Lets say a loved one died and left you their coin, stamp, doll, poster, jewelry etc collection worth at least a few thousand dollars. What would you do with it? Also, you don’t currently collect it yourself.
Other: I’d find someone else who is as much involved in collecting as dear old Uncle Wilbur was, and give the collection to them, on the condition that they maintain it. Okay, maybe I’d sell it to them, but at a big friendly discount. I wouldn’t sell it to a professional collector, but make sure it falls into the hands of a true afficionado.
I wouldn’t take a collection of comic books to a comic book store; I’d try to find a serious comic-book geek. I want the collection to go to someone who will love it the way Uncle Wilbur loved it.
I’m not really the type to collect things, and I don’t have room to keep them, so if it was something that made me thing of the person I might keep a few of my favorites and distribute the rest among family if they wanted them, sell the rest.
Similar situation when my grandmother died. She didn’t really have a will, so her bells and blue willow ware got distributed among the (very large) family. They weren’t worth anything anyway. What no one took got donated to a church fundraising sale fwiu.
As an ebay buyer and reseller of collectibles of various kinds I am well aware of the difficulty in turning collections of anything into cash. I am also very unsentimental about collections as they rapidly turn into junk piles.
It’s takes research and a LOT of work to maximize selling value. The beating you will take selling it all as a lot is often worth the lack of hassle vs parting it out. Unless it’s something that’s obviously very valuable I would see if anyone in the family was a collector. If not I would dump the whole collection on ebay.
Since I can’t think of any collectible item that is, to me, worth anything above its price as a functional object, I would simply sell them all.
It depends on how much room the collection takes up and whether I like the items. Anything too big (cars, furniture) I’d sell. Dolls would be burned, because they’re horrible. Stamps don’t interest me, so I’d give them to a kid or sell them, but I like coins.
I’m kind of a hoarder, so it’s good nobody ever leaves me anything.
I can just go by what I would want done with my collections. I have several, worth, in aggregate, probably around $20K. I’d want my kids to leave a couple of pieces for themselves to remember me by, then sell the rest. If they would not collect the same stuff, of course.
One of the reasons I didn’t pick pass it on to my heirs is that it’s not looking likely that I’ll ever have children. I do have nieces, but I’m not convinced that they will feel any particular attachment to stuff that used to belong to my side of the family.
When my wife’s grandparents had to downsize, her grandmother gave us the bulk of her collection of Lladro figurines - to do with as we wished. We had no space or inclination to display them, so to ebay they went. It killed me to see how much she paid for them compared to how much I was getting for them, but the close to a thousand bucks we cleared total was infinitely more useful to us than the figurines.
We did hang on to a few that either our daughter liked or had some particular story behind them.
The same grandmother purchase my wife a whole slew of Madame Alexander dolls as a kid. They are ALL still in their original boxes (what little girl doesn’t want to play with a Nancy Reagan doll?) in her father’s basement and, based on resale prices, will just go straight to the dumpster at some point.
I’d ask various relatives if they wanted some of the pieces. Otherwise, I’d possibly keep any that had meaning to me and sell the rest.
My grandmother had a gazillion Hummel figurines and thank goodness my sister wanted them - I’d have felt all kinds of guilt selling them off, but I hate stuff like that. It’s bad enough that I’ve got a vase that my grandmother bought from the Franklin mint - the collection of 4 was divided among 4 of the 5 sibs - I don’t remember what the 5th one got. I’ve offered the vase to my daughter, but she doesn’t want it. So it sits on the mantel until that cat knocks it over.
I’ve got too many hoarders in my family, and no room, so sell, sell, sell!
I’d want to maximise my profits, so if I had time I’d sort through it all and ebay it bit by bit, but if I was pushed for time, I’d go round fellow collectors and dealers and see what they’d give me for the lot just to get it gone.
It would probably depend on the value of the actual collection and/or if there was someone else in the family or among my friends who would really appreciate it.
For example, if I somehow came into a coin collection that had 1-2 really valuable coins, and a bunch of interesting, although not overly valuable coins, I’d probably keep the really valuable ones, and give the rest to my nephew, since he’s a coin collector.
OTOH, if someone gave me a rock collection without anything particularly valuable, I’d probably give it to a school or something for teaching earth science/geology.
If it was a shipping container full of Beanie babies, I’d probably just give them away to some charity.
Other: stick it in a closet. Move it to another closet later. Box it up well and put it on a shelf in the garage.
This is what we currently doing with my FIL’s stamp and coin collections. Even though they came to us, and no one else wants them, there are people in the family who might upset if we sold them, so we just shuffle them around for now.
My father collected model airplane kits. He had a lot of them. He told us that when he passed, he wanted us to sell them and do something fun with the money. We did just that.
My situation is like Baracus’s. Grandparents downsized, I took grandma’s spoons and Golden Books. She didn’t care to keep them so I’m selling them - FOR her. It’s a lot of work for little return but she appreciates what extra money she gets due to her new living situation.
If I wanted to collect something, I’d do so. Hopefully, dear old (whoever) got a lot of joy from their collection during their lifetime, but I have no need to keep it as a shrine. eBay.
I have fairly recent experience with this.
After my dad died, my stepmother hung on to his extensive stamp collection for a number of years, thinking that one of his kids would want it or, failing that, one of his grandkids. None did, and she got tired of storing the large cabinet it was in, so she passed it along to my brother, his oldest child. He kept it for another year, thinking that someone might change their mind, but after polling the entire family every few months with the same result, he finally realized none of us was going to get a sudden interest in philately. We all decided to sell the collection, which brought much less than our dad spent on it over the years. At his widow’s suggestion, we donated the money to his favorite charity.
I suppose that would be “other,” considering that if anyone had been interested in the collection, we’d have gladly given it to them. After that experience, I realize there’s no way I’d hang on to anyone’s collection, no matter how beloved it was to them, unless I was interested in it myself.
I have started selling them bit by bit on ebay, letting the money mount up and then using it to take the kids away. Dad would have been happy his stamps are being used on his grandkids.
Looks like the evidence is pretty overwhelming: sell your collection before you die to get the max out of it.
I’d keep anything that interested me, like old coins, and sell the rest in bulk lots on ebay
Sell it - I don’t need that kind of clutter in my life, and I have no room for other people’s junk.