Nics W.

Thank you all for your feedback and advice so far! I realized fairly quickly things like Washington quarters, Lincoln pennies, Roosevelt dimes, Jefferson nickels, most of the foreign coins, etc. weren't going to be worth anything so I stopped looking at them individually and just looked up "key years" to see if any of those were present.  The few that are "key" don't seem to be extremely rare or anything like that anyway though, and most are reasonably worn.  And all the silver proof sets seem to have been pretty widely circulated so I didn't expect them to be worth much more than their melt value.  Most of what I think might be of some higher value are older coins, some of which seem to be in reasonably decent condition--Morgan and Peace dollars, Liberty Seated/Barber/Walking Liberty half-dollars, Liberty Seated/Standing Liberty/Barber quarters, Barber/Mercury dimes, etc.  Some of them appear to have been purchased at a coin store, so they're in "decent" condition but I don't have any delusions that any of them are anywhere near mint or uncirculated or anything like that, so the values I estimated were at a pretty low grade.

I like the idea of taking a set to different coin stores to feel out who's willing to offer what; will definitely try this once the situation changes and stores reopen!  Do coin stores also buy coins for silver melt value, or is that somewhere else?

Thanks again!

Nicole

Hi all--I'm sure you probably get tons of questions like this, so I just wanted to say thank you in advance for any help or guidance anyone is willing to give!  My in-laws recently passed away and in the progress of cleaning out their house, we discovered a decently sized coin collection my father-in-law had been keeping over the years.  I've spent a considerable amount of time going through sorting and cataloging into a spreadsheet all the coins in the collection and now we're looking to sell what we can to hopefully get back a little money to fix up their house to sell it.  Most of what he collected appear to be circulated coins, so there doesn't seem to be anything super rare or valuable, but some of the older pieces seem like they may be worth something more than their currency or even silver melt value, even in a lower grade condition, and there are some labeled uncirculated.  Many of them were at least kept in a binder, and some do look to have been purchased at a coin store so some have grades on them, but very few do.  There are also a number of silver proof sets and things like that, and a lot of the coins have silver content, so they're valuable in that regard in terms of melt value.

Since I don't think there's anything rare or extremely valuable, we are just looking to see what we can get for some of the coins that may be a bit valuable even circulated.  We aren't hoping to get a huge amount for anything because of this (anything I looked up values for I used a very low grade for my estimates, since obviously I am not capable of grading these myself), so we don't really want to go to the expense of having the collection professionally graded or anything like that (of course, any listing/sales posting would obviously note this).  So my questions are this:

1) What would be the best method/venue to go about selling in this case? Ebay? Postings on message boards?

2) Is it preferable to sell as a lot of similar coins, or sell individual coins?

3) What is the best method/venue to utilize to sell silver coins for melting?

Again, thanks in advance for anyone who is willing to provide any suggestions or guidance.  I actually knew nothing about the world of coin collecting before this discovery, but I've actually greatly enjoyed sorting through the entire collection, discovering what was there, and doing research about the different kinds of coins, variations, learning about grading, etc.  I've actually learned a great deal as well, and have decided to keep a few of the more interesting coins for myself and give a few to my dad, who has always had a fascination with Buffalo nickels!

Best to all in this trying time, and hope all are staying safe!

Nicole Wittlief