Considering the board’s collective age and experience, I figured a few of us have some experience on this subject. I know the demographics for most of these collectors has collapsed, to the point that many collections are considered waste that may be hard to give away but this has come to play for me recently.
A couple of days ago, much to my step-mothers surprise and happiness, my father unloaded a part of his old collection of stamps (it was something he did from the mid 1940’s to the mid 1960s or so) as well as a number of his silver coin collection (mix of US and international coinage) with the explicit instruction to sell them however I want.
With the speculative prices for silver these days, most of the coins are worth a good bit based on metal content alone, and he believes a few might be worth more than that, though not by a large amount.
The stamps, probably less so, especially since at a glance, most have not been stored well, and show substantial aging/yellowing.
So my questions - can any of you suggest a good, current website or other resource to evaluating the coins (only about a full quart zip lock bag’s worth) to see what if any additional value they may have? A reputable chain or other enterprise to sell them through? And the same for the stamps, though they don’t have a minimal value like the silver content of the coins. Or (as the title says) that it’s not worth it to go through the effort on them (it’s a box of old folders and holders, maybe 2’x2’x2’).
I’d say that it comes down to how serious your father was about it. If he was really serious about it, seeking out specific items to complete sets and so on, then it could be worth a lot, but if it was the far more common incidental “ooh, here’s a neat-looking one, I’ll keep it”, then it’s probably not worth the time and effort it would take to get a “fair price” for it, and you’d be best off just listing it as one big lot and taking whatever someone will pay, sight unseen, for it.
The fact that he only passed on part of his collection significantly increases the probability that it’s all junk, because he knows his collection better than you, and most likely, the part that he handed off was the part that he didn’t think was worth much, either. If he had anything that was actually valuable, that’s probably among the ones he kept.
After our father died and I cleaned out his apartment, I gave his coin and stamp collection to my brother, who had the time an inclination to research the rare items and determine their value (neither of us wanted to keep the collections). He also had some experience to know which ones were rare/sought-after. He sold everything online, and a few pieces individually, and reported making a modest amount of money from all the time he put into the endeavor (which I read as “not really worth it”).
For the OP situation, I would find the nearest coin store or two, and bring in a few of the pieces for evaluation and estimates, then unload the entire thing, if possible, all at once if the buyer is agreeable (I would not bother with the online stuff for this). Sure, you could be missing out on some rare, collectible item, but unless you are willing to put in the time to research which ones are rare, and which ones have some value beyond face value, it likely wont be worth your time. It’s key to remember that while the current owner “believes” some of the items “might” be worth a lot more than face value, that is only the case if someone else thinks that, too, and is willing to pay that much (and likely the current owner is over-estimating how much their item is worth). To answer the question - unless you are interested in old coins and stamps, unload it all to the nearest willing recipient for whatever they are offering you.
I missed this in my first read of the OP. But yeah, this doesn’t sound like anything other than a setup. Not implying bad intent on part of the father, but I’d sure guess that the “wants to keep” part of the collection is where the significant component of the value is.
My brother just went and found our dad’s “coin collection” which is not much to speak of. I think just some junk that he happened to come across once at a flea market that tickled his fancy, so he bought it. Some coins from his time in Vietnam. And maybe a piece here or there that had gotten mixed in with his regular change.
Both my brother and I are experienced eBay sellers. He has gone through eBay and taken a look at sold prices, as @PastTense suggests (I suggest this too) so he has a general idea of what it might all be worth.
We think we’re just going to find a local pawn shop and offload them there. Accounting for time spent and eBay fees, we’d probably end up with the same payout from a shop.
We’ve sold little fiddly collectibles on eBay before - Golden Books, sports cards, magazines and the like - and it’s fun and interesting. But only worthwhile if you have the time and a system for getting it done. And some knowledge of how eBay works.
Also chasing a difference in $5 here, $10 there, choosing which offers to take and stuff…not worth it. Especially if you just got something for free. You put $0 into it so any money you get whatsoever is profit. Sell it as a lot locally and move on.
Do large-scale coin dealers with or without storefronts still exist? Seems like someone selling off a collection might be able to unload it without all the fuss and potential risk of working with eBay buyers.
There’s at least one in my town. Until recently there were two that I knew of.
The challenge is this: I had a small collection of coins that had come to me from one uncle or another. Mostly odds and ends, but also a stack of older silver dollars. My wife went to place #1 (now out of business) and the guy told her it was borderline valueless and offered a few tens of dollars for the whole deal.
