<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">I want to thank everyone for their wonderful comments!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Highly grateful! I’ll let you all know how it went.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">—jms</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 13, 2018, at 9:58 AM, Jeff Hubbs via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" class="">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I'll tell you what I know, based on my
own experiences including selling items on behalf of my mother's
estate through 2016 and 2017.<br class="">
<br class="">
Any coin or sports memorabilia dealer is going to do his or her
level best to give you only a token amount of money for
everything. It's not a matter of them being trustworthy vs. not;
it's just business - including a healthy amount of information
asymmetry. Consider that if you bring them 300 coins, going
through each one to both identify it and grade it is no small
task. Coins that are packaged and graded through one of the major
grading companies like the American Numismatic Association
Certification Service have a value-add baked into them, but it is
generally not going to be worth that or even paying to have a
local expert grade them when you're talking about e.g. 50-cent
pieces that might sell for $0.75. <br class="">
<br class="">
In other words, coins are a massive time sink and unless you have
some pieces that are in exceptionally good condition for their
age, they just aren't worth much. Having said this, I have some
recommendations for eBaying:<br class="">
<ul class="">
<li class="">If there are some individual coins that seem like they may
be worth at least a few bucks but you don't know grade, don't
bother trying to grade it yourself; just take really good
photos of obverse and reverse. I got good results by putting
them on the flatbed glass of a decent scanner (and that
process is pretty fast, too - especially for getting images of
a lot of coins at once). But some years back, before you could
get better than 300dpi on a scanner, i set up a rig where I'd
place a coin on a gray cardboard circle atop a lightbox and
set a truncated cone of aluminum foil on top of that so I
could shoot a picture with a DSLR through the hole atop the
cone; this made for nice even lighting all the way around the
coin.</li>
<li class="">If the coins in the plastic tub are mostly undifferentiated
and well-worn, group together the all-copper and all-silver
ones by denomination and by composition (you'll have to look
that up) and sell each group as a set. Unless there are some
real outliers as far as rarity goes, the clad coins are all
pretty much worth face if they've been circulated at all.<br class="">
</li>
<li class="">EBay and PayPal together take quite a chunk out of any sale.
I worked up a spreadsheet in Calc that runs the numbers with
all the fees and allows for different shipping payments by
buyer and seller (ideally they are the same) and the cost of
packaging so I can tell how much I've cleared or, more
importantly, use Goal Seek to know what opening bid I need in
order to clear a given amount or break even. It's very easy to
wind up upside-down on an eBay sale if you start an auction
too low and that's what it sells for. And clearly, if you've
gathered together 100 silver quarters to sell as a lot you
want to make sure you clear no less than $25 on the sale. <br class="">
</li>
</ul><p class="">For the sports memorabilia, some of the above holds with the
addition that you can often search existing or past sales to get
an idea what to ask for. If there are existing sales, your
mission is to set your opening bid so as to undercut everyone
else without risking going upside-down. <br class="">
</p>
<br class="">
On 8/13/18 8:57 AM, Jerald Sheets via Ale wrote:<br class="">
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:8D4D7601-FF6D-43DF-85CC-E4AEDD4C1AF7@gmail.com" class="">
<pre wrap="" class="">My Dad passed away recently, and I’ve got a plastic tub FULL of coins. I’ve also got some sports memorabilia here.
I need to unload it all.
Problem Statement: Every time I’ve ever even so much as entered a coin shop, I walked away feeling as though I needed a shower after. Either the place was filthy, or the people were specious, or I felt like I was dealing with Rick from “Pawn Stars”.
Do any of you have a relationship with a coin shop and/or a sports memorabilia shop that is trustworthy and honest that you would recommend? I don’t want to keep all this mess, but at the same time, I don’t want to get taken advantage of. My dad and grandmother spent almost 40 years collecting all this, and I’d like to have their efforts mean something by not “giving away the farm” to some disreputable clod(ess).
Any help would be most appreciated!
Jerald
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