New Member - Widow Needs Help W/ Husband's Coin Collection

to the Community!

I moved your welcome post to the 'Main Coin Forum' for the proper attention.

My best advice is to also educate yourself! For a pretty reasonable price, you can purchase some literature to give you an idea on prices that would be fair. Do not go to a pawn shop. Good luck to you. Welcome to our site!

Sorry to hear about the loss of your husband. This is likely a tough time to make decisions so I would recommend posting a couple photos of the collection here on CCF if possible. Do not disclose your name, address, phone number, e-mail, etc. If you cannot post photos consider these tips I copied from a website:

When it comes time to get your coins appraised, you're going to want to go to a coin dealer that does a good job of appraising coins. Many coin dealers know what they're doing, but fewer possess the years and years of coin buying experience that goes behind making a really good coin appraisal.

You'll want to do your research and look for a coin dealer who has been in the business for a long time. If you live in or near a big city, finding a professional coin dealer that has been in the coin business for a long time may not be too hard. Still, choose the best of the best. Call around or do some web surfing to get the details of the coin dealer(s) you plan on working with for your coin appraisal. If you're living in a small town, finding any coin dealer can be tough enough. Finding one that's well skilled may be difficult.

There are many major online coin dealers who are quite reputable and will do coin appraisals and buy coins through the mail. The key here (as you'd expect) is to find an online or mail-based coin dealer that does the job well and is honest. No matter what coin dealer you settle on working with, make sure you double check with the Better Business Bureau to find out if the coin dealer has had any complaints (and the nature of those complaints). You'll also want to consider doing business with coin dealers associated with respected coin organizations, like the Professional Numismatists Guild, the American Numismatic Association, and the Professional Coin Grading Service.

The bulk of those getting their coins appraised do so to find out how much they can sell their coins for. If you're getting your coins appraised because you care to sell them, you may want to take the extra steps (and pay any extra fees) to get a second opinion on value â€" especially if the first appraisal resulted in an appraised amount figuring into the thousands of dollars. You may wind up getting a second figure that brings a higher value.

Many coin dealers willing to give appraisals are also likely to offer to buy those coins from you. If you're interested in selling your coins, you'll want to call the coin dealer ahead of going to the store to see if they buy coins. There's really not much of a point in going to one place for an appraisal and another place to sell coins unless you want a party not involved with the coin sale to estimate the value of your coins.

If you would like us to recommend reputable dealers where you could send the collection for appraisal/purchase, just reply with a post here and we can list a few for you.

Sorry to hear of the loss as well.

To expand on what BH said there online ones may be a good place, I would trust a company like a David Lawrence over some random coin shop anyt day if theres some items of value.

My question to you would be how much time and effort do you want to put into it?

The reason I ask is that will be important for what the best course of action for you personally would be. If you can figure out the best coins are selling them individually would bring you back more money where you could group together the common stuff to sell at once and be done with. Those coins inbetween valuable and common would be where the time would come in. You could make more selling those off in small batches or one by one but it would take time and may not be worth the difference in money to you which is completely understandable.

As a general rule though the larger a lot you present to a dealer the lower per coin value you will get. At the very least I would recommend break the collection up into smaller lots and finding what the most valuable stuff is and either remove that from those lots to sell on their own or put them in their own small lot. With the large lots dealers may try and pull one over on you not pointing out a valuable coin figuring you dont know its there or may miss it themselves, even the honest ones though will expect a good size discount for the bulk purchase.

I am very sorry to hear about your loss.

I would love to see what you have.

Welcome to CC and sorry for your loss.

You should first buy a Red Book to help you identify the key date and conditional rarity coins. Most of a collections value is within those and they should be treated separately. I would make a list of all the coins so you know what you have. We here to help! If you have specific questions, be sure to ask.

A few suggestions. Some already stated though.
1. Attempt to get a thing called the Red Book by Whitman Publishing. IF your coins are all US coins, you could get some sort of approximate value of what you have.
2. Unfortunately coin values are based on several different things. One is popularity. Then there is condition, quantity minted, possible quantity left, etc.
3. All of the above would eventually make you sort of a coin collector though and you would possibly end up keeping what you have.
4. I did notice you only asked for a possible appraiser, not a place to sell. If you want to sell, that is one thing. If only interested in their value, that is something else.
5. I also think you should consider contacting other relatives to see if any are interested in coins and/or would like to be. Of course this means trusting some of your relatives and if like me, not a good idea.
6. Do not advertise anywhere in public of your coins. Such as Craiges list, ebay, newspapers, etc. Do not post such info on public places at all.
7. DO NOT take those coins to a coin store. Do not take them anywhere unless you really want to get robbed.
8. Attempt to find a coin club or coin show in your area. Those are usually advertised on the internet. Type in coin shows and your state. IF near a state boarder, also type in that other state.
9. Make an approximate list of what you have if going to a coin show and ask several dealers what they think based on your list.
10. Of course you could send me all those coins and no more problems. I'd pay postage.
11. (10) Is sort of making a joke you know.
12. If not in a hurry, stick with this forum and make sufficient posts to make yourself able to buy/sell right here.
13. Noticed your in Florida. You may want to request other members of this forum to contact you via email or some other ways. Not a guarantee but I'd say almost all members of this forum are trustworthy. Mayby not me though.
14. If you do consider taking the chance of having one of the members here evaluate your coins, I'd suggest doing it in a public place such as a Library. You could make a possible list of what you have and just ask for an approxiate value.
15. Most important of all is do not take those coins anywhere for that appraisal unless you have an armed guard with you.

Althoug in many instances such collections are only minimal in value, criminals don't know that. And people have been robbed for a few cents. Always better to be safe than sorry.

Of course you need to realize that no dealer is going to give anything but a very lowball estimate based on just a list.