Selling Coins and Stamps From an Estate: Where to Start

Why the coin jar matters

Older American coins are often made of silver, and silver has a market price by the ounce. Dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 and earlier are ninety percent silver; half dollars from 1965 through 1970 are forty percent; nickels from the middle of the Second World War contain silver too. A coin like that is worth its metal regardless of its date or condition, and a jar full of them, sold by weight to a coin dealer, can bring a sum that surprises everyone in the room. What it brings depends on the silver price that day, which moves, so no figure here would be true for long, but the point stands: the jar is not loose change.

Gold coins are the same story at a higher price, and any gold coin, American or foreign, is worth at least its metal. Beyond the metal, a small number of coins carry collector value for their date, mint mark, rarity or condition, and a very small number are worth a great deal. Most collections are mostly ordinary, and the value is in the metal and in a handful of better pieces, but you cannot know which handful until the collection has been sorted. That is why the coins should never be spent, never be dumped into a counting machine, and never be sold as a lot to the first person who asks.

Do not clean anything

Before you touch a coin or a stamp, take in the one rule that matters more than every other: do not clean it. A dark, tarnished, dull-looking coin is what collectors want; a coin that has been polished, dipped, scrubbed or rubbed with a cloth has had its surface altered and its collector value largely removed, permanently, however shiny it looks. Dealers can see cleaning at a glance and price accordingly. The same goes for stamps, which are damaged by moisture, by handling, and by being pulled off paper or out of albums.

Handle coins by the edges, over a soft surface, and put them down rather than dropping them. Handle stamps with tongs or not at all, and keep albums closed and flat. Leave everything in whatever holders, folders, tubes or envelopes the collector kept it in, because those holders are part of the record and sometimes part of the value.

How to sort the coins

Sorting does not require expertise. It requires a table, good light, a magnifying glass, and an hour or two. The aim is not to value anything yet but to separate the collection into piles a dealer can price quickly and honestly.

1. Separate anything already in a holder. Coins in sealed plastic slabs from a grading service, in cardboard flips with notes, in proof or mint set packaging, or in tubes and rolls. These were kept apart on purpose. Leave them in their holders.
2. Pull out the silver. Dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 and earlier, half dollars from 1965 through 1970, silver dollars of any date, and wartime nickels from 1942 through 1945 with a large mint mark over the dome. Look at the edge: a silver coin has a solid silver-colored edge, a modern one shows a copper stripe.
3. Pull out the gold, and anything that looks like it might be gold. Put it somewhere secure.
4. Pull out the foreign coins into their own pile. Most are worth little, some older ones are silver or gold, and a dealer sorts them quickly.
5. Pull out anything old or unusual: large copper cents, two-cent and three-cent pieces, coins with a date before 1900, coins with a small letter under the date or on the back, commemoratives, and anything you cannot identify.
6. What is left is modern circulating coin, and it is worth its face value. Count it, and take it to the bank.

Photograph each pile and write down what is in it. If the collector kept an inventory, check the piles against it; a listed coin that is not in the box is a question to ask before the collection leaves the house.

What gives a coin its value

Four things, in roughly this order for most collections. Metal content sets the floor: a silver or gold coin is never worth less than the metal in it. Date and mint mark decide rarity; most dates of most series are common, and a few "key dates" in each series are scarce and command a premium that can be many times the metal value. Condition, which collectors call grade, can multiply the price: the same date in worn condition and in untouched, never-circulated condition can differ by orders of magnitude, which is why cleaning is so destructive. Demand does the rest; some series have many collectors and others few.

Researching all of this yourself is possible, using published price guides and the sold-listing method in our guide to finding out if something is valuable, and it is worth doing for the handful of coins in the "old or unusual" pile, so you walk into a dealer knowing roughly what you have. It is not worth doing for a jar of silver dimes, where the metal is the value and a dealer's scale settles it in a minute. Prices for any specific coin depend on condition and the market on the day, and the same coin can be quoted very differently by two dealers for legitimate reasons.

