What To Do With an Inherited Coin Collection

Let’s assume that you know little about U.S. coins other than that you can spend them for small purchases, and you inherit a relative’s coin collection. Congratulations! Now what?

Let’s further assume that you don’t want to become a coin collector, and you want to convert the collection to spendable money. How will you go about it?

I live in a small town and have often been asked to look at inherited collections. These collections have ranged from minuscule, with only a handful of coins, to quite large. Values have ranged from less than $100 to more than $2,000,000.

Many years ago, my mother-in-law asked me to look at the collection a friend of hers had inherited from her husband. It turned out to be one of the smallest collections, with no more than a dozen coins. All were “spenders” (worth only face value) except for one, the big key to the Indian cent set. I offered the woman $70 for her 1877 in AG-G condition, which was the wholesale value at the time. She took it, and I sold the coin on my next mail-order price list. I often wondered what happened to the rest of the man’s collection if it contained a coin as scarce as an 1877 Indian cent.

On some occasions, I’ve been asked by longtime collectors what they should do with the coin collection they put together years earlier and have lost interest in. Assuming there are no potential heirs interested in coins, what should the former collector do with the coins while still alive?

If there will be multiple heirs, my advice is to sell the collection so that the proceeds can be divided among them. Most of the heirs to collections are more interested in what they can get out of them than in the collections themselves.

But let’s get back to the original question: What should an heir do with an inherited collection? Based on my observations of many inherited collections, I would advise the heir first to organize the coins. Note that I will often use the word accumulation rather than collection, as the coins are not in albums or binders or in an order that implies a systematic collection.

I have rarely been asked to look at a collection with an inventory. An inventory implies that some effort has been made to put the coins in order. Often the collection occupies a hodgepodge of boxes of different sizes. Some of the coins may be in albums, usually the inexpensive blue Whitman folders with only one side of the coin showing. Some of the coins are just loose, perhaps in sandwich bags, occasionally not even separated by denomination.

The most valuable accumulation I was asked to examine appeared at first to consist of a sizable number of silver coins (junk silver). My advice to the wife (the husband had accumulated the coins, but he was showing signs of dementia) was to separate them by denomination, and I would go through them to see if there were any worth more than just their bullion value.

When I examined them on a later visit, I pulled out some of the half dollars that I thought were worth more than bullion. For example, there were several high-grade circulated 1929-Ds, a couple of AG-G 1916-Ss and other Walking Liberty halves that I thought were too good to go to the melting pot. As it turned out, the ultimate purchaser of the accumulation didn’t agree with my assessment, paying bullion value for everything. That portion of the accumulation went for about $70,000, as I recall.

All along, the husband had been trying to tell me about some gold coins that he had in a lock box at one of the local banks. I asked him various questions to try to get an idea of what he had, but he just kept saying that they were gold pieces that I should be familiar with.

Finally, a date was set for me to go with them to the bank so that I could see his gold. Of course, I was hoping that his coins would be double eagles ($20 gold pieces) or eagles ($10 gold pieces) or even half or quarter eagles, but such was not the case. What he had were American Gold Eagles in half-ounce and ounce sizes, more than 1,000 ounces of them. With gold at close to $2,000 an ounce at the time, the couple received a wire transfer to their bank for close to two million dollars!

Although I received some payment for my efforts, friends and relatives thought I should have gotten more. They don’t understand the small markup on bullion sales by coin dealers.

Of course, most of the collections I’ve been asked to look at have been worth much less than this, with several in the $10,000-$20,000 range. If I were a non-collector or collector inheriting such a collection, here are the steps I would take.

1. Organize the Coins. I would put any loose coins in order by denomination and then by date within a denomination. If there are albums with coins in them, these too would be organized by denomination. If the collection contained proof sets, which many do based on my experience, these would be ordered by date. If there are foreign coins that aren’t silver, I would put these together in a plastic bag large enough to hold them.

2. Make an Inventory of the Collection. This will be useful both for a potential buyer and if you’re trying to put a value on the collection. In the case of multiple heirs, a valuation will be useful if one of the heirs wants to purchase the collection and also if you take it to a dealer or dealers for an offer(s). Although most coin dealers are honest, I have known some who are what I would call “as-honest-as-they-have-to-be.” That is, if you know what the inherited coins are worth, at least approximately, then they will make you a fair offer. If you don’t, then they may try to take advantage of your ignorance.

In Cash in Your Coins, Beth Deisher has an entire chapter devoted to talking the talk of a coin person. In it, her second tip is: “Never approach a possible buyer by saying ‘I don’t know anything about these coins.’ Such proclamations are an invitation to be fleeced.”

In making an inventory, take a pad of paper and list all the items in the collection. Again, your organization will help you here. You might start with the coins in albums, beginning perhaps with Lincoln cent albums. You might have an album with Lincolns dated from 1909-1940 and another album with cents dated from 1941-1974. In terms of value, you can figure the circulated wheat-back cents from 1934-1958 as worth no more than 2 cents apiece, with Lincolns after that at face value. Earlier Lincolns, particularly mintmarked coins, may have significant values, depending on condition.

Nickel albums would be next, arranged by the different series (Liberty Head or V nickels, Buffalo nickels, Jefferson nickels). If interested, dealers usually pay about $20 for a set of circulated Jefferson nickels. Dates after 1955 are spenders.

