My Father-in-law recently passed away. My husband and I are in the middle of a big mess trying to settle his estate as I described in this thread
The memorial was this past weekend and after the service my FIL’s girlfriend gave my husband several smashed boxes of stuff she said was at his old house before they met. They appeared totally unopened.
My husband and I spent hours last night sorting through the contents and we found some very interesting things. We took out all the family heirlooms and jewelry that has meaning or was the least bit familiar. However, we have no idea what to do with the rest of the things or how to find an expert to evaluate it all in our area. Briefly here is a list:
a couple of boxes of solid gold bridges and solid gold dental appliances. (He and his father owned a dental lab in the 70’s and 80’s.) I would estimate several ounces.
a dozen or so men’s rings that are 10k or 14k gold with gemstones. No idea if they are antique or not.
4 or 5 “antique” pocket watches. One of 14K gold cover and watch. Others we are not sure.
A large coin collection all circulated. (I was able to look up the approximate worth on ebay for the 1800’s US coins there appears to be one rare Morgan that may be worth a few hundred dollars.) A Tupperware bowl full of wheat pennies that we need to go through comparing to the list of rare ones I found on the Internet last night.) Early 20th century dimes and pennies along with dimes, quarters and 50 cent pieces from between 1930 and 1965.
Nazi collectibles that my husband grandfather got when he was overseas in WWII. (Jewelry, patches etc.)
various other chains, earrings and small trinkets.
All these things were thrown into small cardboard boxes bunched together. The chains are twisted together, the coins were all in different types of margarine jars not even sorted. It took us hours to get it into some kind of order. Now we have no idea where to go from here.
We’d like to figure out how to get it evaluated only. We don’t want to sell anything right now. Just find out what we have.
So, since these boards have experts on just about everything, I am throwing it out to beg for your help on what the heck we do now. Thanks.
Well, I know of a local flea market that recurs and sometimes has ‘antique appraisers’ - but your ultimate resources are going to be published guides and eBay, I suspect.
The unfortunate truth about collectibles is that they are really only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. A catalog/book/expert can estimate what they are worth but until someone actually has money in hand willing to pay that price they aren’t worth anything.
I’ve attempted selling old (from the 40s) sports cards and comic books on ebay and to dealers where a book said it was worth $900 and the most somebody was willing to pay was $100.
So did I only get a fraction of what it was worth? No, I got 100% of what it was worth. Apparently it was worth $100.
So I guess what I’m saying is don’t bother trying to find out it’s estimated value.
Instead find out what somebody would actually pay you for it.
The difference is huge.
I do some selling on eBay and I’ve found that it is rather useful to look for the item you have, or similar items, on the site. There are approximately 150,000 coins for sale on eBay now (nearly 100,000 from the U.S.), you can probably find a lot of your coins there and see what people are paying for them. There is a good chance you can find some of your other items there as well. Good luck.
Just a little curious about your motivations. Does your interest in keeping or selling this stuff depend on its value? Because ISTM that if you are not interested in - say - coin collecting, you’d be best off just selling the coins, whether they were worth $100 or $10,000.
In Chicago, there are auction houses and collectibles shops that provide evaluation services for a fee. You might need to plan a weekend trip to the nearest large city to find such a service.
Thank you everyone for your advice. I took a look at ebay for some ideas and it was very helpful. Any other suggestions? I was thinking of finding out if a museum might be interested in the WWII Nazi things. As far as the gold, there are several internet sites that say they buy dental gold so my husband is considering sending a small piece to see how it works. I wonder if a watch shop would charge us to tell us if they are junk or not.
Regarding the question of our motivation, we want to know what we have. We will sell the gold but if there is something of real value in the jewelry, we will put it away for our daughter. Eventually we will sort it out and save some and sell some but right now, we just want to know what we are looking at.
I go to New York often on business so that might be a good idea to research shops prior to my next visit. The coins that we have discovered have some value we are definitely NOT going to sell but put aside for our daughter. What’s selling for $200 now should be worth a lot more in 20 or so years. If nothing else, these things are very interesting to examine and wonder where each item came from and the story behind it.