Selling Collections

I agree, all my coins are Certified and this is one of the major reasons behind my madness. If ever anything happens to me, my children have instructions on how to liquidate.
And having everything Certified just makes it that much more simple.

Glenn

Sounds like 'fire sale' thinking to me. It need not be like that, and especially not with the disposal of a coin collection, if you go about it the right way.

If your wife is giving you a hard time try to tell her of the problems of a 'fire sale' type of mentality and the possibility of not getting as much money for the collection as you should do.

Generally, most collectors build their collection over a lengthy period, and have a lot of fun doing so. This should also provide you with the clue on how to sell it.

Take your time, and have a lot of fun selling it. If you can't sell it yourself because you may be old and dodery at the end of your life, instruct someone you can trust in your family to do it for you, and how you think would be the best way to sell it. Most of the clues in doing that will come out of the methods you used to buy it in the first place.

As a frequent buyer of coins I think people who believe a slabbed coin is going to protect its value for a future wife or heir is likely more than a little hopeful. Market conditions and venue conditions change constantly and wishful thinking plays little part in it. Add to that the uncertainty of auction commissions - I doubt you'll ever find a single, friendly private collector who wants to purchase them all - and you have a recipe for disaster. My advice to collectors is standard: sell while you're alive and still able to control at least something of the exchange.

(a) if someone's heir sells as a package they are highly likely to suffer some heavy losses (collector value, NOT bullion value). dealers or collectors are going to pay for the cherries but not the 'dead stock'. slabbed or not, what YOU collect isn't always going to be desireable to someone else. no one's going to pay for something that is going to take time to sell. I don't know if you would even get your TPG fees back out of a bunch of them.

unless someone is willing to sell them off one at a time you are going to get below wholesale, the larger the collection the larger the loss.

(b) people who are desperate do silly things. you can't eat a slabbed coin. you can't keep warm and dry either (well UGLY could probably build a house out of his, but the rest of us are screwed!)

best thing you could do for your family is catalog it all and try to educate them. if they aren't interested then sell it off and take a vacation.

My cost basis is so low in total, in many cases $0 or face, that whether it be by death or emergency fire sale, whoever sells my collection will realize a profit over my cost. Now on any items acquired within say, the last year or two, despite being acquired below market prices at the time, I could see the possibility of a 10-20% loss on those items alone in a liquidation, mostly due to selling fees. If gold were at $350 an ounce and silver $8, things would be at about break even. I have an Excel spreadsheet set up the lists bullion values on each coin based on inputs and estimated wholesale values updated annually. So should my kids not want to pursue collecting, they have no excuse to receive anything less than a fair deal at the time, which again, will certainly be over my cost. I have it all teed up for them. They just have to use it.

Well l guess it would depend when l die first of all. As it sits now my collection goes to my grandson and hopefully he isn't in a position where he ever "needs" to sell it but if he does there are instructions - via spreadsheet - of which ones have the most value, lowest mintages etc so it can at least be dealt with at a minimal loss.

No one is going to want to buy everything as a lot in may cases. While they may like the dollars or the halves, maybe even the quarters not alot of people will be interested in the penny book or at least not as a group.

We collect what WE like and hopefully someone else likes it too but be realistic, l have 45 different 1964 pennies and there are people here with more than that in other years, how many people want that kind of focus besides those of us who put them together.

Hopefully if instructions are followed and the right people contacted, even if he does decide to get rid of it he will get fair market value for it but as was said above, for him its all profit since it didnt cost him anything.

Im putting together a penny date set for him, well trying to lol from 37 to date hoping if l spark an interest for him he will be more prone to keep what he gets but in the end lm sure alot of our sets will be broken up and our hard work scattered to other collectors and really lm not sure thats such a bad thing either.

It seams most of the people on here have let their family know how to sell in the event of their death.
I guess it all comes down to educating everyone concerned.
one of the things that got me thinking about this is the posts on Asyn
and where they get all their coins.
I have a lot of different books that I bought over the years, I'm always showing my wife and kids some of the higher priced stuff that we have but it never occurred to me to keep a spread sheet of trends of my stuff.
might be something to work on
As long as my wife never gets a hold of it while I'm still alive ... wouldn't want her to know how much I've spent over the years LOL