Foreign Coins...what To Do?

ebay works. Less than $20 coins, I'd market in lots. More than that, sell individually. Sort out the ones worth $250 or more and send them to NGC for slabbing. More than $1000 sell through Stacks or Heritage.

Melting does not work becuase of the mixed silver content. Who wants to buy a brick of .678 silver?

An auction house has a 10-20% consignment fee. ebay costs about 14%. A dealer will pay market -20%. Choose you poison.

the price of silver has pushed a lot of grades to melt value > collector value. this is only going to get worse especially if silver doubles this year like people are predicting.

i am not a fan of melting coins of any grade (not everyone can afford UNC/MS and for every one that gets melted is one less that can be collected) but you might be able to thin the herd substantially by starting with a melt bucket.

melting is an option but you would be paying refining fees. in large volume I think it works out to about the same as ebay or auction fees but you have to be dealing in large volume. but at the end of the day you end up with .999 silver bars that can be converted to cash at any time (or easily stored long term as an investment)

you might want to consider trading with forum members. no commisions/fees, just shipping. everybody wins.

really good site for looking stuff up is numista.com , you can search by diameter, metal content, weight etc. the site doesn't give values but does give mintage #s. you can also export your collection to excel and pass the list around online.

good luck!

with svslav. As a collector, melting a coin is just about the worst thing I can think of. I cannot fathom that a coin collector could ever melt a coin - isn't that even worse than cleaning one - at least the cleaned coin is still available for a collector if they want it. I don't collect for profit so the fact a coin is silver is really only an obstacle for me. With so much 'collecting' of precious metals vs a coin for it's collecting pleasure, this has really become a dilemma if I do want a particular coin because I'm trying to collect a type set. I would love to be able to actually get some silver coins at melt because that is likely the only way I will ever be able to complete some of my types sets. The speculation buying is just too rich for my budget.

Melting domestic, even foriegn can only increase values, as coins available versus mintage decreases making the ones still existant more scrace. Popular opinion is against 'melting' which is expedient but not efficient. I am personally against melting as metal contents and prices vary and I disagree with the concept from an artistic point of view. Coins are works of art. I use ebay as the item can go into someone's care/collection.