Coin Collection

[John Bailey]

My mom just gave me my father's and grandfather's coin collection to see what it might be worth. Since going to a reputable coin dealer is a long distance adventure for us, I would like to have an idea of how much energy and time to put into this project.

Do any of you know of a web-site that could give me some basic estimates? I'm looking for a site that I can dial in a type of coin, say a penny, and a date, say 1943, and get some type, or range, of estimates. Also, is there a site that will give me an explaination of what the ratings letters and numbers mean.

I've done searches already and believe there is nothing in the collection of great value. I have many old coins from the 1800's and early 1900's. I just need a way of getting rough estimates to decide how to go from this point.

By the way, for those of you that know about these things, I had an interesting day doing research on the 1943 pennies, and the 1866 and 1853 half dollars in the colletion. I was thinking I had a real find. Of course, they ended up being very common and not worth a lot. The pennies stuck to the magnet, the 1853 has the arrows and the 1866 has the motto.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

John

[Jim Young]

Have you taken a look at the expired ebay auction and what similar coins went for? It is a good tool to figure out roughly what you would get out of ebay.

[John Bailey]

Jim,

That's a good thought. How do you get to the "expired auction" section? I didn't know about it.

John

[Pat Monahan]

John
You may want to visit your local bookstore. There are reference books for coins available (or were a few years ago) that list the year, how many were produced, condition and how the condition is determined, approximate value and pictures. Finding the value for coins is fairly easy from these books, but the value listed may differ significantly from the price a coin dealer would offer you if you were selling . IIRC the books were in the $8-$15 range.
HTH
Pat

[Jim Young]

Jim,

That's a good thought. How do you get to the "expired auction" section? I didn't know about it.

John

In the search field type in your coin. Then when the current listings come up you will see in the yellow field on the left side of the screen a box to check next to "completed listings". Then hit "show items" at the bottom of the yellow field. Ta da, the past auctions. Just look at the ones that sold, the unsold ones have no research value (there's a reason they didn't sell). The items with a green price are the ones that sold.

[David Fried]

John
You may want to visit your local bookstore. There are reference books for coins available (or were a few years ago) that list the year,

You might want to visit your local library too! I know ours has such references.

[John Hart]

Hey John.

I really enjoy coins because there is so much history in them. My favorite are Roman and Byzantine coins but also like to mess with the US coins as well. The thing about coins is their value is subject to a lot of interpretation, including the condition and rarity, which I'm sure you already know. But also, "what the market will bear" comes into play, over and above what the appraisers say, which is why Ebay is interesting. Your coin may be worthless to one person but a "must have" to another.

Anyway...stopping my ramble...Check out http://www.coins.big.com/

Not much of a site really, but there are a bunch of links to a variety of other sites on its homepage. Browsing around is a good way to get a feel for what something might be worth along with myriad educational materials.