Live auction of a good chunk of my collection tonight (Friday)

Collecting coins is easy. Collecting coins on a budget is hard. Selling coins is easy. Selling coins for what they're worth is hard!

This Friday night (the 20th) is the night much of my collection goes up for live auction. You can watch it here: http://www.proxibid.com/asp/Catalog.asp?aid=54963 or you can also find it through RJ's Auction Service in Scranton, KS.

Much of my slab collection will get sold cheaply, if my past buying experience holds here. Browse the auction for mixed date multi-slab lots of moderns, and you'll find great bargains. I wouldn't be surprised if the lot with the two PCGS 1960 5c MS65's goes for $4/coin, or if the eight-coin lot including the NGC 1965 5c MS66 goes for $40 total. OUCH!

Months and years of good buys, great buys, a few impulse buys, a few decent trades, LOTS of roll searching, and improving success at slabbing raw coins ... well, that all sounds good and like my collection improved, BUT ...

Let's just say no matter how great a deal you bought something for, it's not a great deal until you sell it. And you're not going to sell it if it's in a pile of boxes and half-finished coin projects in an area of your house you're trying to keep your messes out of the rest of your family's hair!

(I always admire collectors like W.K.F. who post photos of their pristine dining tables with an organized collecting project complete or ongoing in an easily seen start-middle-end fashion.)

Roll searching is true treasure hunting, but it's also death by a thousand messes in the household, and it's death by a thousand nickels in trying to resell great UNC raw stock at UNC prices. Ain't gonna happen, I don't have thirty years and 5000 s.f. to leave the stuff laying around.

What's the answer? Sell!

If I had sold all the slabs singly on EBay no reserve, I might've done better than this auction will go with multi-lots. The 2009-D BU dime rolls, lost in a multi-date lot, will go close to face, when the better choice/gem examples could sell for $5 each coin raw.

At least there's an unusual $100 of mine on the block, too.

Have fun watching the auction results, and if you accumulate your collection like I have mine, keep in mind how you plan on organizing and selling.

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