Casual Collector - Inherited Large Collection - Thoughts?

I'm doing quite-thorough cataloging of them - in a spreadsheet with numbered references, dates, type, etc. and pictures of everything. Not going to post it here, just noting that I'm keeping track of everything. May use this a crude way to estimate the total value.

It's a huge variety!

Take your time thinking about the options before doing anything. Those traveling buying events are not the best in my opinion. Try local coin stores, coin shows, the well known online dealers. Sold prices on ebay is a good place to get current values.

If you decide to sell them all you are not far from major city, there's several coin stores within about an hour drive you can check out. Use your browser to find them. Coin stores will offer lower price than retail of course so they can sell and make a profit.

There's prior comments about this on CCF, here is one:

https://goccf.com/t/491701

to the CCF, WolfStock!

I get the feeling that there is no urgent need to liquidate this collection ASAP, which is a good thing. Having to rush into a sale guarantees that you won't get the best price for your items. If there's no pressing need for the funds, take your time to itemize the collection in a spreadsheet. You can then assign values to each item. More on this in a bit.

I advise you to not sell anything if you are considering taking up the hobby. I have quite a few coins from my father - he had been a more than casual collector and then got more serious when I showed an interest in collecting in the early '70s. The family connection makes me appreciate these coins more than other similar ones. Also, it would be a shame to have to go back and reacquire an example of a coin that you sold if you do take up the hobby.

There are a few different ways to assign values to each coin. The first is to ask someone, such as your LCS or better yet here on the CCF. We don't have a financial interest in your coins so we'll give you the best estimate. Start a new topic for each coin, and post a clear image of both sides of the coin. If you have a large number, you could scan an entire sheet and post that. A second way is to look at ebay sold listings - not items for sale.em

After you have a firm idea of what you have and the general value, you can then look into what you'll do with the collection.

Great advice given above.

You can also click on inherited to learn more.

Hello and welcome.

The first thing you're going to need to get your head around is the different concepts that are out there about exactly what the "value" of a coin is. It all depends on who's asking the question, and why.

First off, you've got the value that the owner of a coin shop is going to give you if you were to just dump the entire collection on their desk and ask them "how much would you give me for this collection, right now". While the crudest definition of a coin's value is "whatever someone is willing to pay for it", this is the quickest and simplest way to convert an estate collection into something more easily divisible and there's some kind of hurry to obtain the funds quickly. However, this "value" is going to be quite low. The dealer, in this circumstance, is not going to look too closely at the collection and will be making lots of worst-case assumptions about the collection, without looking at it too closely. Then, when they have time, they will then go through the collection and pick out the best items from it for individual sale. Coins not deemed worthy of such treatment would be sold in bulk lots. Most dealers will happily give you this kind of valuation for free, even if you make it clear that you're not interested in selling the coins immediately.

Second, there's the "book value". This is the number you would obtain if you were to look the coin up in a coin catalogue or price guide. It would also likely be the price that a dealer would be selling the coin at. This is also the value that an insurance company would want to know for a formal valuation, since that's how much it would cost you to replace it. Coin dealers can do formal valuations, but this takes much longer as they have to spend the time looking at each individual coin and looking it up in the catalogues. You do have to pay the coin dealer an hourly rate for their time if this kind of valuation is being undertaken. Note that a coin dealer will not then accept that valuation as a sale price for the collection. But you can find out the book value of your slabbed coins fairly easily, as the slabbing companies maintain price guides for the coins in their slabs.

Finally, there's the actual value someone will give you for the coins. Unfortunately, this number is unknown and unknowable until someone actually gives you the money. Ideally, you want that number to be as close to that high number from the second definition as possible, but realistically it should be somewhere between those two values. Selling coins on some place like ebay is an option many choose to try to attain higher prices, but ebay has it's own risks and issues (shipping and packaging, "difficult" buyers, being mistrusted as a "new seller", etc). I'd only recommend ebay if you're already an enthusiastic eBayer. For larger collections, especially in the larger cities, dedicated coin auction houses are a good way of getting better value; the drawback there is having to wait until the company is running their next auction. Coin club auctions have also been mentioned by others above as a good option for both selling coins and for learning about coins generally.

My suggestion, given your circumstances: take the collection - in its entirely - to a couple of coin dealers (not jewellers or those "we buy gold" booths, unless there are literally no coin dealers within easy driving distance) and ask them for that definition 1 valuation of the entire collection. They will need to see the actual coins, and not just the list (though the list may be helpful too). Maybe talk through the list of dealers you plan on asking, before you go, so there's transparency with the family there. Get a couple of valuations, and choose the highest. This gives you a number for the estate to consider, as that component of the whole estate. I'm assuming for now that your dad's estate includes other assets other than the coin collection (eg house, car, cash in the bank, etc). This way, the entire estate can be partitioned fairly among the heirs, and you can ask to take all or part of "your share" of the estate as the collection, rather than as cash.

It is "fair" because the valuation you've used is a genuine valuation from a knowledgeable independent third party (not some number you've concocted yourself, or that some random people on the Internet gave you) and you would be essentially gambling that maybe you might get a higher value for some of the items at a later date. Who knows what coin prices are going to do in the future, and you might decide not to sell after all. If, at some point in the future you do happen to sell some or all of the collection and you realise with surprise that someone is prepared to pay you much much more than your estate valuation had allowed for, then you can always voluntarily choose to make a further split of the profits to maintain family harmony - and to remember again your dad who left you that legacy.

I'm sure your dad would have been pleased as punch that at least one of his kids was actually interested in maybe keeping all or part of the collection and becoming a collector themselves. Coin collecting is not a hereditary disease and can be a somewhat lonely hobby, and sadly many coin collectors in your dad's situation find themselves with maybe a dozen or so kids and grandkids, but none of them share their passion or want anything to do with collecting coins.

Thanks for all the advice! Will take some time to parse through and chew and respond. And yeah I'll post some pics.

Definitely not planning to sell at the event - it's mainly to (potentially) get a dollar figure to show the family. I expect it'll be low - much lower that what I could get via other means of sales, and I can then use that to show them that I need to take my time selling (or if I buy them from the rest of the family - why what I'd give them is a good price).

As a primer pic - here's pretty cool commemorative coin that's part of it:

(OK well - I want to post an image, but it seems like it has to be posted to another site first and linked from here? I guess does this site not host images? If not - is there a recommended site to use? I can figure something out - just wondering.)

Yeah indeed I am interested in keeping at least a portion of the collection. I'm not a "quantity" person but prefer to have just a single sample of most coins, at least the numismatic ones. So will be having an email chat with the family about options; with the the ideal proposal being that I use my discretion for each set to either sell somewhere or to buy myself (from the family), but do it slowly over time.

One source of at least some value level is the Yeoman Red Book. I've got a few copies from various years, and just got the 2027 one. I've read that the prices on there tend to be a bit high; probably about in line with what someone would pay for at a shop, but way higher than what one could expect to sell it for.

See my question above about pics - how do people generall post pics in here? It appears you can't drag-and-drop, and it doesn't look like there's an "add pic" option - just the option to link to a pic in some other site. Is that the case?