A Coin Dealer's Dream Consignment

It's a scarry subject. And a real problem for some and maybe not for you though. The problem comes in when other relatives find out and start all kinds of "You are robbing our family" or "How much are you pocketing" or many similar situations. If in fact as you mentioned you two are the only relatives, that is sort of good but so many times other mysterious relatives pop up out of the woodwork.
Now if your left alone with all of those coins, even your friend may start to wonder just what could be happening when no one is looking. And then too, when and if you sell something, there could be that doubt that you and someone is skimming off the top.
All sounds a little pessimistic but I've seen similar situations and had one in my family just like I explained.
My suggesetion is to purchase books and magazines on coins with prices prior to any sales. The carefully explain to the owners of those coins that even then those prices are what dealers sell for and unless your planning on becoming a dealer, you would not get those prices.
His estamate of what they were worth was just that, an estimate. Many people have appraisals made for insurance purposes and those are usually inflated due to insurance comapanies don't give you what things are worth.
I suggest you never sell any of those coins except when they are present and have their approval.
So many problems are created by this type of situations.

How many coins in the collection?

I have no idea how many coins. He said something like "buried under dad's house in the country..."

Of course, that scared the crap out of me.


I very much like the "act as agent" advice. I'd prob do that. While I prob know less than a tenth of what most of you know, I prob know enough to ask the right questions and keep them out of trouble.

The minefield comment is also quite relevant. This project would consume so much of my time.

But, I hope I get it. It would be cool. And hopefully, I'll have enough posts here to offer things up for sale. :-)

If the individual value of these coins exceeds, say, $500-ish (and it seems likely given the appraisal you mention) your best bet is Heritage or Stacks-Bowers. Nobody else commands the quantity of deep-pocketed buyers that they do.

SuperDave's comment is an interesting one.

I've worried that doing things manually by myself:

- getting Third Party Grading on the coins

- selling them myself on, say ebay,

would be counterproductive. Access to the correct market is critical in a case like this one.

$500 thousand , that's a lot of coins.

Carl offers excellent advice. You'll have to be VERY careful or risk losing your friendship.

The first thing to do is to inventory everything. I would only use Heritage for the very expensive stuff. The key dates/high grade coins should be slabbed before sale to get the highest profit. If there's lots of low grade/cheap stuff, I'd bundle that in batches and sell on ebay.

Another key point is that I'd only take the coins in small batches from your friend and track each and every coin taken to work on selling. There's absolutely NO WAY I'd just load-up all the coins at once and drive away. That leaves far too many questions and potential problems. No matter what, this is going to be a LONG process. Good Luck!

As suggested above.

Inventory Everything. use the description of the coin and assign an Item number. Yes, this item number may get into the 5 digit range.

Use an electronic format for your inventorying, that was you can benefit from Computers doing match and searches for you.

Keep records of EVERY sale, the date the item went up for sale, the date it sold, the price it sold at, and always use receipts.

I would also actually, have a contract signed up between you and your friend, naming you as the consigner and releiveing you of any financial and personal responsibility in the event of a dispute. Have it notarized.

When transfering the money to your friend, if physical cash, bring along a non interested third party to witness the transfer.

I know a lot of this seems uneccesary between two friends, but if this collection is worth what you say, it's in everyone best interest that you protect yourself, and them. I think it's the responsible thing to do.



Also, if you feel the task is too large / risky, you could refer them to Bobby and Susan, they do consignment. At the least they may be able to offer suggestions from their experiences.