3 Tips To Help Sell Your Coins or Paper Money
Coin collecting can be an interesting hobby, and potentially a lucrative one. If you sell a collection of coins or paper money, you could end up making a tidy profit. Whether you are the collector or the heir of someone else’s collection, you want to get the most out of it and receive a fair price. Here are some tips to help you get a good deal.
1. Organize Your Collection
Organizing your collection makes the evaluation process easier. It may be that you already keep your collection in an album designed for the purpose. If so, you have already completed this step and do not need to do anything more. Otherwise, there are several steps you can take to organize your collection:
- Some coin collections include pieces from multiple countries. Separate world coins from North American coins. Then sort out Canadian coins from those from the United States. If you only have world coins or only have coins from one country, you can skip this step.
- Separate the coins by material. Sort out any coins made of gold or silver.
- Sort U.S. or Canadian coins by denomination.
- Sort coins based on date. For world coins, separate those minted before 1900 from the rest. For U.S. coins, sort out those minted earlier than 1965, for their silver content, except in the case of $1 coins, in which case you should sort out those minted prior to 1936. For Canadian coins, sort out those older than 1969.
If you have a collection of paper money, you should organize it by issue date and separate bills into the following categories:
- Frontiers series (current)
- Canadian Journey series
- 1980 Birds of Canada
- 1969-1979 Scenes of Canada
- 1954
- 1937
- 1935
- Chartered and Dominion notes
2. Use Coin Catalogues To Determine Value
While you can have your collection appraised, it is good to have at least a rough idea of what your coins for sale are worth. That way, you can recognize a good offer when you see it and have less chance of being cheated. You can also set a reasonable asking price, which can help you sell the collection more quickly if that is important to you. The standard reference to value a collection of Canadian coins is the Charlton Standard Catalogue. For world coins or banknotes, you would refer to the Krause Standard Catalogue, and if valuing U.S. coins, you would need the Whitman Red Book. If you do not want to purchase these books yourself, it may be possible for you to borrow them from a library or from a reputable coin dealer.
3. Determine Whether You Need a Formal Appraisal
If you are just interested in selling your collection, you can ask for a simple verbal appraisal from a coin dealer, which is an informal process. It usually doesn’t cost anything, or at least very little. However, if you have a buyer who wants a written appraisal, you need to take your collection to an appraiser with a coin company that is well established and have a formal process done, which can cost money.
Coin Collecting Can Pay Off
At Colonial Acres, we perform in-house appraisals for free. No appointment is necessary; simply bring in your collection and one of our experts can look through it with you and let you know what we would pay for it right away. You can choose to hang on to it or walk away with more money than you came in with.