How to Sell a Coin Collection (Without Getting Lowballed)

The expensive mistakes with a coin collection happen early. Someone polishes a coin, splits up a proof set, or sells the whole box to the first buyer who names a number. None of that can be undone, and an afternoon of sorting plus a few phone calls prevents all of it.

What should you do first with a coin collection?

Before anyone looks at the coins, spend half an hour on these five things.

1. Don’t clean anything. No polish, no soap, no pencil eraser. NGC, a major grading service, says unskilled cleaning is one of the most common reasons a coin gets a “Details” label instead of a numeric grade, and that harsh cleaning can’t be corrected afterward. Tarnish is fine. Leave it.
2. Leave every coin in its holder. Albums, Mint boxes, cardboard flips and sealed plastic slabs stay as they are. A buyer wants to see a set the way the Mint sold it, and a coin cracked out of a grading slab no longer carries that grade.
3. Hold off on dividing it. If relatives want a keepsake, let them choose after the inventory, so nobody walks off with the one coin worth more than the rest of the box.
4. Gather the paperwork. Receipts, invoices, U.S. Mint order slips, old appraisal letters, insurance riders, and any notes the collector wrote on album pages or envelopes. A note that says “paid $400, 1978” tells a buyer where to look.
5. Work out who can sell. If the collector has died and the estate is still open, the executor makes the call. There’s more on estates below.

Sort the collection into piles

A coin shop, a bullion buyer and an auction house want different things. If one buyer gets the whole box unsorted, you’re relying on them to find the good coins and then pay you for them. Sort first, and you know what’s in the box before they do.

The silver dates come from the Coinage Act of 1965. It took the silver out of circulating dimes and quarters and cut the half dollar to 40% silver, which lasted through 1970; circulating halves from 1971 on have none (our 1971 half dollar guide covers that year). Nickels struck from 1942 to 1945 with a large mint mark above Monticello on the back are 35% silver (war nickel melt value). Morgan and Peace dollars are 90% silver. The silver checker sorts out any date you’re unsure about.

In the “might be special” pile, value usually comes down to a specific date and mint mark. The 1916-D Mercury dime is the key date of its series, with 264,000 struck. The 1909-S VDB is the rarest Lincoln cent by date and mint mark, with 484,000 released. Some 1955 cents were struck from a doubled die, and the date on them is plainly doubled. You don’t need to spot these yourself. Pull anything old, odd or separately stored into this pile and have a specialist look.

Know the melt floor before anyone makes an offer

Silver and gold coins are worth at least the metal in them. At today’s spot price:

• One 90% silver quarter (0.18084 troy oz of silver): …
• A $10 roll of 40 silver quarters: …
• One Morgan or Peace dollar (0.77344 oz): …
• One 40% Kennedy half, 1965 to 1970 (0.1479 oz): …

Ten dimes, four quarters or two halves (one dollar of face value in 90% silver) hold about 0.72 troy ounces of silver when new. The junk silver calculator uses 0.715 to allow for wear and handles a mixed pile. A coffee can holding $50 face is roughly 36 ounces. Use the gold coin melt calculator for gold, and the per-coin pages for Morgan dollars, silver quarters and Kennedy halves.

Melt only covers the metal. Offers on common silver are tied to melt, and how close they come depends on the shop and the day; our guide to what coin dealers pay goes through it. For a coin in the “might be special” pile, melt is the least it’s worth. A buyer who offers melt for a key date is either missing something or hoping you are. When an offer comes in, run it through the offer checker.

Do you need an appraisal or just offers?

An appraisal estimates what something is worth. An offer is what one buyer will pay today. Plenty of sellers only need the second.

Get a written appraisal when the number has to stand up for someone else: an estate that needs a value as of the date of death, heirs who want equal shares, an insurance policy or a donation. For a box of common silver and a few proof sets, skip it and get offers. Many shops look over coins for free on the way to making an offer, and our coin appraisal page lists the shops whose own websites say they do free, written or in-home appraisals.

Be careful with price guides. NGC’s online price guide shows the average dealer retail price, meaning what a shop charges a collector. A dealer buying from you pays less, because they still have to resell the coin. Use guide prices to flag the coins worth a second opinion.

Is grading worth the money?

Grading means sending a coin to a service like PCGS or NGC to be authenticated, graded and sealed. NGC’s current fees are $20 a coin for its Modern tier (coins from 1965 on, worth up to $3,000), $25 for Economy (non-gold U.S. coins worth up to $300) and $45 for Standard (up to $3,000). Add a $10 handling fee per submission, shipping both ways and an NGC collector membership, which NGC requires for direct submissions. Paying that to grade a silver dime worth a few dollars in metal makes sense only if it’s a rare date in high condition. The grading cost calculator does the math for a batch.

Where should you sell each pile?

Coin shops suit most collections. You can get two offers in an afternoon and walk out with payment. Call first and ask whether they buy whole collections and when the person who prices them is in.

Coin shows put many dealers in one room. Walking a sorted collection to three tables in an hour is the fastest way to test an offer. See the coin show calendar.

Auction houses and consignment suit coins valuable enough that bidding can beat a dealer’s offer. You pay a seller’s commission, the buyer pays a premium, and you wait for the sale and then the check. Get the fee schedule in writing.

Selling online yourself gets closest to retail and takes the most work. eBay’s final value fee for Coins & Paper Money is 13.25% of the first $7,500 of each item and 2.35% of anything above that. Bullion is 13.6% on an item that sells for $7,500 or less and 7% on one that sells for more. Each order also pays $0.30 (orders of $10 or less) or $0.40. Shipping, insurance and returns are on you.

