My father and his father did coin related things together. I was 16 years old when he passed and ended up not doing any coin related things with him. My grandfather had four children, with my dad being the only one who had any interest or sentimentality toward the collection. My father bought his siblings out, when they settled the estate. As is I do not know which coins my grandfather favored, or I would certainly keep those. I am currently leaning toward keeping some of collection and letting that pass down to my son.
I would get a lot of feedback and not sell right away. Dealers will low ball you and sell it for a higher price. Auctions would be the best way to go or find someone who really loves to collect. Figure out the number you are dealing with and maybe even jack it up more.
Always a good start to go on Reddit, just create a thread on these subreddits and ask: http://www.reddit.com/r/coins http://www.reddit.com/r/coincollecting
To add on to this, those coins might be worth more than they are now, when No Worries' great-grandkids post on CF, 100 years in the future, asking the very same question But I echo a lot of posters - if you're intent on selling them, get an estimate first, from a reputable coin dealer / other knowledgeable people. That way, when do decide to sell, you'll have a ballpark estimate on what you should get back.
Agree with doing your homework, going slow, getting graded, seeing how comparables are selling on ebay, and selling individually. Otherwise you will lose your lunch. The challenge is doing that. But it will be worth your time. One of those coins is likely to hit a homerun. Coin collecting is still a thing, but of course you need to be selling something they don't see everyday on ebay.
I'm facing an unknown future for some things I've collected since the late 1950's. Books. Hundreds of hardcovers and a far larger number of paperbacks (those largely stored) that I've got on beautiful bookshelves that I also collected over the years. We raised our two children, adults now, to be voracious readers, and they are. One might imagine that loving literature, along with a wide variety of non-fiction, would insure that after I'm/we're gone, the two would end up with several beautiful bookshelves and hundreds and hundreds of books to divvy up between them. That's not really the case. Why? The e-reader. That, and tablets (fine for surfing the net, but e-readers are far better than tablets for reading - no contest, unless the book has a lot of illustrations - e-readers are pretty awful reproducing maps, photos, etc. - that's if you don't prefer the book in your hand). They don't need actual books in order to read, in the main. They also aren't as "sentimental" as I am about things passed down from generation to generation. We also have a lot of art with an uncertain future when we've left this world, so to speak. Oh, some of it they'll keep and love, as we do, but far from all of it. Our tastes both coincide and diverge. I think they'll keep the hand tinted photographs we've collected, maybe fight over them, but I'm not sure about the oils. Sorry, No Worries, but your thread brought this to mind. Just idle thoughts floating through my head. That's not unusual for me, as you may have noticed over the years.
Interesting thread. I have "inherited" my own coin collection from when I was a boy. It has been at my parents' house for the last 40 years, collecting dust. My brother and I recently cleaned out my parents house to get it ready to sell after my Dad passed away in June, and I reclaimed my coin collection. The collection is a bit unusual as I started collecting when I was living in Australia as a small boy and there is an almost complete collection of Australian pennies (introduced in 1911, before that British coins were used) through the mid 60's. My children have no interest in the collection so I think I will sell them and buy a Tesla . There is also a fairly extensive collection of US coins. Obviously selling to a coin dealer would be the easy route, and I assume if I were to auction them I would have to photograph and grade them which would be a fairly extensive undertaking as there may be in excess of 500 coins total in the collection - thoughts?
I strongly agree with this @No Worries Unless you are in a financial pinch, keep the collection. It will become a tangible link between your kids/grandkids and your father/grandfather. And maybe they will think it is really cool (and might be very valuable) in 100 years when everything is done digitally.
I'm also running into this problem @Deckard. I have a large collection of Funko Pops that I'm not sure my children will want.
I know nothing about the book market, but what I think is that if e-books have taken over, as well as those audio books, you actually have the upperhand because now you have something no longer in production. Something you can touch and feel. But if there are no collectors due to strong interested in electronic publication, your in trouble. You need scarcity and demand. You still need someone to buy it in the future. I've probably always misunderstood the value of books myself because there's no original book, it's all about editions, but obviously there are still collectors out there seeking the stuff.
I have a hard time believing in the value of e-goods, I really do, yet I see it happening before my eyes. Kids love it. I still think it's a bubble that will burst down the road much like the art market. And yet, I cannot deny it's happening. And that the entire economy is virtual anyway. But I do think that is a good thing for collectors of physical content that is going virtual. It should increase value substantially.
I visited a local coin dealer today, who had a good representation. It was like a lamb being lead to a slaughter. He wanted me to take a 50% haircut. We will see. Next up, I am going to check out ebay.
I think you misunderstood me, PhiSlammaJamma. I'm bemoaning the likely absence of interest my kids will have in keeping them (and other things) after my significant other and I have reached the Great Beyond, not what I can get for them. I have no interest in selling what I have. I reread a lot of them (and I'm a very fast reader), and enjoy browsing through the shelves. They're good companions, in a manner of speaking. It was more a comment to @No Worries. Sorry for the confusion. It'll be up to the kids to do what they like with the books. Some are valuable (my late grandmother's 1st edition of The Great Galveston Disaster - she remembered going through the storm as a kid in the Heights - my great-grandparents wood frame house floating off it's blocks and floating down the street while they were in it - long story), and I think they'll figure that out, and some are only of interest to me, value uncertain, although certainly valuable to me.
You remind me my situation but just from the other side. My maternal grandparents were avid book collectors and i never counted the amount of books they had when they passed away but it was just to much for us to handle. Even though my mom, her siblings and especially my dad are avid readers it was still too many books. Everyone wanted the "rear" books firstly and than we really didn't know what to do with most of the books they had, many of them were books related to their work field or unique hobbies they had and no one else in the family really cared about. We ended up donating a huge amount of books and im really happy that maybe someone else would enjoy them like my grandparents did. The best advice i can give as someone how's gone through this is to organize ur books in categories that would make it easy for them to identify what they want to keep.
My grandfather was a coin collector as well. When he passed, we went through the collection and identified any valuable coins. None were worth an extraordinary amount (some were $500 max, i.e. none of those special 1943/4 pennies worth $100k). But, he collected them over the years so we're just keeping them. It was fun to go through the coins as a family after his passing and I hope my future kids will have a similar enjoyment at that time.
