Seeking Advice On Selling Merchant Tokens

Jody526

Here's the situation:

An aquaintance has happened upon a rather large quantity of tokens issued by a scarce merchant. Two reference books, for the state involved, by two different authors, have been checked and one of them does not list the merchant or the city. The other does list the city and the merchant (sole merchant for the city). Only one denomination is listed for that merchant with 5 or less known to exist. The company, and even the city itself, no longer exist.

Many collectors of this type of token try to obtain one token from each town that issued tokens in that particular state, so this token is currently a very tough and desirable one.

He has had the opportunity to talk to an elderly former employee of said merchant, who indicated that they had never used tokens at the store. Our thoughts are that these tokens were ordered and received, but for some reason were never used (store closed?), and left in the bag. This bag has approximately 1400 tokens with at least 4 different denominations, 3 being unlisted. Some denominations may have varieties.

He would like to sell them, but does not want to flood the market with them, drastically reducing their value, but that may be inevitable.

We have no current values ($22.50 in the mid-70's), but would estimate that at present these tokens would bring $100-$200 each. He has sold only one set, which brought well over $100 per token.

This quantity may not sound like much at 350 per denomination if evenly distributed, but in the token arena, a population of 350 is starting to approach common.

Does anyone have any thoughts/advice as to a good way of disposing of these tokens to achieve the best return?

Thanks in advance,

Jody

coachleonard

i'd definitely spread them out as much as possible. If folks see a bunch listed at once, something will go off
in their brain that says "common as dirt." that's why i can hardly GIVE away my common ancient roman bronze
coins on ebay!

Spinynorman

Selling the tokens that are thought to be scarce, when you know they aren't, sure doesn't sound right to me. Did the person that paid well over $400 for the first set know that there were potentially another 300+ sets to be sold? If it was me, I'd get in touch with somebody from TAMS and proceed from there.

cladking

350 of a token is not approaching common. Depending on the state there are
rarely more than 10 or fifteen avid collectors. Being a town no longer in existence
and being a scarce town greatly enhances their value since there are several dozen
collectors of each town for each state. For a very popular state the first 20 are worth
up to $100 if the buyers don't know they're common and the next 100 are worth perhaps
$20. The balance are about $2 each. For unpopular states figure 10 are worth $50,
the next 50 are worth $15 and the balance are about $2 each.

Frequently such hordes do better if sold to a dealer who knows the collectors. They
won't usually try to get the best prices, but they can get them to the right buyers.

Jody526

Thanks for the replies.

Anyone else got any ideas?