This is part of a series of blog posts I wrote for a coin collecting site circa ~2015 that seems to have disappeared off the Internet. Note any prices mentioned in this series are from 2015.
Any serious collection eventually gets its own maintenance and upkeep hassles. You make an inventory system, it gets too cumbersome, you invest in software for it, you need binders and slabs and holders and boxes and labels… Eventually you want it insured, at which point you’ll want to know (if you hadn’t wondered already) what the whole collection is worth, in total.
Well, here’s some handy tips to better appraising your collection, via spotting the hidden values in some items which you may have overlooked. Because finding out that it’s worth more than you thought it was is like finding free money…
#1. Look for Prooflike Surfaces
Proof coins are minted with variably polished dies. The flat surfaces of the die are highly polished, while the details are left deliberately dull. This produces the popular “cameo” or “frosted” finish. Many amateur coin collectors don’t know the difference and sell them as regular grade coins. It’s not even outside the question to find proofs in with other coin varieties in the “bargain bin” at a vendor stand on a Bourse floor. Especially with older coins, proofs don’t stand out as much as the modern ones do.
#2. Regrade Older Holders
It’s called “gradeflation”: over time, a coin’s grade tends to increase. This is because grading services will handle this year’s coin a lot more casually than they would a coin from a few decades ago. For instance, an Ike Bicentennial Dollar would have maybe gotten an MS-60 rating in 1976 – we’re seeing them every day then, so what’s to get excited about? Bring the same coin in to get graded today, and the grader will be far more impressed with the coin’s condition. If you had a coin slabbed and tagged the same week it was current, chances are good that it got a lower grade than it deserves now.
#3 Search for Errors, Varieties and VAMs
Errors are sometimes deceptive to the eye, unless you know what to look for. Have you thought to flip every state quarter you’ve found to check for rotated dies? Check every coin’s lettering for signs of an overstrike? Or perhaps your Morgan Dollars have an identifiable VAM – this is shorthand slang for distinctive die pairs from known dies which showed variety over time. One wears down over a couple of letters, another tends to double-strike one lock of hair on the profile, etc. You really can spend a lifetime learning about coin varieties and still keep discovering more.
#4 Consider a Second Opinion For Your Grading Service
Lesser-known coin grading services tend to low-ball coins. Sometimes this is from dealing with under-trained graders, sometimes it’s just sloppiness on the part of the business, and sometimes it’s a dealer hoping that the under-graded coin will be sold to them at a low price so they can flip it into a higher profit. If you send the same coin through three different services, you’ll usually get it back with three different grades. Knowing your services and which ones grade what the highest can sometimes help add dollars to your collection’s value.
Bonus tip: You Get What You Pay For.
Finally, keep your sites aimed high – always pay the premium price for premium coins. The money you save from buying a sub-par coin is nothing compared to the value you’ll gain from preserving a top-quality specimen for decades to come. Yes, it’s more fun to buy five coins where you could buy one, but remember that over time the one coin you could have bought would have increased six times its value, while the chump change coins barely budged a percentage point.
