Help! How to sell inherited coin collection for maximum value????

DFreiheit,

With all due respect to everyone's opinions in this thread, the best advice given is quoted below. I've seen too many people in your situation take the route of selling themselves that ended up greatly regretting the decision.

In post 20 you mention having an auction "expert" look over some of the coins, but go on to ask for auction house suggestions. I doubt any of the well-known coin auction sites will be interested in generic raw material, but you may want to contact Ian at GreatCollections even if you do not want to take the slabbing route. He is a good guy and will tell it to you straight. Also, be wary of self-proclaimed experts at any small local auction companies.

 

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Goldbergcoins has some lower value auctions, they normally have a budget section for coins in the $50-$300 dollar range. They will also auction raw coins. Might be a good place to contact, depending on the value of the collection they may be willing to look it over and give advice on the best way to sell it. They also have a pretty low buyers premium compared to Heritage or Stacks.

Here is a link to their most recent auction, session 2 is their budget:

http://images.goldbergauctions.com/php/toc_auc.php?site=1&lang=1&sale=72

 

How about posting the coins here in the For Sale section and ask for best offers? You're likely to get fair prices for them...

 

Thanks for the recent posts! The suggestion for Goldbergcoins was an excellent one. I will contact them. They sound like just the sort of thing I'm looking for--for part of the collection, at least.

I've gotten a lot of PMs. For those who are thinking of sending a PM proposing to do business with me or proposing a friend or associate to do business with me, I am not looking for that sort of thing. I am only looking for advice, at this point. So, please don't take up your time composing a PM (or mine b/c I feel obligated to reply to PMs just out of courtesy, even if it's in the negative).

I am by no means going in the direction of selling the coins myself, at the moment, but it's still a possibility. So your post was interesting. Could you elaborate a bit? What was their experience like? It seems to me that selling on, say, ebay, would not be that hard. It's not like I have to grade the coins to do so, and the bids seem to be close to retail, as far as I can tell. But, then again, what do I know? I'm just a lucky schmuck who got these coins dropped in my lap. (youch!)

 

Howdy and welcome.

Truly, the amount of money you get out of this collection will be strongly correlated with the amount of work you are willing to put into the sale of the collection. The sale of the collection consists of not just handing over the coins and accepting payment, but also in grading, understanding what you have, presentation, images, shipping, contractural agreements, appraisals, storage, acquisition of knowledge and time. Most folks who inherit a collection and want to sell the collection want the most money, but they aren't necessarily interested in making the proper investment of resources in order to maximize the sale. A great analogy for this is in building a new home. The majority of new home owners would love every last detail in luxury in their home, but they pay someone else to build the home and to provide those details and luxuries. Certainly, if one were to invest the time, energy and resources into building their own home they would end up with a larger home and have greater amentities, but the fact is that few folks are willing to do that. Instead, they pay someone else to build their home with the understanding that the other person will charge some sort of fee for the service. Similarly, you can pay a professional a fee to simplify your life with the sale of these coins.

The major auction houses (Stack's-Bowers, Heritage, Goldbergs) do not deal in the type of material that you have listed unless there is a hidden, rare gem in there that you have forgotten to list. Teletrade may handle some of it, but quite a bit of what you have will be rejected. Ebay is certainly an option, but you will net less in larger lot sales while you will have to work quite a bit more if you sell it essentially coin by coin. My short answer would be that if you want the maximum dollars for this collection that you be willing to expend the maximum effort. The longer answer would recognize that you likely do not want to do this, therefore-

1) Pay $200 or so for a written appraisal of value from an established dealer.

2) Bring the collection to multiple dealers or shops and ask them to make an offer. Of course, realize that if everything is poorly organized that you will receive a lower offer.

3) Guesstimate how much you can get for the coins using completed sales on ebay.

4) Guesstimate how much time, angst, insurance liability, effort, frustration and boredom you will encounter selling everything on ebay.

5) Determine what the difference is between what you can sell everything for on ebay vs. the best good faith offer from a dealer.

6) Determine if your time, angst, insurance liability, effort, frustration and boredom is worth at least the difference in value from a possible ebay sale vs. a sale to a dealer.

7) Do not clean anything.

8) Good luck.

 

[FONT=&amp]Posts 25 and 26 should give you a lot to think about. What these two gentlemen said is pretty much what I was talking about in my earlier post about people who have tried selling a collection themselves and greatly regretted the decision. It's a lot of work and a lot of hassle for what in the end will likely be nowhere near the reward you had hoped.[/FONT]

 

It's all about time vs money. Just like most things.
You can sell tho the first person you find that buys them and get the least probably for them.
All the way to setting up at shows your self or opening a coin shop and you'll get top dollar.

I'd thing the best bang for your buck keeping time in mind it to go to at a few coin dealers or to a coin show and get a few offers. This way you should get a rather good price and get it quickly.

