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Coin collection inherited
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20 posts in this topic

Hello all. I have alot of coins. Silver dollars,  quarter's, and dimes. Very few pennies. What would be the best way to sell them.. local dealer seems little cheap..

20200123_083209.jpg

Edited by Kipswg
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Two possibilities exist:

 

1) The material is very common, or

2) He may be trying to lowball you (rip you off).

 

The more likely is #1, the more evil is #2. Only knowledge can tell the difference.

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Welcome to the forum!

To help set expectations, #1 as suggested above is true 99.9% of the time, common coins with very little numismatic value.  How many coins are we talking about?  There is a time cost in going through boxes/jars of coins (for you and for the dealer) and they have no reason to invest their time unless they can make a profit. 

If you want to invest your time, itemize each coin by specific series, date, and mint mark.  If you don't want to commit that level of time, at least identify each coin group by series on a list (i.e Washington quarters, Morgan dollars, Mercury dimes, etc.) and share here.  We can quickly tell you what to look for.  Those new to coin collecting and value are often shocked to learn 100 year old coins can be worth pennies over their face value for example.  For example, a normally worn 1955 penny could be worth 2-3 cents but the same coin if the double die error could be worth $1000.

It would be awesome if you really had something of value!   

 

 

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It really amazes me how many people have coin collections but not an inventory of what is in them or what they are worth, I know it takes time to do but is worth it in the long run.  People must not think enough about their collection that if something happens to it, that would be no big deal.  At least take some pics so if it gets stolen the police have something to look out for.  Home owners won't cover the loss with out it being apprised. I have lots of coins most everything is worth under $20, but a have some that are worth a lot more too. when I pass my collection on the person getting will know what they have and what I paid. ( what it is worth is always a number that is not fixed) So what I'm saying is take your time, make the list, look at each coin, you can find prices give it the cheapest one you find. (unless you are Rick or Mike from TV) 

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I think it's not lack of interest in having an inventory but that the joy of collecting is greater than the slog of inventorying - and by the time they realize they need an inventory, it's too late, the sheer number of coins is overwhelming! Let's face it, most hobbies involve an element of hording and then being able to locate something specific within that mass of collected material! Inventories are just boring paperwork. :grin:

Kidding aside, I maintain a very detailed inventory except for value. Value is something I can always get off the internet as a benchmark, and since I'm not dealing with super rare or super expensive coins, the cost of maintaining that value in time is so much greater than the amount of value I'd potentially lose.

Edited by Kirt
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2 hours ago, Kirt said:

I think it's not lack of interest in having an inventory but that the joy of collecting is greater than the slog of inventorying - and by the time they realize they need an inventory, it's too late, the sheer number of coins is overwhelming! Let's face it, most hobbies involve an element of hording and then being able to locate something specific within that mass of collected material! Inventories are just boring paperwork. :grin:

Kidding aside, I maintain a very detailed inventory except for value. Value is something I can always get off the internet as a benchmark, and since I'm not dealing with super rare or super expensive coins, the cost of maintaining that value in time is so much greater than the amount of value I'd potentially lose.

I agree part of collecting is hording.  I would say most of the coins I save are of face value. Yes putting together  an inventory is the boring part, yet when I want to see what mine looks like compared to what someone is showing I can look it up in minuets.  yes I may be a little ODC about things , but taking pics also made me look at each coin and see if I missed something of importance. When I started I just looked for dates and mint marks, by the way last week I found a jar of Mercury dime at a yard sale. I had to augh the guy had a sign saying there was $40 of dimes in it and he took $45 for it. (even after I told him that they we sliver and he could get more at the coin shop) So I have hours of work ahead.:banana:

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I like another website, that allows for cataloging, valuation, etc.  Very easy.  When my aunt gave me the coin collection she got from a divorce, it was alot, but it was very relaxing and enjoyable.

If OP is near Philly, LMK, I will be happy to meet in a public place to give some advice.

