IF AND WHERE TO SELL YOUR COINS

Deb048gold

Many of us may never plan to sell off any or all of our collection. However the time my come to sell. Where to sell? Where do some of you think you can garner top dollar? One piece at a time on E-Bay verses Heritage versus large dealers? What are some of your thoughts and experiences?

LindeDad

Try here.
Link

cladking

All collectors should sell at least a few coins right from the beginning. Mostly just so
they know what the true values are and how the market works, but also so they'll
know how to sell when the time comes.

The best way for me is generally the easiest; that means either shipping off to the
biggest wholesalers or your best contact (marketmakers). Selling is learned too, so
don't wait too long to do it.

roadrunner

Often you don't know what the right way was until you already sold the coin the wrong way. Infortunately true.

What you have for sale greatly influences how to sell it. I'd say as a rule that 98% of sellers (maybe 99%) do not how to get top dollar, or even strong dollars for their coins. I would have to toss myself into this category at times too. The best way is usually to sell outright, but to a near-end user who is paying strong. Heritage is a logical choice for many better coins in the $100 and up range. However you need to be able to price your coins within a few % of market or you'll get picked to death. Selling is 10X harder than buying and it takes years to get good at it. To those collectors who say they will never sell, or only sell once, they usually only get fleeced one time or their heirs get taken...but that's all it takes...once.

I see what some of the major retailers pay for coins over the counter and I just shake my head at times. The sellers think they were getting top dollar because they sold to top retailer "XYZ".
But those sellers keep coming back or others replace them. There are lots of members on the forum who would gladly pay somewhere between the price a retailer pays and their final asking price. The sellers for some reason are more content to sell to the retailers direct. Their checks are no doubt safer I guess.

roadrunner

haletj

You want to avoid this at all costs... you place coin in major auction, dealer buys it, dealer sells it on ebay. That's 3 people or companies making money off it. Try to limit it to one! If it is a very rare hard to find coin that several collectors will surely want, sell in a major auction. An affordable but very popular coin will do fine on ebay yourself (affordable is key, people don't like spending a lot of money on ebay from unknown dealers). A midrange expensive but not too rare coin you may have to find the right dealer to consign or sell it to.

solid

I haven't sold much on ebay in the past couple years, but was fairly
active prior to that.

One thing I noticed is that I usually received higher bids when selling
a complete set, or a chunk of it at a time. By that, I mean selling
numerous coins from a series, individually, with maybe 3-5 minutes
between coins.

My reasoning is that if a collector of a particular series sees a string
of nice coins ending on a particular night, they may feel it is worth
their time to make sure they are available at the end of the auction
to bid for the coins they want. If you can get multiple bidders at the
end of the auction having a strong interest in your coins, you can do
very well!

Ken

ThatImpalaDude

Let's take a situation like Puff's, a collector with a high end set of coins who wants to dispose of them. Would that collector realize a better price overall if he would consign the set to Pinnacle, for example, rather than sell the set to Pinnacle?? I realize that a sale gets faster payment, but let's assume the collector doesnt need immediate payment and is willing to get periodic payments over time in the hope of realizing a larger total amount of money for the collection. Would that collector actually receive more money by consigning than by selling this high end set???? Having never sold or consigned a major set, but as someone who might in the future, I'm curious what those of you who have done so think is the best way to go.

Steve

wondercoin

Most have addressed the "WHERE", so I will address the "IF".

The biggest mistake I see collectors make is SWITCHING from series to series (some every year or two, if not a couple times a year). EVEN IF THEY GET A GREAT AUCTION RATE, OR GET A VERY FAIR OFFER FROM A REPUTABLE DEALER, auction companies and dealers obviously do not work for nothing. Figure 10%-15% of value will be lost in the exchange (minimum), then consider if 2 or 3 sets or collections of coins are built and then sold in a short period of time - easy recipe to leave a great deal of money on the table in a couple years.

I personally have around -22- active registry sets right now, not counting pattern nickels (which have no registry as of yet). Figure around 500-750 coins are involved in these sets. Over the past couple years, you can probably count the number of coins I have sold from these sets on one hand (maybe two). To be sure, some coins have risen in price and some have dropped, but, I have also avoided 500-750 commissions in the process. What if I had sold the wrong coins (the ones that rose sharply in the last couple years) and bought more losers. Or vice-versa. The only constant would have been 500-750 commishs lost on coin sales.

Now, I am commenting here from the perspective of a "collector" (which I believe the question is being asked from) - of course, if the issue was purely "flipping coins", I may have done well dealing every coin I ever handled and never collecting a single coin.

Just my 2 cents.

Wondercoin

WalkerGuy

Know your set, know the market, sell to a private collector. Hard to do, but it can be done.
Sell to a dealer and rightfully expect to pay for the years of customer relations they have built.
Sell to an auction, catch the wave with your set (this is the part of knowing your set, and knowing the market) and make the money. How many reading this have read a market report from a dealer after an auction, and read about coins on the floor selling for less than auction prices? Good for seller, bad for buyer. Know your market.
For those spending dollars that are near and dear to you, treat the coins just like a regular business deal, best you can afford, in quality and rarity. You will enjoy your collection more, feeling good about prices, and be closer to your profit line when you sell, whether to a dealer or not. Dealers make money for themselves, that is why they are in the business. If you don't know the market or your set, they "can" be your best friend. Make sure you use one you know and trust, probably the one who put you at the front of the line when a tough coin came up.
Dick

puff

<< <i>Know your set, know the market, sell to a private collector. Hard to do, but it can be done.
Sell to a dealer and rightfully expect to pay for the years of customer relations they have built.
Sell to an auction, catch the wave with your set (this is the part of knowing your set, and knowing the market) and make the money. How many reading this have read a market report from a dealer after an auction, and read about coins on the floor selling for less than auction prices? Good for seller, bad for buyer. Know your market.
For those spending dollars that are near and dear to you, treat the coins just like a regular business deal, best you can afford, in quality and rarity. You will enjoy your collection more, feeling good about prices, and be closer to your profit line when you sell, whether to a dealer or not. Dealers make money for themselves, that is why they are in the business. If you don't know the market or your set, they "can" be your best friend. Make sure you use one you know and trust, probably the one who put you at the front of the line when a tough coin came up.
Dick >>



Excellent advice Dick!