Good luck and let us know what happens.

 

the op mentioned teletrade, i know that teletrade only wants certified coins for their auctions. a few years ago i sent three certified coins to teletrade for auction. they called me and told me that there was only one coin in the package when they received it and that the package must have (popped open in the mail). i lost over $400.00 dollars worth of coins by sending in coins to them. i am not sure what happened there. as for the other auction houses, most of them only want very high value coins for their auctions. i am not sure how they feel about large collections with a high total value. good luck

 

My advice: Do not rush. Do not go to "dealers". Start watching ebay completed auctions and Heritage completed auctions (every day for a month or 2). Start an ebay account and sell the less expensive stuff to build feedback. Once you have your sea-legs move up in value. When you sell do 30 day "buy it now" and ask top dollar. The key is patience. "dealers" will definitely give you half or less of the top dollar you will get on ebay.

 

OP, though I "know" most people who have posted here, I agree with you that I would not be interested in selling via PM here.

I would echo other sentiments here that say to spend a little bit of money to have an expert go through every coin and document which are valuable and to what extent. This will be money well spent. If you are not a collector, you do not know if those incomplete books are all common date junk, or there are two or three really valuable coins in in of them. It can happen. I have seen the weirdest things. Most everyone has seen partially filled mercury dime folders, always missing the 16d. Well, one time I saw at an auction, (unfortunately others did too and bidding went too high), where someone was putting together a VF set. The folder was only half complete, but had the 16d in VF in it. That was a $1000 coin way back then!

So, ask for good dealers near you, pay them a couple of hundred for a really good appraisal, THEN you are in a pretty good position to consider your options sir.

Best of luck to you.

Chris

 

Edited

 

Thanks to everyone who posted yesterday and today. It's all food for thought--and I actually like the fact that there are sharply differing opinions on what to do; that's what I would expect when there are, ultimately, no clear answers to the question. The information provided will help me decide, e.g. the potential hassle of ebay sales. One thing I want to make clear: if I were to sell some of the coins myself, I would focus on the high value coins. I will probably sell the low value coins to a dealer, and just sold some last weekend, in fact.
I will post again with a more considered opinion. I just wanted to post quickly to acknowledge posts and thank people for taking the time to give me their thoughts. (I personally dislike it when an OP never replies to give an update or tell the outcome, seems ungrateful to me for the time people spent trying to help--and, in the past, it has certainly made me less inclined to reply when someone posts a query in an area where I have some expertise.)

 

I'd suggest finding a local coin club and asking for some assistance. The club I belong to takes coins on consignment for members and the membership is like $15 year. You'll pay a slight commission but much less than what would happen at an auction house. At my club, a long time collector actually grades the coins and when the auction runs (once a month) the coins usually go for somewhere in the 50 75% range of the value assigned.

It might take awhile to run through them this way but you might be surprised by the $$ produced and the things that you can learn along the way.

​

 

Yes, I realize this thread is three years old, but I'm in the same position as Daniel was and I have a similar coin count.

How does one go about getting an appraisal and how do you know to trust the one doing the appraising? I can't imagine that I would go to the shop and sit there for hours on end while this person reviews all my coins. Do you just give them the coins and hope that if you have a very choice one in there that you actually get it back?

 

YES. (microphone drop)

 

I'm infamous for distaste of bumped threads, but "inheritance" threads are a type that age well and ought to be rediscussed regularly.

You can do a lot of the initial narrowing-down right here. Like the original poster, come up with a basic inventory - types, years - and create a thread of your own to start the conversation about your specific holdings. We can help to isolate the specific members of each issue group worthy of additional information - key dates, conditional rarities, dates known to have significant varieties, the like. For your part, you're going to have to come up with a basic grading sense, for now just enough to differentiate between obviously-worn and obviously Uncirculated; the ones which fall into the grey area in between are likely worth further attention if Uncirculated examples are worth it.

Of course, the results will be pretty generalized, and at some point the ability to create and post decent images of individual coins will become necessary. However, your first post - if enough information is there - will probably weed out at least two-thirds of the pile into the "I should probably sell these in bulk" types, or at least provide you enough information to do that on your own.

Not until this process is well along will it even be relevant to start discussing how/where you might liquidate, if that's your intent. Moreover, if you end up having them appraised (knowing your general location will allow somebody in the know to recommend appropriate possibilities, and the best appraisal is one you pay for), it'd be a lot easier on the appraiser if you only hand them fifty coins instead of a thousand.

 

Go to a local coin club meeting.

They should know reputable local dealers -- to appraise your collection.

Plus, I bet you'll get plenty of advice (hopefully helpful). Maybe some decent offers too.

 

Whew!....

Chandler AZ.
And I'll leave this thread alone and start a new one when I have more info to provide. Thank you.