Hello Everyone, I am new here though I have visited periodically through the years. I finally took the leap and joined. Now I have a problem. I haven't found it in the archives but I am sure it must have been discussed somewhere and at sometime. My problem is too many coins and what to do with them. I am a "type" collector. I currently have 2700+ coins in my collection and over 249 countries. The problem is the other 100 pounds of "type" copies. Some of them like my pfennings or yen are over 100 coins of one single type. I do not know how to divest myself of these coins. I don't want to destroy them with holes or glue or in some other way. I don't wish to go into business as a seller. What do you do with your extra coins? I would appreciate hearing how others deal with this problem. I have made a private resolution not to acquire any new coins until I can somehow cope with the ton of extras I have. Please help.
You could always 'bag' them into 5 pound bags and sell by the pound. There are folks who buy foreign coins by the pound; in fact there are two of them in my local coin club. There is no B/S/T discussion in the regular forums.
Hello "Techwriter", I have no problem selling them by the pound except shipping is outrageous and I live in Wyoming. I usually buy by the pound when on the road which is how I ended up with them. I now have them all separated by country and KM number so a pound would be several KMs or countries packaged together. Trading is an option too. I still have a few countries and coins to go.
USPS offers numerous economical flat rate shipping options. You can ship up to 70 pounds of most anything you want anywhere in the country Priority for one low rate in either a large envelope or sturdy boxes that come in various sizes. Prices start at only $5.05 and that includes tracking and insurance. The envelopes and boxes are free as well.
No further discussion of B/S/T. Fine to discuss giving away or methods of disposal, but when it is someone trying to make a deal, its a no go.
I donated about 1,000 excess coins to a Boy Scout organization to help them earn their Coin Collecting merit badge. I lost out on a bit of money as I'm one of those people who occasionally buys foreign coins by the pound, but if I even make one lifetime collector, I'll consider it worth it. Currently, I'm only at about 166 countries so I'm a bit jealous there.
I can tell you what I do with mine. One of my employees is a single mom with three kids. One (the youngest) has Asperger's. He's not a bad kid, but can be a handful. One thing I noticed is he's really into Legos, so much so that he is virtually invisible when building things. When he concentrates on something, he's well-behaved. Found out he also likes coins. So I got him Memorial Cent albums and a few rolls to search. She said he was ecstatic. So i also started to bag up some of my extra foreign coins for him to search through. He stays occupied for hours with these. So, as others suggested, find someone like this, or a young one showing even a mild interest in collecting, to see if you can fan that fire. Or, find a scout troop and give them to those kids. See if your local school district would be interested in them, would go great with geography or history lessons.
