I am a younger collector, but knowing that accidents do happen I have a letter tucked away in my collection with information about what pieces need special attention should my wife need to part out the collection if anything would happen to me. I know she has little interest in the coins themselves, and in the unfortunate event that I am not around anymore I wanted her to have an idea of what my collection consisted of, someone to contact for help, and not to take any of it to a pawn shop
For now, my older daughter likes "looking at coins with daddy", and is hopefully developing the collecting bug. Younger daughter is still too young to understand the hobby yet. Hopefully at least one will develop the bug and take over the collection over time and I won't have to worry about it. At the moment, the wife does know a little bit about what I'm doing as well although it doesn't interest her. Thankfully I'm dealing with mostly buillion-type coinage at the moment so at the least it should be easy to get proper value out of it, and the wife knows where to go for trusted dealers. As I have time I will be organizing / cataloging the collection and making notes as I go along so in case none of them develop into collectors at least they won't be completely in the dark as to what it may be worth and how to divest it properly when the time comes.
I think RickyB authored a thread on this awhile back and it had a lot of good info in it. Let me poke around a bit and see if I can find it.
I have my collections cataloged along with instructions, such as where to find current values and markets to pursue if my family wishes to sell. I've also listed all the things they shouldn't do, just to be safe.
No one else in the family has any interest in coins and once I'm gone I really don't care what they get for the coins, and they really don't relish the idea of have to fool with trying to dispose of them. One thing I have considere is donating them to a local club for disposal by putting each coin in an unmarked numbered envelope, and then at their annual shows letting all the YN's that attend to draw a number and they get the envelope with that number. At the rate at which YN's come to shows they will be able to do this for decades, and it could be very interesting because while many of the envelopes hold common coins, there would also be over a thousand envelopes that hold coins worth from $50 to over $1500
