Coins are among the most collected things in the world, and selling them to us is straightforward whether you have one coin or an entire cabinet. We buy damaged coins as well, so nothing needs to be in perfect condition before you write to us.
We accept coins from anywhere in the world
- gold coins
- silver coins
- platinum and palladium coins
- bullion coins, rounds, bars and ingots
- antique and ancient coins
- silver dollars, half dollars, dimes and junk silver
- proof sets, mint sets and commemoratives
- banknotes and paper money
Send the whole collection, not only the best pieces
A lot of people pick out the five coins they think are the good ones and leave the rest in the drawer. That is usually a mistake, because a collection that is still complete is worth more than the same coins sold one by one, and because the coin you think is common is sometimes the one our expert gets excited about. Alex Fordham takes care of coins, ingots and bullion here, and sorting through a box or a whole cabinet is his work and not yours.
Please do not clean your coins
This is the one thing we ask everybody. A coin that has been polished, rubbed with a cloth or cleaned with a chemical can lose most of its collector value in a few seconds, and it cannot be undone. The toning and the surface that look dirty to you are very often exactly what a collector is paying for. Send the coins as you found them and let us decide.
The same goes for handling. Hold a coin by its edge rather than across the face, and leave anything that is already in a holder, a flip or a slab exactly where it is.
What decides the price you get
For bullion coins like Eagles, Buffaloes, Krugerrands, Maple Leafs and Libertads the metal does most of the work, so the price follows the market on the day you accept our offer. For everything else it is the combination of how many were struck, which mint struck them, and what condition yours is in. Two coins of the same year and the same country can be far apart in price because one still has its mint lustre and the other spent twenty years in somebody’s pocket.
Mint marks matter more than most people expect. A single letter under the date can be the difference between a coin worth its silver and a coin worth a hundred times that, because it says which mint struck it and some mints struck very few that year. This is why we would rather look at the whole album than have you decide in advance what is worth sending.
Gold coins and bullion
Modern bullion is the simplest thing we buy, because the metal decides it and the arithmetic is public. You can work out roughly where a gold coin sits before you contact us, and our page on what a gold calculator does explains how, including troy ounces and the difference between grams and pennyweight.
Older gold coins are a different case. Pre-1933 United States gold, sovereigns, francs and the European trade coins often carry a premium well above their metal, and that premium depends on date, mint and condition rather than on weight. Those we look at as coins first.
Silver dollars and junk silver
Junk silver means circulated United States coins struck in 90 percent silver, which is dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 and earlier. It is bought by weight and there is nothing complicated about it, so send it in whatever bag or jar it lives in and don’t waste an afternoon sorting it.
Silver dollars are not junk silver and should not be treated as such. Morgan and Peace dollars are collected by date and mint mark, some of them are scarce, and a nice uncirculated example is worth a great deal more than its silver. Never send silver dollars to be weighed by somebody who is only interested in the metal.
Graded coins, raw coins and slabs
We buy coins that are already graded and slabbed by PCGS or NGC, and we buy raw coins that have never been near a grading service. You do not need to have anything graded before you contact us, because in most cases the cost of the grading does not come back to you in the price. We also buy accumulations that nobody has ever sorted.
If some of your coins are slabbed, photograph the labels. The grade and the certification number on them tell us most of what we need without any guessing.
You inherited a collection and have no idea what it is
This is how most coin collections reach us. Somebody has died, there are albums, folders, tubes and a shoebox, and nobody left in the family collects coins. You do not need to know what any of it is. Photograph the album pages if you can, send us what you have, and we will tell you what is there and what it is worth.
Please photograph: both sides of anything that looks unusual, the album pages as a whole, the dates and mint marks, and the labels on the slabs if some of the coins are graded.
How it works from there
You get a written opinion and a price back, in most cases within a day. The appraisal is free and there is no obligation to sell. If you go ahead, shipping is prepaid and fully insured, two of our people open and record the shipment together, and you are paid within 48 hours of accepting the offer. If you decide against it, everything goes back insured and at our cost.
Coins are only one part of what we do, and a coin cabinet rarely turns up on its own. There is a full list on our what we buy page, along with our pages on stamp collections, military items and ring collections. If you already know what you have, start on our sell online page.