One of the most difficult parts of dealing with an old coin collection is simply determining whether it might be worth anything at all. If you inherited your collection or if you are uncertain of its origin, then evaluating whether any of the coins that it contains are worth real money can be a challenging task. Although you should always have a potentially valuable collection appraised by an expert, it can be helpful to get a rough estimate of the value of your coins beforehand. Luckily, you can take a few easy steps to quickly judge if a professional appraisal is worth your time.
Start by Preparing a Workspace
If you have a large number of coins to deal with, then you will want an appropriate workspace to go through them all. You will need a large desk, a bright desk lamp, a magnifying glass, and a few bins for keeping interesting coins or coins that you want to check later. This may seem like a lot of trouble, but going through a large coin collection in a cramped area without enough light is likely to be a difficult and frustrating experience. Having a dedicated work area will also allow you to easily split the job up among multiple days.
Do Some Research and Prepare a Cheat Sheet
It is fairly easy to find lists of valuable coins in circulation. Do a bit of research to locate a few of these lists and consider printing them out to keep near your workstation. As you sort your coins, check against this list. While finding an exceptionally rare coin might be unlikely, it takes only a few minutes to check as you work. You never know—you might strike gold!
Sort Your Coins
If the collection is unorganized or unsorted, you will want to organize the coins as best you can. The easiest way to do this is to sort by denomination. If you have a particularly large number of one denomination, you can further sort them by year or decade. Having your coins sorted will also make it easier for a professional appraiser to value them later, should you decide that the collection is worth selling.
As you work, make notes of date or date ranges that are particularly common. This will help you in the next step.
Evaluate Your Coins by Group
If your collection is large, then appraising the entire collection is likely to be time-consuming and rarely worthwhile. If this type of coin-by-coin evaluation is what you are looking for, then it may be worthwhile to have the collection professionally appraised. Instead, go through your sorted coins and identify the groups that you have separated. If you made any notes regarding the age of your coins, keep those notes handy now. You will also need a coin value guide.
At this point, the best plan of attack is to look up coin values for types and years that are common in your collection. Find coins of particularly high value and check if they are contained in any of your sorted groups. Rather than attempting to value every coin, your goal should be to roughly estimate an overall value based on the coins that you have a large number of. This is often the bulk of a collection's value, so it is a good place to start when determining if any further appraisal is worthwhile.
Determine If Your Collection is Worth Selling
You can get a rough idea of the total value of your collection by simply multiplying the average value of coins in each sorted group by the total number of coins in that group. While this will not provide you an exact value and it has the potential to miss some very valuable coins, it will help you to decide whether you are holding onto something that might be worth selling. If you decide to sell your coin collection, it is likely worthwhile to have your collection professionally evaluated.
Share23 May 2019
One thing I have always been good with is money. Even in high school, I always had a savings from my allowance and from working for the neighbors. I created this blog to help other young people understand the importance of financial responsibility even at a young age. If we start our adult lives knowing about financial responsibility, we can make it further in our lives before we suffer from the devastation of financial mistakes that can take years and years to pay back. Hopefully, what you learn here will help you avoid those financial mistakes and maybe help you recover from the ones you've already made.