Buying A Deceased Relative's Collection

As a person that has been involved with a sort of similar situation, I would just tell your Aunt that you really don't want to get involved at all. Maybe in your case it will be OK but my experiances with similar situations has never been to good. So much depends on other relatives. Almost anything you do there will be someone saying you probably are cheating. If you want my suggestion, tell her to take the entire mess of coins to a coin dealer and ask for an estimate of value. It will cost a little but will put any other relatives at rest. Then if your interested, offer to buy it all. Other wise just forget the whole thing.

@Ty2020b I would be very grateful for a copy of latest greysheet. I am not sure why I cannot receive or send messages from here but at risk of exposing myself to the entire internet, you can email me at *** Private information removed by Staff. Please do not post your address/email/phone number etc. ***

Although my aunt is a sweet, sensitive person, she does not share the love of the hobby. It also seems that she was left little else in terms of estate so she has little choice but to liquidate the collection. I have been collecting for years so hopefully with some resources I can responsibly handle it.

I thank everybody for the thoughtful tips.

Don't make any offers until you see the coins. It is possible these people have talked up their coin values.

Plus how well do you get on with your Aunt. I ask this, because if you find the coins are fakes or worth well below what she thinks they are - she may accuse you of robbing her and not being a loyal and respectful nephew.

That is important to me as my culture means you can't disrespect your elders (Aunty Anti Vaxxer is not the same culture as me). You have to find that line between being a good nephew and being a prudent and profit minded numismatist.

Make sure she has not seen or talked to anyone else (A dealer, auctioneer, another family member) as this could cloud how she will operate with you.

Plus you will be dealing with someone in grief and the raw emotions that come with the loss of a spouse, in addition to the emotions you may feeling over your uncle. Basically if you can put some time (And it looks like you have), that will make things easier. Many people I know are too hasty to divvy up a deceased persons possessions too soon and it leads to arguments and raw emotions coming to the fore.

Just be honest first and then loving, your relationship with your family is so much more important than a few gold coins. I mean coins do not tuck you in at night or tell you they love you. Moving to another town and staying out of touch with my family has cost me dearly, don't make the same mistake (Aunty Anti Vaxxer gets on my nerves, but I still love her and can see her point of view at times).

Probably let her know too, you are doing her a favour, many dealers will try and swindle her and the general auction houses won't have a clue. Yes coins can be worth a lot of money bookwise, but you need to find people willing to pay that price for them. Also that you are buying stuff you don't want off her as a nicety.

Then hopefully she will come around if she has not already.

Finally, sorry for your loss as it sounds like your Uncle was a buddy as well as Uncle and good luck with everything!

Thanks to @jbuck and @ty2020b for ushering me through this. I will be sure to update the community with the results.

No problem.

just my opinion but I would not pay retail for the collection. you are the one that is taking the risk especially if there are any rarer pieces that are not slabbed. you have no idea how they could come back and if you are off by even one grade or the coin details you could be overpaying for it.

depending on the size of the collection and initial assessment for the number of better prices it might make sense to get a greysheet subscription. if there are only a couple better dates then I would be inclined to have them assessed and graded here on CCF and go with about 70% of retail of the average grade. for the rest, I might separate out any common silver and pay maybe 10% over spot for them and then come up with a bulk price for the rest of the common pieces. depending on the number of commons I would not try to grade or price each one out

OK. Results are in!

The collection consisted of many graded unc silver eagles, many raw proof silver eagles (OGP), tons of US Mint proof sets, tons of golden dollars (Sacagawea and Presidential) and some random low-grade classic and foreign coins. Oh yes, and 1 unc graded AGE! Doing a little research with the gray sheet kindly provided by @jbuck, we were looking at almost $5k value!

So I took the entire collection to a local dealer that I have worked with for a while. They were basically offering Spot +$5 for the unc ASEs, and $51 for the proof ASE's. Spot for the gold eagle. And about 60-70% of grey sheet for the sets for a total of about $3.6k.

So I gave my aunt exactly what the dealer appraised to be fair to her. I let the shop have all the sets and low-grade classic coins. I just couldn't give up the silver and gold so I am absorbing the costs for that portion. I can always flip some of the bullion on ebay if I want (although I am a bit of a silver bug so probably not). The result to me is that I obviously made a large investment this week in bullion that I otherwise would not have made, but I did get it for what a dealer would pay so I guess I am happy. And I have a clear conscious for treating my aunt super-fairly.

Thanks again to all who offered help and opinions.

Thanks for the update. Glad it all worked out and everyone walked away happy. Not always the case with family affairs!