Buyers that pay by weight, such as mall kiosks, hotel “buying events” and some pawn counters, tend to price everything as scrap. That’s fine for a broken bracelet (the scrap gold calculator tells you what it should bring). For a coin worth more than its metal, you hand them the difference.

How many offers should you get?

• Common silver and bullion: two offers, on the same day. Spot prices move, so compare them within hours.
• Gold coins, silver dollars and sets: two or three.
• Anything in the “might be special” pile, or worth more than a few hundred dollars: three, with one from a dealer who specializes in that series or from an auction house.

Ask every buyer for an itemized offer, by pile, in writing. That lets you sell the silver to one shop and the dollars to another. A single number for the whole box hides which coins the buyer is paying up for and which ones they’re getting cheap.

How do coin dealers decide what to pay?

Bullion and common silver are priced off spot. The gap between what a dealer pays you and what they charge the next customer is the spread, and it covers rent, staff and the risk that silver drops before they resell.

Collector coins are priced from the other end. The dealer starts with what the coin should sell for, takes off a margin, and adjusts for how long it might sit in the case. A coin they can sell next week gets a stronger offer than one that might sit for a year.

So an unsorted, whole-box offer tends to come in low. Coins the dealer doesn’t have time to check get priced as common, since guessing high costs them money. Sorting and itemizing take that guess away.

Shop listings on CoinShop Finder show, where we have the data, how many of a shop’s recent Google reviews describe fair offers and how many complain of lowball ones, its BBB record, whether it’s an NGC authorized dealer, and what its own website says it buys. Read a few before you load the car: coin dealers by city.

What to say when you get an offer

Ask these, in your own words:

1. “Can you break that down by pile?”
2. “What spot price are you using, and what are you paying per dollar of face value on the 90% silver?”
3. “Which coins in here are you paying more than melt for?”
4. “Can you write that down with today’s date? I’m getting one more offer before I decide.”
5. “I’m going to hold these few back for now.”

A fair dealer answers all five without getting irritated. If someone won’t itemize, won’t put a number on paper, or says the price is only good if you sell right now, pack up the coins and leave.

Payment, ID and taxes

ID. Bring a photo ID. Some state laws require one for certain purchases. Florida’s secondhand-dealer law, for example, requires a photo ID and a right thumbprint for most used goods, though its definition leaves out coins and properly marked bullion. A shop may still ask for ID under its own policy.

Payment. Ask how the shop pays before you sell: cash, check or wire. For a large sale, a check or wire leaves a record. Get a receipt that lists what you sold, not “misc. coins.”

Cash over $10,000. A business that receives more than $10,000 in cash, in one transaction or related ones, files IRS Form 8300. That form is about a customer paying a business in cash. A dealer paying you for coins doesn’t trigger it.

Form 1099-B. Dealers report only a narrow set of precious-metal sales. Under the IRS instructions, a sale is reportable only if the metal is in a form approved for delivery under a regulated futures contract and the quantity reaches that contract’s minimum. One gold coin doesn’t qualify, because the approved gold-coin contracts call for at least 25 coins. Sales within 24 hours are added together, and splitting them on purpose to dodge reporting cancels the exception. Ask the shop up front whether your sale will be reported.

Tax on any gain. Reported or not, a profit is taxable. The IRS taxes net long-term gains on collectibles, coins included, at a maximum rate of 28%. Coins held a year or less produce a short-term gain, taxed as ordinary income. Your gain is the sale price minus your basis (generally what you paid), so keep the old receipts. This is general information; a CPA or other tax professional can tell you what applies to you.

Selling an inherited coin collection

If the estate is still open, the executor (some states say personal representative) decides when and how to sell. If you’re an heir but not the executor, ask before you sell anything.

Two IRS rules usually help heirs. The basis of inherited property is generally its fair market value on the date of death, or on the alternate valuation date if the executor chooses it, per IRS Publication 551. It isn’t what the collector paid in 1975. And under Publication 544, inherited property counts as held for more than a year no matter how soon you sell it. Sell within a few months at about the date-of-death value and there may be little gain to tax. A written appraisal as of the date of death, kept with the estate papers, documents that value if anyone asks later. Check with the estate’s attorney or a tax professional before a large sale.

If heirs are splitting the coins rather than selling, value them first and divide by value, not by count. One silver dollar can be worth more than a full album of cents.

Be wary of anyone who contacts the family first offering to buy “the collection.” You decide who sees it. Our appraisal page and shop listings show which dealers say on their own websites that they buy estates, make house calls, or do written estate appraisals.

How to avoid getting ripped off when selling coins

Walk away from a buyer who:

• won’t itemize the offer or write it down
• says the price expires the moment you leave
• puts coins on a scale with jewelry and pays by weight for everything
• wants to keep your coins overnight without an itemized receipt
• calls everything common, then insists on buying the whole lot instead of the pieces you choose
• cleans a coin to “check” it, or tells you to clean them
• reached out to you first

Credentials help. Members of the Professional Numismatists Guild need at least three years as professional numismatists, sponsorship from four full members and a background check. In the PNG code of ethics they pledge not to buy at unreasonable prices, not to misrepresent a coin’s value, not to use high-pressure sales techniques, and to arbitrate disputes over a purchase or sale. Our guide to finding a reputable coin dealer covers the rest of the checks, and where to sell coins compares the options in more detail.

When the piles are sorted and you know the melt floor, pick two or three shops in Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio or Pennsylvania that say they buy collections, call ahead, and bring the coins in their piles.