Stamps are a different story

Stamps disappoint more families than coins, and it is kinder to say so early. Most stamp collections assembled in the twentieth century consist of common used stamps, worth very little individually and not much more in bulk, because so many people collected the same things at the same time and the number of collectors has fallen since. A full album of neatly mounted stamps represents years of a person's care, and that is exactly what it should be remembered as. As a sale item it is usually modest.

The exceptions are real, and a family should look for them before deciding the albums are only sentimental:

• Early material, especially nineteenth-century stamps, and early stamps from countries with strong collector markets.
• Unused stamps in perfect condition, with their original gum untouched, which are worth far more than the same stamp used or hinged.
• Errors and varieties: missing colors, inverted designs, misplaced perforations. Rare, and the reason collectors keep looking.
• Covers: whole envelopes with stamps, postmarks and addresses from significant dates, places or events, which can be worth more than the stamps on them.
• Unused modern postage, which is at least usable at face value and is bought at a discount by dealers who resell it for mailing.

A collector's catalog, with entries ticked or annotated, is the map to all of this. So is the collector's own note of what they thought their best items were. If the collection has either, a stamp dealer or a philatelic auction house can assess it from a description and a few photographs. If it has neither, a dealer will still look, but expect the conversation to be about weight and albums rather than individual stamps.

Where each kind of collection should go

Coins and stamps are collector categories, and the general rule for collector categories applies: the right buyer pays for what a thing is, and the wrong buyer pays for what it looks like. An estate sale can be the right buyer for some of it and the wrong one for the rest.

An estate sale company can sell coins and stamps well, but ask how before you agree. The good practice is the same as for jewelry: counted in against your list, kept in a locked case with staff, priced by someone who knows the category or sent to a dealer who does, and counted out again. Loose coins on a table in an open house are an invitation. If the company says it will sell the whole collection to a dealer on your behalf, ask which dealer, what the offer was, and whether the company's commission also applies. The contract checklist shows where those terms belong, and estate sales versus auctions explains when a specialist auction is worth its fees.

Choosing a dealer and avoiding the usual mistakes

The buyers for coins and stamps are dealers, and dealers make their living on the difference between what they pay you and what they sell for. That is legitimate; it also means the first offer is not the price. A few habits protect the estate:

• Get two offers from established local dealers, on the whole collection or on the same sorted piles. Bring the inventory and your photographs. A dealer who wants to price a pile of silver in front of you, on a scale, at a stated percentage of the day's price, is doing it properly.
• Ask how they are pricing: by weight, or as individual coins? A dealer paying metal value for a pile that contains a key date has bought it cheaply, and a dealer who separates the better pieces before making an offer is the one to trust with the rest.
• Be wary of temporary buying events at hotels and of anyone who comes to the house unasked. Their offers are rarely the best available, and the collection leaves with them.
• Do not sell piecemeal to the first enthusiast. A relative or a neighbor who "collects" and offers to take the good ones off your hands is cherry-picking, whether or not they mean to be.
• Do not let the coins go to the sale loose. If the estate sale company is selling them, it should be from a case, priced, with the silver already separated.

Proceeds from selling an estate's coins or stamps may have tax consequences, and who is entitled to sell them at all depends on the estate's situation. Rules vary by state and this is not legal or tax advice; an executor should ask the estate's attorney or a tax professional. Our guide to an executor's duties for personal property covers the wider responsibilities.

What to do next

Secure the collection, find the collector's records, sort without cleaning, and photograph the piles. Take the silver and gold to two coin dealers, the unusual pieces to a specialist, and the stamps to a stamp dealer with the catalog in hand. Keep the receipts for the estate. Our guides to overlooked treasures and what sells best at estate sales cover the other places value hides in a house.

When you are ready to hear from companies that can handle the rest of the house, describe the estate once and local estate sale companies will reach out to you, free. Tell them there is a coin or stamp collection, and ask each one exactly how it would handle it.

Frequently asked questions