Perhaps Better To Pass To Next Generation

[kemokimo-migration]

Trying to learn how to price a coin once I have determined a grade from Photograde Online. If I have a 1941 penny that is a VF35 and the Red Book says that a VF20 is worth 40 cents and an XF40 is worth 60 cents, then as I calculate it, the VF35 should be worth 55 cents. Now I know that I'm not going to get that for it, even assuming that I have graded it correctly. My question is what kind of offer can I expect for the VF35 from different kinds of buyers like dealers or individuals. Is there another category of collector I might run into at a collectors show? If so, what could I expect from him?

[MarkFeld]

Don't use the Redbook for pricing. Even if the prices are accurate at the time they are submitted, they might be outdated by the time the book is published and available.

 

If you don't already subscribe to the Heritage auction archives, you should. You need to register to use it, but it is free and a great source of pricing information. There are other price/value sources offered by, among others, NGC, PCGS the Coin Dealer Newsletter, Numismedia, etc.

[newprepper]

So do you feel that the auction house archives, (not ebay) are probably the most accurate location for FMV?

[MarkFeld]

So do you feel that the auction house archives, (not ebay) are probably the most accurate location for FMV?

 

eBay is certainly another potentially helpful source. But to my knowledge, as opposed to the Heritage site, you can't access transactions after a certain amount of time on their site.

[newprepper]

Thanks, sorry if I hi-jacked your thread for my question

[Mozin]

Don't hesitate to register with Heritage, they are the biggest coin auction house in the world. I buy most of my coins from their auctions.

[Conder101]

If you don't already subscribe to the Heritage auction archives, you should. You need to register to use it, but it is free and a great source of pricing information.

How many 40 cent coins are you going to find in the Heritage archives?

 

Kemokimo,

One problem you will find with trying to sell low priced coins is that they are common enough that any dealer is likely to have a sufficient supply of them already and is really not going to want to buy more of them. So any offer they do make is going to be very low. It may sound cruel but for most coins that list below $5 and definitely below $1 these list prices are what I refer to as the "Dealer nuisance charge". Even selling at those prices the dealer is often not making enough money to cover his expenses.

 

Your best shot at getting anywhere close to the listed prices is if you can find another collector to sell it to. The problem here is that there are a lot of these lower priced coins for the collectors to pick from so why buy yours? And there are still more of them available than there are collectors.

[kemokimo-migration]

After all this encouraging advice, and I know you are just being honest, the best course of action might just be to punt and pass the selected coins on to the next generation. The good news for them is that the coins will be substantially older by then and unlike with me, they won't, for example, have to go thru 6 to 8 thousand pennies to cull 100-150 that might be worth trying to sell.

[kemokimo-migration]

After rereading this last post from Conder101, a few more questions occured to me for the sake of the next generation. It starts with "How many 40 cent coins are you going to find in the Heritage achives" If my offspring can't, for example, find a reliable price on most of the pennies in the collection and if most are worth less than $1.00 according to the Red Book, why would they even bother to try to sell most of the 150 that I cherry picked on this basis, even if another 10 or 15 years go by? Plus you make it sound as though they would have to spend an exorbitant amount of time just trying to sell them if they hoped to get anywhere near the "market price" due to more coins available to buy in this price range than there are individul collectors.

[cladking]

At this time a coin like this will almost have to be sold as a common wheat cent which means about 3c in bulk.

 

The retail market can be very much different than the wholesale market.

 

As a retailer you might ask 40 or 50c for it but the postage will be much more.

[DaveG]

There's an old adage among coin collectors: "common coins will always be common".

 

Rather than burden your heirs with a collection in which they may have no interest, I suggest you sell your coins now and do something else with the proceeds.

 

And, sadly, it's true that about the only way to sell circulated common (1941-1958) Wheat cents is by the roll. You can probably get $1.00 to $1.50 per roll for them currently.

[Coinbuf]

Unless you had found a key or semi key date the best use for this type of material is for filling coin books. The best options for selling is in bulk lots on Ebay advertised as unsearched Lincolns, some collector of varites may be interested. The other option is to hold and pass them on, its possible that some day the value of copper will be high enough to excede the face value.

[DirtyGoldMan]

Your offspring will want cash, not a bunch of common wheaties. Roll them, sell them, and move on.