Place #2 said that most of it was valueless, but there were a few pieces (some of the better silver dollars, a tiny California gold fractional token) that were worth something. She came away with a few hundred bucks.
How you know if you’re at place #1 vs place #2 I dunno.
Exactly. That is why I suggested taking it to a couple of local places and see what they say, compare, and then see if they will take the whole thing for whatever they offer.
After Mom died, I was trying to calculate the worth of the ‘junk silver’ coins that Dad had purchased about 25 years earlier. I found this website and evaluated the coinage using their numbers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this website was quite close to the actual value I received when I took the coins to a dealer in Wichita. That was about four years ago. YMMV, of course.
Recently, my father wanted to know about some of the coins he’s been collecting. He has a significant amount. If you go on your phone, you can download a good, paid app that lets you scan the coins and get an estimated value for them. (The free ones were.. bad). If you just have the one bag for this, I’d get it for a month, scan the coins, and get some data to start with.
Get the bullion value of the silver for the non-collectible stuff (as well as the collectible stuff for a check on the offers you get). Remember the traditional coin silver is 90% silver and remember that the troy ounce used to measure bullion is different from the standard ounce to weigh everything else. So weigh it or calculate it.
For the coins which only have bullion value (vs collectible value) you will probably get more money from a (probably online) bullion dealer than a local retail coin generalist.
You don’t. It’s a gamble. If you spend more time and effort on it, you might get a higher payment. But you’re guaranteed to spend the time and effort. Is it worth definitely spending that time and effort for a chance at the higher payout? Overall, it’s a pretty poor lottery ticket.
Considering they are stored together in a zip lock bag, chances are there aren’t any great finds in there. It’s probably not financially worth it to do a lot of work to price every coin. But because they’re from your dad, there might be some relationship value to be had. You could talk with him about interesting coins and why he decided to save them. Same with the stamps.
I spoke to a collector about a year ago about my childhood postage stamp collection. He said there are a handful of stamps that are worth some money (e.g. rare misprints) to collectors but if you’re holding stamps that were printed from the last century they’re generally worth little to nothing. If the glue is still good you can use a dozen of them to mail a letter.
One nice feature of silver coinage is that the coins are sized to have proportionally correct metal content, so a dime would weigh 1/10 the weight of a dollar.
Because of this, “junk silver” is priced according to “per dollar face value” of silver. Last time I looked, that was around $35, but surely that has gone up with silver in recent months.
Figure out the going junk silver per-dollar-face-value and multiply that by the face value of your silver. That’ll give you a high water mark for what to expect.
the problem is that the “spot” price of silver has skyrocketed, but if you take your coins to a dealer at the moment, they are going to give you 20% less than what they are theoretically worth. The huge runup in prices has created a really inefficient market at the moment and dealers are just not paying what they are supposedly worth based on the amount of silver in the coins. This discrepancy is particularly noticeable in junk silver (90% silver coins). You should be able to get nearer to spot price for .999 silver coins/bars.
Thanks to all for good advice, and it’s much appreciated. A couple of comments as a general reply and an explanation to address the issues brought up in the thread.
The collections of stamps were something my father did as a child-teen-early college years, he pretty much stopped after that, and didn’t do anything with it during my entire childhood until I left for college. It has sentimental value for him, or he wouldn’t have kept it after the divorce and multiple moves (in city though), but I don’t think it was ever meant as a method of generating wealth.
Some are on letters (IE used), though many are on small sheets, and from a number of nations. It’s almost certainly beyond my time and energy to do a good valuation of, so
The coins were not collections in the usual sense. He seems to have, like some do, picked through change for years and set aside any of high silver content. The only ones that are “collectibles” are a number of 1974 Bicentennial First days covers in the original packaging, that seem to go from $7-14 on listings, with a lot of stock in general.
I might actually hold on to those for sentimental value - they are the latest coins, NOT in the bag, and were purchased the year I was born. Given the current prices for silver, the rest, unless then have some weird mis-marks, are almost certainly doing better as melt value. An additional thanks for mentioning that the dealers are lagging on the silver value though!
Minor update, managed to sort through all the coinage - outside a few outliers (some Canadian currency, a few part-silver Pesos) it included 114 90% silver quarters and 116 90% silver dimes. I got some advice in the Silver Shortage thread, and will likely sell for melt value (there’s maybe 10-15 that might have value beyond melt) in the near future.
Not looking forward to sorting the stamps, but I’ll do at least a cursory review of the ones not attached to letters/circulated.
