Selling old coins

shewolf :
if it's only dirt , clean it with gentle soap and water only . the dirt might corrode the surface over time .
one of the saddest things i watched a few years ago at the coin dealer :
an ekderly lady came in with her departed husband's collection of valuable silver coins . she had labouriously cleaned them to a shine using something like "brasso" .
the coindealer told her they were worth the silver value now .
hbg

Wow. That is sad.

I was looking last night on google, how to clean some coins.

one of the things I read over and over was to use olive oil?
And if that didnt work, to use isopropyl alcohol.


On my coins, my favorite one ( pictured earlier) is just filthy. Oil, dirt, grime.. etc.
If I clean it for a possible sale, I would definatly remove what ever value it might have.

My jefferson, is covered with.. green stuff? Have no clue what it is..

That's Verdigris, She..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdigris

I know of a man that had a pretty vast collection of old coins. Prior to the 20th Century people would often be buried with gold and silver coins to increase their good fortune after death. It turns out he would take a metal detector to very old graveyards and...you guess it.

I can NOT say, that it has not crossed my OWN mind.
Not that I would ever dig up a grave, but I do always wonder what they have way down there..

I am sure there are untold riches lying in those decaying caskets Shewolfe. But far be it from me to be the one to disturb the dead and deal with the eternal torment...

but............. but..

but



but

but but ,, (sigh)

Hmm. Johnboy actually knows something about this. Rita, my mom, was a stamp and coin dealer from 1963 until her illness and death in 1999-2000. I worked there from age 13-16 until I could get a real job. And later, when I took over the art supply business, her shop was in in the front of the store and hung out up there.

Three points:
1) Just because a coin or stamp is old does not make it valuable. If it was common at the time, it probably is still not valuable today.
2) Never ever do any cleaning. Never. if you are hoping to sell it. Not with soap and water or brasso or silver polish. The value plummets.
3) The grading of the coins is a very strict science based on how the highest points of the coin wears. For example, as I recall, the highest points of the Indian Penny are the feathers in the headress and the stars in the headband. Just because it is shiny does not mean it is in great condition.

This is going to be a long and somewhat convoluted tale. I can't cite refereneces that are verifiable. But I think it is true. I really do.
Back in about 1939 or so, my dad, an electrical engineer in the Navy was reassigned to Washington. This was 7 years before I was born. The US knew that what would become WW2 was in the making.
My folks lived in a dreary little apartment on Bashford Lane in Alexandria, VA. Just outside DC. Their neighbors and best friends were Jack and Sharon K. From Miami. Jack was a Marine Corps reservist who kew all about moving large quantities of stuff quickly.
Here is where this gets somewhat relevant to the topic at hand.
Jack and Sharon were Jewish and Jack was a fledgling stamp dealer in Miami before his Marine Corps recall came. Some Jews in Europe saw the storm clouds coming and moved their wealth into something that was easily transportable and convertible into dollars. Stamps.
There was a golden age of stamp collecting from the late 1940's until about 1990. But kids aren't interested any more.
I had a giant map of the world on my wall at one time. And I would paste stamps from wherever I got them over the map of the country of origin.
And, ****, I know where Malawi and Paraguay are and I know where Yugoslavia used to be. Thank you for reading this. -Johnboy.

We lived in Alexandria, but that was in summer of '47. I was olderrrrrr than you!

On stamps, I had a big red stamp book. Wonder whatever happened to it. I still have some stamps, more recent ones, from back in my laboratory days, when people from all over the world would request reprints of our papers. All, or at least most of them, cancelled. I didn't care.

This point I do know.

I have several magnifying glasses that I use to check on the high points.
On most of my sellable coins, most of them still have the high points in tact. Maybe not to the naked eye, but when some close examination you can still see outlines and the indentures .




Ok.




Absolutly.

I have been to a few coin shops and a few dealers . Most of them say exactly what you say, except the cleaning part. Some of them have actually told me to clean them.
That makes me... squeemish to say the least..

Some needed to be cleaned..
( daughter spilled milk on some once)
But the only cleaning I have done was to rinse them with clear water.
Thats it.
Let them dry on a rag.

There is an old cemetery down the road from my house that sits on a hill alongside the road. Most people aren't even aware that the cemetery exists.

