What to do with Coin & Currency Collection? (buy, prices, legal)
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Quite a few years ago when my MIL passed we inherited a bunch of her things. Most of it has sat in the garage, unopened.
So the other day we dug out this collection of coin and paper currency. I started googling around to see if I could find any info on the types of coins and paper money that we have... and was pretty surprised to find that some of the stuff we have might actually be worth something.
What do I do now? We don't really want the collection - it holds no sentimental value for us. Both my MIL and FIL were hoarders and had TONS of junk, crap, and stuff and my husband - once they both passed - has been happy to slowly, piece by piece, get rid of it all. This money collection is no different.
How do you get a fair appraisal of your collection? Or do you just list it on ebay? How do you do this?
We have coins and paper money from all over the middle east and south east asia as well as some U.S. coins that might be worth something (such as a 1900 gold $20 coin).
Sme of the most beautiful money is from Japan and Singapore, and I think some of the most collectible money we have (just going off of how much it is selling on Ebay) is from Brunei.
I'd appreciate any wisdom or advice anyone can share with us. I have compiled a list of what we have, and I can post photos if that helps.
The simplest way might be to sell it to a local coin dealer - realize that they will pay less for the entire collection than you could probably sell it piece by piece yourself, but selling it by the piece is work, and this work is how the coin dealer earns his pay.
Most coin dealers are honest enough, they don't want to damage their reputation by taking advantage of a noob.
You could try to Google a few of the better pieces and see what they are selling for online, or go to a coin dealer and look to see what the price is on anything you recognize.
Thanks! We're meeting next week with a local dealer.
I've been spending quite a bit of time the last few days scanning and cataloging the collection... I'm getting kind of attached to it. I might decide to keep it and start collecting coins and currency
myself! lol Who knows... maybe it'll help pay for the kids college...
How do you get a fair appraisal of your collection? Or do you just list it on ebay? How do you do this?
The Ebay coin auctions are massive in the number of coins that are sold. There are literally millions of buyers. Take a good picture of each item and list them at a low starting price. Bidders will scarcely ever let something sell for less than what it's worth. The only exceptions would be very obscure or seldom collected material. It's very unlikely that you have that sort of material. You will need to learn what each coin is; e.g. Franklin half, so you can list it.
Coin dealers pay low prices. They frequently pay ten or twenty percent of what they expect the sale price to be. If the dealer knows you're inexperienced he'll murder you on the price. They brag about this both to each other and to favored customers to whom they do often give good deals. I've been a favored customer of several.
You'll get three times as much money at least if you sell yourself. The buyers know the values.
That said, this is an extraordinarily bad time to sell silver and gold coins as the dollar is still falling with no hope of a near term trurnaround. Silver and gold will go up. Other coins and currency are very unlikely to go down. I've been collecting coins for well over a half century. They always go up.
I just finished scanning the paper currency I have from Iran. I don't know if it's really worth anything (haven't checked Ebay or bought any of the books yet), but I do think it's cool because it 1960's pre-ayatollah currency - has pictures of the old Shah on them.
What about the metal value of copper and bronze coins? Would these be worth saving for the value of their metal content? I understand that USA copper pennies cannot be melted down, but what about coins from Europe, or from now-defunct countries such as Yugoslavia? Happy, do you have any info on this, you seem pretty knowledgeable.
Don't forget that the Red Book, while a valuable resource, lists the retail prices of coins: what the dealer sells them for. He won't pay quite that much for them. There used to be (and may still be) a Blue Book which listed the prices a dealer was likely to pay.
What about the metal value of copper and bronze coins? Would these be worth saving for the value of their metal content? I understand that USA copper pennies cannot be melted down, but what about coins from Europe, or from now-defunct countries such as Yugoslavia? Happy, do you have any info on this, you seem pretty knowledgeable.
It's legal to melt coins provided that you are in the US. It's illegal in Canada and possibly some other countries. But there's no advantage. No one will buy a lump of metal without an assay whereas coins are easy to sell. Furthermore, there is the likelihood of some numismatic appreciation. For that reason alone people will pay more for coins than for melted scrap even before there has been any appreciation. Scrap always sells at a discount from melt (bullion value); coins sell at no less than face value irrespective of the bullion value which can go down as well as up. But they generally sell above melt. Silver bottomed at .25 per ounce in the Great Depression; but the silver in US coins is valued at 1.29 per ounce. If someone had melted silver coins he would have taken a bad loss.
I thought they recently passed a law against melting pennies. I also read somewhere that we can't take out large quantities of loose coins to stop them from being melted in another country. Did this legislation not go through.
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Who knows... maybe it'll help pay for the kids college... 
