The 8 Mistakes Most People Make When Selling Their Coins
The 8 Mistakes
Most People Make
When Selling Their Coins
Are You About to Make A Mistake That Could Cost You Thousands?
The 8 Mistakes Most People Make When Selling Their Coins
A busy full-time dealer in rare coins and notes can buy their stock from dozens of different
people a week – some busy city dealers might meet up to 50 different people a week. Multiply that number of people over a number of years or decades, and you can understand
how after a while some dealers develop the ability to be able to “read” which sellers they
can buy cheaply from, and which ones they can't.
The sellers that dealers can buy cheaply from tend to make one (or a few!) of eight
basic mistakes – avoid them and you'll go a long way to ensuring that you get top
dollar for your collection:
MISTAKE #1: Some sellers expect to be able to get a completely accurate valuation
of their collection over the phone, by letter or via email. If you've got some old coins to
sell, it makes perfect sense to ring a few coin dealers to see if you can't find out how much
they're worth. When it comes to most coins however, a dealer will need a reasonable
amount of information in order to not only work out how much your coin is worth, but also
to work out exactly what it is you have!
Often, it doesn't matter how keen or determined a seller is, they may not be able to communicate what they can see in a way the dealer can understand: “I've just found this old
coin mate, how much is it worth? It's got like the King's head on it and that, and it looks
sort of brown.” Likewise, a written description of a coin or collection simply may not be detailed enough for a dealer to be able to understand, no matter how clear and precise it
may seem to the seller:
Neither is a pencil rubbing of one side of a coin going to be adequate for a dealer to be
able to provide you with an accurate buy price, however they are sent into dealers through
the mail with regularity.
If you have some old coins and notes to sell, and you believe that there's a chance they
could have some value, then there's only one way to get them appraised properly, and
that's to have a dealer actually look at them in the flesh. This will of course mean that you
need to make the effort to visit a dealer, and if that seems like it'll be too much of a hassle,
it could mean that your coins probably won't be worth much at all.
MISTAKE #2: Just when the dealer is about to begin the appraisal, the seller says
something like: “I just want to get rid of them” or “These coins are just old junk, I'm
sure they're not worth much.” I've encountered a wide variety of effective negotiating
tactics in my time, and actively minimizing the appeal of the very items a seller is looking to
sell certainly isn't one of them! If you have some coins and aren't really sure if they're
worth anything or not, get them to a dealer for an appraisal – and just keep quiet while
they're doing their job.
MISTAKE #3: Many sellers don't shop around or do their homework. I know as well as
anyone that having a coin collection appraised can be an overwhelming task, especially if
the seller doesn't have any experience with them. If those coins have been inherited following the death of a loved one and there are a lot of other tasks to deal with regarding the
estate. All of this stress can lead some sellers to just actually dump their collection onto the
counter of their local dealer and let the cards fall where they may. While this can be the
easy way out, it can also be really expensive – the first dealer you try may not be the best
placed to handle the coins in your collection, might only be prepared to pay a low price for
the items you have, or might not be as interested in them as another dealer that's a real
The 8 Mistakes Most People Make When Selling Their Coins
alternative for you. At least indicating to a dealer that you're prepared to go elsewhere if
their offer isn't sufficient will go a long way to keeping a legitimate dealer on their toes.
MISTAKE #4: They don't check their collection to see what's in it. Numismatics (that's
the fancy word for the study of rare coins) is a complex field, so non-collectors with busy
lives can be excused for not personally calculating the wholesale and retail value of each
and every coin in their collection. When all's said and done, dealing in rare coins is a field
that requires detailed expertise. That's not to say you shouldn't make some effort to determine the kind of coins that you should be looking for – adequate information is reasonably readily available for sellers that are prepared to put a bit of work in. (I know of
quite a good ebook that includes everything you'll ever need to know!
MISTAKE #5: They don't consider selling their collection until they need the money.
