What Will Happen To Your Coin Collection When You Die?

God willing, I won"t have to sell anything before that time. I explained everything to my son (currently 26). It'll be his "problem" to deal with.

Knock on wood, this is a long time off for me (I'm only 33). That said, I have young kiddos, who for the most part haven't taken much of an interest except for my son (7 yo), who is on and off with helping me out in the hobby. He has already asked who gets the coins when I die . As of now, they will go to my children, but depending what the future brings, may become part of my retirement .

Funny thing - if you find a dollar in your deceased parents house, it technically is a taxable asset for consideration of inheritance tax. Of course there usually is no one to police that so it is an honor system to declare it.

If it is in a bank deposit box, however, it is policed. The box is inventoried and the value is reported to the state. (at least where I live)

I will leave it for my heirs to figure it out which is what happened in my family. I had to set some value to everything and then divide it four ways.

There were some beautiful coins gleaned from banks and pocket change that you would be drooling over a bit now but were basically worth face then and would still be worth about the same now. I just broke up those collections by blindly dealing them into four paper grocery bags one at a time (they were in flips). I informed my siblings that those coins were basically spending money unless they wanted to go through the effort of trying to sell them for more than face or found a dealer that might be interested.

I put the items that were worth more than face in separate containers, divided out 4 ways based on value. Fortunately, I could make sets of four nearly identical by item type so it went fairly well.

I'm in my early twenties so this question is far off for me, but still something I consider.

I have put work into paring down my collection to just 2 albums and a small grouping of slabs. My goal for the future would be to have kids that, even if they aren't interested in coins, would hang onto a single album of them to remember me by, like an heirloom. This is why I put so much work into making my own type set but within a Dansco album: it's uniquely me but doesn't take up much room and looks tidy.

T-Bop,

If you adopt me I'll gladly take your coin collection.

I typed out instructions and emailed them to my wife. This is an active document that I update whenever I add meaningful items or a dealer I mention to sell to retires/dies. My kids are still young, but ideally I'd like to pass on a core part of the collection to them if they become more interested. I think the best thing you can do for your estate is organize and inventory your collection as best as you can. This will make things easier for them and hopefully avoid them rolling up the key dates and depositing them at the bank.

Thanks for the replies so far. A lot of interesting comments. Not only do I have coins to pass on but I have toy collectibles, sports memorabilia, licenses plates and vintage collectibles. My wife always say " if something happens to you I'm throwing it all out into the front yard!" So I called my closest friends and told them, " if I ever die, you best get over to my front yard as quick as possible!!"