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