If there are proof and/or mint sets, put these in order by date, with the oldest ones first. A lot of dealers I’ve encountered at coin shows aren’t interested in relatively modern proof sets (those after the late 1950s). If a dealer makes an offer for these or for mint sets, just be sure the dealer is offering at least face value.

For individual coins in 2x2 holders, assuming they’re identified by date and denomination, put these in ascending order by denomination and date if they’re not already so ordered.

Continue with the process I’ve sketched here until you’ve got the whole collection in some sort of reasonable order. By doing this, you’ll be getting an idea of just what you’ve inherited. Gone will be the need to tell a dealer that you don’t know anything about the coins.

3. Purchase a Pricing Guide and Read the Introductory Material. In this issue, you’ll find a review of a pricing guide that I would recommend: A Guide Book of United States Coins, a.k.a. the Red Book. You can find these for sale at some big box stores (e.g., Walmart) and also online (eBay, Amazon). You can also get one from the publisher at Whitman.com. Although the values in the Red Book are supposed to be retail values and not what a dealer might offer you for a collection, you can use it to get an idea of the collection’s value and figure that a reasonable offer would be in the ballpark of 70-75 percent of the Red Book’s value.

If you’ve carefully read the book’s introductory material, you should have some idea of coin grading and will know what a grade designation such as F-12 means. You can use this knowledge when you look at a specific coin series, such as Buffalo nickels. In the description of grades at the beginning of the series, you can read that an F-12 nickel will have the horn and tail smooth but partially visible and an intact obverse rim.

You can use this approach to values for all the coin series represented in the inherited collection. In addition to seeing the value of common date-mintmark combinations in the different coin series, you’ll be able to learn which are the uncommon dates, the keys to the various sets. For Washington quarters, for example, it’s obvious that the keys are the 1932-D and 1932-S. These two dates have both the lowest mintages and the highest values.

Note that the grade range changes for 1936 and later dates. The reason for the change is that lower grade (G-4 - VF-20) quarters after 1935 are mostly worth only their bullion value.

4. Spend (or Cash In) the Spenders. This will have to be done at some point in dealing with the collection, and you might as well do it early. For one thing, if you decide to ship the collection for an offer, there’s no sense including a lot of coins worth only their face value.

Coins that I pull out of a collection and put into a spenders bag include circulated Lincoln cents after 1933, dateless Buffalo nickels, Jefferson nickels after 1939 except for War Nickels (1942-1945 with a large mintmark above Monticello) and the 1950-D, dimes and quarters after 1964, half dollars after 1970 and modern “gold” dollars (dollar coins beginning with the Sacagawea dollars). The same is true for most circulated Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.

Well-circulated dimes and quarters before 1965 contain 90 percent silver and have bullion values that depend on the price of silver at the time the collection is evaluated. Similarly, the same is true for half dollars before 1965. Kennedy half dollars from 1965-1970 contain 40 percent silver and also have bullion value, although not as much as the earlier coins. War nickels, mentioned above, have 35 percent silver content and thus some bullion value.

5. If Possible, Get Multiple Offers. If you go to, or live in, a city with multiple coin shops, then try to get multiple offers. If you show it to two dealers and one offers $10,000 and the other $20,000, then you might want to get a third offer with this much discrepancy between the first two. The same can be said for showing it to multiple dealers at a coin show.

Notice I said “if possible.” If the collection is too large to fit into one reasonably sized box, then multiple offers may be harder to get. I’ve occasionally been asked to evaluate or make recommendations on collections that required me to pay multiple visits to the home of the heir.

One of those was a collection formed by a couple of different people that had become the property of three sisters. The first time I went, I was in a new sports car (Miata) I had just acquired. It must have been obvious that I was getting excited looking through the collection because one of the sisters asked me if I would be willing to trade my new car for it. Without hesitating, I said, “Sure!” Although I didn’t trade my car, that was a most interesting and rewarding experience.

6. Purchase and Read Books That Will Aid in the Disposal of an Inherited Collection. I’ve mentioned two books in this article, Beth Deisher’s Cash in Your Coins and the latest Red Book. As indicated, if used appropriately, the Red Book will help you get an idea of what the collection is worth. Deisher’s book will be particularly useful in helping you dispose of the collection.

The Coin Collector’s Survival Manual, by Scott Travers, contains a great deal of useful information for heirs to a collection. The final chapter in the 7th edition, “Don’t Turn Your Valuables Into Fool’s Gold,” seems particularly relevant. In the chapter, Travers discusses topics such as “Finding Reputable Buyers,” “Selling Your Gold Coins,” “Gold Jewelry,” “Rings and Things” and “How to Protect Yourself When Selling Gold and Silver.”

Although not aimed specifically at coin collectors and collections, The Collector’s Handbook, published by Ivy Press, Inc. is worth studying. This slim book has been through many editions, and my version, published in 2016, is the 10th.

Another worthwhile resource I found on Amazon is Managing and Settling a Numismatic Estate: How to Preserve and Dispose of a Coin Collection. The only edition appears to be a Kindle edition, which is free if you have Kindle Unlimited Membership, or $3.99 to purchase.

All the books I’ve cited here are available on Amazon and eBay, and you can often find slightly used copies for a fraction of what a new copy would cost. Even when new, most of the books are not especially pricey.

I think you’ll find that the knowledge gained before you offer the collection to a potential buyer will be beneficial in the long run.

And who knows? You may find numismatics so interesting that you’ll decide to use the inherited collection as the nucleus of a coin collection of your own.