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These are 1944 D Dimes they look in good shape. Any worth getting graded. If I'm right they all have full bands on the back which from reading seems to be a good thing

20200207_113155.jpg

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24 minutes ago, Kipswg said:

20200207_114047.jpg

On at least some of those coins, the bands are not full. The areas you need to check are circled in red below:

image.png.f2271d10f35a83b3d3ab856cc8454cc4.png

 

And, this is what to look for (The descriptions are not exactly accurate. The second picture is fully split bands, and the third picture is fully split and rounded bands):

image.png.7cb6806ef36ee4edcb6be2b6d5591dc1.png

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There is an area between "worth mostly metal value" and "worth having graded"--let's call it "worth protecting with at least a flip"--and it is quite possible that most of your best examples will fall into this category. You might want to handle these with clean cloth gloves (some dealers use throwaway linen gloves) or little rubber fingertips that I call leprechaun condoms. They sell by the bag. If you did happen to have a really nice high uncirculated coin, and you thumbed it while arranging it for photography, it might lose a couple of grade notches. With most coins, the higher the grade, the disproportionately more the value jumps. So if it's worth $10 at 63, $20 at 64, $40 at 65, and $145 at 66, and it was a 66 before it got an indelible thumbprint in handling, now it might be a 63 and careless handling made $135 evaporate.

No one can fully tell whether any of those Mercs have full split bands; too many crammed into one pic and too small. Plus they're not oriented correctly, which some people won't even bother looking at.

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Ok that's very helpful thank you. Never thought I would be learning about coins.  It's very addictive and over whelming when you just get some many coins at once and unexpected 

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25 minutes ago, Kipswg said:

Sorry was trying not to flood the site with individual pictures. I got a coin scope on order that I can get pictures with it.

Word to the wise on coin scopes...while they can be good for some things, they're really bad at others. The LED lights (at least on the USB ones) create a lighting pattern that can really mess with how a coin looks. Get used to handling your coins wearing those disposable gloves, and looking at them through a 5x loupe under natural or incandescent light, tilting them back and forth to catch hairlines, etc.

That being said, coin scopes would be ideal for looking for full bands on Mercs. That's one of the things they're really good at.

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Your image, if I save and zoom in, is good enough to rule out most of them, but I see one or two that could be split bands, closer examination required. 2nd and 3rd from bottom in last row.

Edited by kbbpll
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1 hour ago, Kipswg said:

Ok that's very helpful thank you. Never thought I would be learning about coins.  It's very addictive and over whelming when you just get some many coins at once and unexpected 

That's completely understandable. Plus, there's always the underlying question: "Could I be sitting on my retirement?" That of course is very, very rare, but it's not utterly impossible. So it creates a certain curiosity and excitement. We all get it on some level even if we are very jaded. Most people here like coins. (I know one very wealthy big-name dealer who does not. "I hate coins," he said. "But they're the only thing I'm good at.")

It's not always bad to post multiple coins per pic, but it's always a tradeoff: the more you include, the smaller the images necessarily must be, and thus the less detail we will see, and the less we will be able to help you. Some people are saints who will actually download the pics, rotate them, zoom in on them, and review them to answer the question. I'm not one of the saints--I ignore any pic that is avoidably misoriented or too fuzzy to mess with--but I am someone who will take time to help someone improve their odds of responses (presuming they haven't been a *spoon*bag; in that case I don't bother at all). I think four coins per pic is a reasonable number, for example, when you have a lot of coins to go through. But would most people think to include a batch label (even "Mercs Group A/B/etc.") with the obverse and reverse pics of multiple groups? No, but that would be very, very smart. Then people could say: "Check your Group B, upper right. I think that one's FSB." No ambiguity. Ease of use. More and better responses. Better information for you.

As for photography? Regular camera, tripod, shoot straight downward, experiment until you get the light correct without glare. Cell phone cameras have become so common that people tend to assume they'll never need anything else. Maybe some won't, but I do.

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I've started using the blue nitrile gloves, when gloves are called for, which isn't often.

 

What JKK said upthread cannot possibly be emphasized too much. There is a VAAAAASST territory between "meh, junk" and worthy of being graded. Did I mention it's vast? It's probably bigger than either extreme is. And once you become okay with that fact (and please do), there are even finer classifications, such as "cardboard 2x2 worthy", "Saflip worthy", "Capital Plastics holder worthy", "2x2 slide page worthy", "hard plastic holder worthy", 2x2x9 stock box worthy", "tube filler", "jar filler", and several others. And they ALL are neither junk nor worthy of being third party graded.

Edited by VKurtB
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