Selling Part Of My Collection

Good luck!

I'll be watching a couple of those for sure.

Ed - With only a bit more than 48 hours to go, I'd think that at this point you're very pleased with the very active bidding so far on your lots. Sunday night several should attract frenzied bidding.

Good luck!

Steve

I hope you get some good return from these.

Let's give a preliminary verdict (the Trade dollar is still pending):

1) Overall, the final sales price on GC is about 80% of what I paid to acquire the coins.
2) Adding grading and listing fees, I recoupled about 70% of what I paid.
3) Higher valued coins such as Draped Bust (Half) Cents and Classic Cent did well, low value coins such as nickels, dimes and quarters were a disaster. For instance, a 1866 Shield nickel I bought for $95 sold for $22.67, netting me - GASP - $6.54!

Clearly, in many cases I grossly overpaid. Especially so-called "problem free" coins obtained on ebay. Many ebay coins are simply marked up 100% and photographed in such a way as to hide scratches and other problems. Had I inspected each coin with a loupe and found the defects, I probably would have had to return 90+% of these coins.
In short, novices should NEVER buy raw coins on ebay. Better go to a LCS and inspect the coins in-hand, or buy graded coins.

Well, yes. I don't blame NGC for accurately grading these coins. Nor do I not blame the buyers for not overpaying.
Moral of the Story: if you are going to spend thousands of dollars to put together an appealing 19th Century Type Set, stick with problem-free, graded coins by NGC or PCGS. And... DO NOT OVERPAY!

One more thing, I never put much thought into the TPG guarantee but after getting a coin that I didn't like the way it looked, NGC actually conserved my coin, so take that into consideration.

Easy to look back and second guess, and while many collectors make out well in buying raw coins and then getting them graded by the top two TPG's, there's a case to be made for buying coins already in slabs:

1. Virtually no risk in ending up with a counterfeit coin.
2. No risk in ending up with a "Detailed" coin.
3. Very little risk in ending up with a coin that's truly lower graded than the supposed grade of the raw coin.
4. Having the coin in a slab minimizes or eliminates the risk of accidentally causing damage handling the coin, especially if you place the coin in an album. On the other hand, having a coin in a slab keeps one from having the pleasure of literally holding that piece of history in your hand.
5. While slabs are not air tight nor hermetically sealed, they do provide a lot more protection against environmental damage over time than raw coins.
6. You can get excellent professional quality photos of your coins. Many slabbed coins already have those photos, and for those that don't it's not too expensive to have that done by the TPG's.
7. When it comes time to sell, by you or your heirs, with raw coins the buyer can try to claim the coin is a lower grade than what you say it is. That argument is so much more difficult when the coin has already been graded by a top TPG.
8. Having the coin in a slab makes it so quick and easy to potentially sell at a fair price.

Steve