Are My Old Coins Worth a Small Fortune?

Lesson 3: Oldies aren’t necessarily goodies

I had high hopes for Howard’s 1920s silver dollars. They were 100 years old! No wear, no tear! Silver value about $15 alone! Sadly, I learned I might get only $25 or $30 apiece for them. Why? Millions more of these coins were minted than people needed, explained Sarah Miller, managing director of the New York City office of Heritage Auctions, another top auctioneer. “They sat in government vaults for decades,” she said.

Lesson 4: Condition can count for a lot

“The same coin from the same year can be worth $4 or $4,000, depending on its condition,” Musinger said. Before valuable coins are bought and sold by serious collectors, they’re usually assessed by independent third-party firms that will assign the coins a number grade, on a scale of 1 to 70, based factors such as scratches, corrosion and luster. Howard’s 1826 half-dollar was in good shape. Examining it through a loupe, Miller guessed a grading service would place it in the 40 or 50 range — something a dealer would sell for $150, and buy for a little less. Schimel priced it about the same; in worn condition, he told me, it would be worth only $30.

But condition also worked against Howard and me. His 1885 dollar had a dark, sooty streak across Lady Liberty’s face and a prominent nick on the rim. “That’s an ugly coin,” said Musinger. “We’d pay $25.” He liked the copper Civil War token, which was privately minted in the North in 1863, when desperate merchants struck their own pennies amid a shortage of coins. “It’s a great piece of history,” he said. But that’s where his compliments ended for the bent, worn and corroded coin. “It’d be in our junk box for $3,” he told me. My Series 1953A $2 bill? It was folded and worn. “In that condition,” said Schimel, “spend it.”

Lesson 5: Ultimately, value lies in rarity

All too often on my quest, I heard the words “if” and “instead,” as in: “If you had a 1928 Peace Dollar instead of a 1922, it would be worth 10 times as much.” What gooses the price of coins is quantity. How many coins just like it have survived in as good or better condition? How many were minted in a particular year, and at a particular mint? While more than 17 million 1885 dollars were, like Howard’s ugly coin, minted in Philadelphia, only 228,000 were minted in Carson City, Nevada, carrying a “CC” mintmark. “Even a damaged 1885 CC is worth a few hundred dollars,” said Miller.

So there I was at the end of my Antique Coin Roadshow — not a big winner. “I like to think of this as a treasure hunt,” Miller had told me. “You’re helping people look for something that’s valuable. And you hope that you can find it.” Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t.

KATHLEEN FU

When you're ready to sell coins or bills that may be valuable, do this:

1. Leave them alone. “Don’t clean them,” says Mitch Sanders of The Numismatist. “Don’t polish them. Don’t try to improve them. That can destroy the value of a coin.” Even the slightest effort at cleaning is detectable by experts.
2. Study up. You can get ballpark values from print and online references. Sanders recommends A Guide Book of United States Coins, published annually, which has pricing info, photos of key details and other useful material. Major grading services Professional Coin Grading Services and the Numismatic Guaranty Company and big auctioneers (Heritage Auctions, Stack’s Bowers) have photos and auction results to use for comparison. “Take the time to do research,” says William Gibbs, managing editor of Coin World magazine. “You’re in a much better place than someone who goes into a dealer and says, ‘What will you give me for all this?’ ”
3. Reach out to buyers. If you’re looking for a dealer to sell to, Gibbs says a good sign is membership in industry groups like the American Numismatic Association and the Professional Numismatists Guild (which runs background checks on its members). You can also sell through one of the auction houses, all of which will let you know whether your money is worth putting on the block.