Help Needed

Its extremely difficult to give an overall guide to what their worth without pics. In the case of a collection, Coins of the same type could be laid out and take one picture, say of twenty coins of the front, and another of their back. That will give the people who respond a general idea of the condition of the coins and a general idea of what they are worth.

Alot of these may contain silver, some near 90% silver. So, with silver at close to $20.00 USD an ounce, a face value of $1.00 in 90% Silver coins would be a MINIMUM of $20.00.

Here is what I suggest. If you haven't taken the coins into a dealer, and plan to, simply walk in and tell the dealer you just inherited the coins and you plan on saving these for another generation and was wondering what the overall value is. Tell them your not planning on selling these, and you'd like to see if thy can do a free basic appraisal of them for insurance purposes. They may then give you a more accurate estimate of their worth.

Remember, a dealer cannot buy coins at near full book. At best, they may be able to buy at 50 to 75% of book if they think they can move the product pretty quick. IF they list them on ebay, they will have to pay 9% to ebay and 2.5% or so to Paypal, so thats lost revenue there as well. Most dealers aren't crooks, they simply have a business to run and pay for. If they don't use ebay, a coin could potentially sit in their case for years before it sells.

A site like http://www.pcgs.com can show you prices. go to the site and look for the COIN PRICES tab. From there, open up the type of coin you are looking for. If your unsure of a grade, and want to get a generic idea of what they are worth, choose the "VF to XF" condition or if they use a numeric scale, something close to a "40" should do. Do that for each coin that shows decent detail on the coin, but are not real shiny. For bank new r uncirculated coins, you are probably safe to guess most would be about the MS63 grade for pricing.

When prices differ drastcially between grades, thats when you can take close up pictures, and resize them to under 100KB in size and post them on this forum, and ask for help grading them. Youll need a full pic of the front and back for planning purposes.


Note the general prices on each, remember these are prices for certified and slabbed coins, but it will give you a very ball park figure.

In regards to the listings, if the year your looking at has a "+" Plus sign in the far left column of say the Washington quarter 1950, you can expand that 1950 year by hitting the PLUS sign in left column if one exists to see the S/D variety if it is listed.

Once you start you should be able to whiz right through that list like a pro. Make sure you look at "MS" listings towards the top. PCGS usually puts the Proof or PF listings, and other specials at the bottom.

By the way, I have about $130 in face value. I'm being afford around $1200 and this seems way off from my calculations. Thanks for the help.

Half of melt is below value for any silver. Even from a dealer they should do better than that.

The first thing I would do is see if you have any key dates or better dates in those piles. Those you will want to sell individually. Numismedia.com is a good quick reference to see which dates have significantly higher prices than others. The key dates should have a premium in any condition.

The other thing that may be holding back the price is the size of the lot. If you're trying to sell it all at once people usually expect some sort of bulk discount. There's also less interest in large lots. A lot of people may be willing to spend 100 bucks on a group of them but that number dwindles significant when it gets into the 4 digit figures. Try breaking it up like 5 or 10 dollars face at a time and you might start seeing offers closer to melt if not slightly above.

Thanks so much for everyones help. I may try and break it up into smaller groups. I'm gonna decide after I do a little more research. I was just offered $1900 and that includes the eagles.

1900 isn't bad assuming theyre all common dates. Itd be a good price without the eagles included.

I forgot to ask would this be an in person sale or will you have to ship them? Shippings going to run you probably 20-30 bucks since youll want to insure something of that value

With that included Id likely pass. The s/d could easily be a 100+ dollar coin if its in half way decent shape. At the very least I would try and do that one on its own.

Unfortuately selling coins or any item used as a collectable is not as easy as buying them. If your not in a hurry, the best thing to do is sell them on ebay. Taking coins to a dealer at a coin store, coin shop, hobby store, pawn shop, coin show, etc. will get you all sorts of offers. Most are far, far from what they have to sell them for themselves.
One thing you must do is get to know what you have. Not just a number of each but thins like their grade. Is there any error coins in the pile. Are they in Albums, Folders, tubes, boxes, 2x2 flips? I know it may not sound good but being a seller of anything that some say is worth xxx is just not easy. What you see on programs like the antique road show is sometimes almost a joke. That is why they say things like "At a auction for these, you may get XXX" Then try to find such an auction. Easy for them to say.
With coins you will usually find you get offered sometimes as low as half what they are worth. That is due to the buyer wanting to resell them to make a profit. And then sometimes the buyer from him also wants to make a profit is selling them too. A coin store must make enough profit to support the store and sometimes a family. This means he must offer much less than they are worth.
I never sell coins, only collect them. They are what I consider a really poor investment. Great for a hobby, just not profitable unless your in the buisness of selling them yourself.