God only knows that I've put off many a tough decision in my life to the last minute, in a
vain attempt to avoid the stress of actually making a decision or doing some work. The
problem with leaving a decision or task to the last minute is obvious – not only do you still
have the decision to make or the work to do, now you're really under time pressure to get it
right! When it comes to selling a coin collection, it's entirely possible that if you cut off your
options by leaving selling until the last minute, you could end up selling for less than you
really want or even know that your collection is worth.
MISTAKE #6: They firmly believe that the worn old penny that their grandmother
once said was rare is worth a million dollars. I know I probably wouldn't have made it to
adulthood unscathed if I hadn't listened to my parents and grandparents, or my friends for
that matter, but that doesn't mean they're the font of all wisdom. In my experience, information about rare coins is often passed along from person to person in a manner that's a
little like Chinese whispers – someone learnedly says in conversation that “The 1930
penny is Australia's rarest coin”, and someone overhears it in passing. That person then
overhears a few other people talking about coins a few months or years later, and they say
“I know there's one penny that's really valuable, I think it's 1936.” Play this scenario out a
few more times and you get an idea of how a lot of people can make a big mistake about
their coins pretty easily if they don't check their facts.
Just like you probably shouldn't ask for relationship advice from the good old boys in the
front bar (as wise as they are), you probably shouldn't rely on your friends or family members when it comes to an area they aren't experts in.
MISTAKE #7: They aren't clear when they ask a dealer for “a valuation”: Providing a
valuation can often seem to be pretty straightforward, you just want to know what the item
or collection is worth, right? For the dealer though, it isn't as straight up and down as it
might seem. The reason for this is that each and every item has a range of values:
Wholesale value – how much an honest and fair dealer would pay a well informed seller;
Retail value – how much an informed buyer would pay an honest and fair dealer ;
Insurance value – how much an insurer would pay in the event of an insurance claim for
theft, loss or damage.
Unless the person requesting the valuation lets the dealer know exactly what kind of valuation they're after, the dealer on the other end of the phone (or letter or email) doesn't know
whether they're expecting to know exactly what they can expect to be paid cash for their
The 8 Mistakes Most People Make When Selling Their Coins
item today, or if they want to get a good idea of what they can expect to pay for a particular
coin when it next becomes available, or if they need to tell their insurer what the total value
of their collection is.
MISTAKE #8: They use just one dealer to get their collection valued, then don't like
the information they're given.
Some sellers clearly would like their cake and eat it too – they want to get top dollar for
their collection, and they don't want to have to go to a lot of effort to get it. Some sellers
would prefer to be able to wander straight into their local coin dealer, plonk their collection
down on the dealer's table, and get top dollar for it right there and then. If the dealer has
clients that are ready to pay good money for the items in that collection straight away, then
they'll be in an excellent position to pay the seller exactly what they're after.
On the other hand, if the dealer doesn't handle the type of coins being offered regularly, or
already has a number of them in stock or is somewhat short of cash at the time, the
amount they offer may not be in line with the seller's expectations. Does that mean that the
dealer is a crook, liar, thief or cheat? Absolutely not! What it means is that the seller will
need to do a little bit more work in order to find a dealer that is in a position to do business
with them at a price they're happy with.
And this is a key lesson for all sellers – you don't have to accept the offer you get from the
first dealer that you visit, even though shopping around might involve a little bit of effort,
the extra amount you get paid by doing business with a dealer that's got plenty of clients
for your material could really shock you.
If you’ve found the information in this document useful,
you might like to buy a copy of - “The Layman’s Guide
to Australian Coin Values”. It will:
you identify all of Australia's most valuable
• Help
coins & notes;
you an accurate idea of how much cash a
• Give
dealer will pay you for it; and
• Give you pointers on how and where to sell it.
"There's not one single book, magazine or website that
has even half the information contained in this book.
Written specifically for sellers of coins and notes, you'll
go from novice to expert by the time you're finished
with it." ! !
!
!
!
!
Andrew Crellin
Click here to order, and you could be checking your
collection within minutes. Remember our 100%
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