The last person buried there was in 1917. The whole thing is overgrown, toppled tombstones, animal holes burrowed into the sides of some graves, small trees taking root. There is one exception however. One grave is meticulously cared for, the grass kept low around the tombstone and flowers placed there at least once a year.

Ok, not meticulously cared for, but in the grand scheme of things regarding that cemetery, it is an enigma.

But forget about that grave. I don't even know why the hell I brought it up.

The point I was going to make was that one of these years I am going to wander around the edges of that cemetery and the old gravel road (which is now barely discernible) that leads to it, and poke around with a metal detector.

There has to have been an occasion when some grieving bastard pulled out a handkerchief as his child was being lowered into the ground and unwittingly dropped a gold piece onto the ground.

The gold piece went unnoticed by the assembled mass of pallbearers and spectators and slowly worked its way beneath the soil. As the hearse was being pulled from the cemetery by a team of horses, one of the horses stepped on the coin, further forcing it into the soil, then the wagon wheel passed over it and firmly cemented it in place.

And that gold coin has laid there for over a hundred years. Animals have passed over it. Seasons have changed. Leaves have blown over the coin. But nothing disturbed it. It is still there after all this time.

And I am going to find that son of a bitch.

And that coin will be mine.

On many shopping trips, I have glanced at metal detectors.

I have this enormous fantasy in my mind sort of like that one.

I want to go to some of the older homes here in austin and poke around the back yards.
Some of these houses were built in the mid-1800's.
And could , very reasonably be a grave for some long lost family member . Instead of taking them to the grave yard, they placed them on the edge of the property so they could watch the family grow and change , still wearing their big diamond engagement ring, long gold necklace they only wore for special days that they had handed down to them from great grammy...

Or , like you said, someone just dropped something and the goat head plant just swallowed it in greed .

Or, my all time favorite fantasy-
I , some how, am able to afford one of these old homes.

The day after I close, I am walking through my beautiful 200+ year old home and it is perfectly empty. I have a rag in my hand and I am dusting the fireplace when I notice a loose brick.

I pullout this brick and behind it is someones hiding place from when the house was built. Jewels, money, silk...

aaaaahhhh


pretty nifty fantasies..

Jewels would be nice but any paper money would have long since decayed and the silks would be all crusted and smell like ****. Nice fantasy though!

If your objective, Gus, was to languidly say less in your post then I did in mine, you win. But I shall return with more banality.

lord ellpus :
you probably already know that the "one penny black" envelopes could be quite valuable , particularly if the stamps have one of the rarer "cancellation" stamps - such as village post office cancellations - rather than cancellation stamps from big city post-offices .
on old letters it's not just the stamp but also the cancellation stamp that determines the value - i hope you hit a jackpot !
to give an example :
i have a number of german pre-ww I used postcards . as such they would not be particularly valuable ; howeveer some of them were posted aboard german ocean liners . these "ship-post" cancellations are much more valuable than a regular city cancellation .
other more valuable cancellations are "railway post" and exhibitions cancellations .
hbg

Quit with the reality...


you are killing my fantasy..

No such luck I'm afraid, hbg.

When my Dad died, we (three sons) went and had the albums valued at Stanley Gibbons in London. He looked at the three envelopes and said that the one on the envelope as previously mentioned, was nothing special and valued it at about £20 (1976).
The other two were worth more, for technical reasons similar to what you mention.
One was worth about £50, and the other about £75, because it was a forgery!
Apparently, a good Victorian forgery is quite sought after.

Another batch of Brit stamps were of interest to him, as they were from Jersey, and the Island had received permission to cut them in half (diagonally) due to a severe shortage of stamps during the German occupation of the Island throughout WW2.
Apparently, letters were still allowed to be sent to the mainland during the occupation, although they were subject to heavy censorship before being put into the envelope (under supervision) and sent.

The story goes that little messages used to be written in very faint pencil, on the inside of the envelopes.

Bloody devious Brits!

lord ellpus :
i hope you didn't sell the jersey stamps yet ; particularly if they are on envelopes , a specialist collector would probably be quite keen to obtain them .
you can probably check at your local library and see if they have any stamp catalogues .
i have some POW envelopes from mail that we sent to my brother in 1945-46 ; they are now worth several 100 euros .
keep checking !
hbg