What Are My Old Coins Worth?

Start by sorting, not by searching prices

When people open a coffee can or a desk drawer full of old coins, the first urge is to look up the oldest one online. That usually leads to scary-high asking prices for coins that sold for far less. A better start is to sort everything into a few piles. Within an hour most families can tell whether they have a few dollars in pocket change or a box worth a careful look.

Work on a soft towel at a table with good light. Handle coins by the edges. You need no tools beyond a magnifier and a few envelopes or small bowls, one for each pile below.

• Face value: modern clad coins with no silver
• Silver: 90% coins, 40% Kennedy halves, war nickels and silver dollars
• Gold: any U.S. or world gold coin
• Copper and nickel collectibles: wheat cents, Indian cents, Buffalo nickels
• Set aside: anything in a holder, set, album or slab, plus anything odd-looking

A sorting table by denomination and years

Use the date on each coin to place it. The table covers the coins that turn up most often in U.S. family collections. 'Melt' means the coin trades mostly on metal content; 'collector' means date, mint mark and condition can add real money on top.

How to spot silver and gold fast

For dimes, quarters and halves, look at the edge. A 1965 or later clad coin shows a copper stripe down the middle. A 1964 or earlier silver coin is silver all the way through. Silver also rings brighter when dropped gently on a table, though the date is the surer test.

War nickels are easy once you know the trick. Turn the coin over and look above the dome of Monticello. A large P, D or S mint mark there means the nickel is 35% silver. The 1942 P was the first U.S. coin to carry a P mint mark. Plain 1942 nickels with no mint mark, and 1942-D nickels with a small D to the right of the building, were struck before the switch and are regular nickel.

Gold is small, heavy and a rich yellow that never tarnishes. U.S. gold coins carry denominations of $1, $2.50, $3, $5, $10 and $20. Any of them is worth far more than face because of the gold alone.

What makes a coin worth more than its metal

Once the metal piles are sorted, the money above melt comes from five things. A coin can have one of them or several.

• Date and mint mark: some years were made in small numbers or mostly melted, such as the 1909-S VDB and 1914-D cents, the 1916-D dime, the 1932-D and 1932-S quarters, and the 1893-S Morgan dollar.
• Condition: a coin with little or no wear can be worth many times a worn coin of the same date.
• Eye appeal: original luster and attractive natural toning draw stronger bids than dull or harshly cleaned surfaces.
• Errors and varieties: doubled dies, off-center strikes and wrong-planchet coins can bring premiums.
• Demand: popular series such as Morgan dollars always find buyers, so even common dates carry some premium.

What not to do with old coins

Well-meaning owners lower the value of their coins every day without knowing it. These are the mistakes we see most.

• Do not clean coins. Polish, baking soda, vinegar and even a soft rag leave fine scratches that buyers and graders spot at once.
• Do not pull coins out of holders, albums, mint sets or proof sets. Original packaging proves what the coin is and protects it.
• Do not crack open PCGS or NGC slabs. The grade and guarantee go with the plastic.
• Do not sort by tossing coins together in a jar. Rubbing coins mark each other.
• Do not sell the 'good ones' first and leave the rest. A buyer can price a full group more fairly, and scarce pieces hide in plain-looking rolls.
• Do not trust a single online listing as proof of value. Asking prices are not sale prices.

When to get an appraisal

Get a professional look if your sort turns up any gold, any silver dollars, coins older than about 1900, coins with little or no wear, slabbed coins, or more than a handful of rolls of silver. Those are the piles where a careful eye can change the number by a lot.

You should also get a written appraisal if the coins belong to an estate. Probate courts, insurers and heirs dividing a collection all work better from an item-by-item list than from a guess. If your sort shows only clad coins and a few wheat cents, you can roll the clad coins and spend them, and keep the wheat cents as a family keepsake or sell them as a group.

Old coins in Dallas homes

The coins we see from Dallas families tell the story of how the city grew. Homes in Oak Cliff, Lakewood and the M Streets often hold coins saved by grandparents who lived through the Depression and the war years. Those collections lean toward wheat cents in rolls, Buffalo nickels, Mercury dimes and a few Walking Liberty halves. Houses built in the 1960s and 1970s farther north, around Lake Highlands, Richardson and Garland, more often turn up silver pulled out of pocket change in 1965 and 1966, when people noticed the new clad coins and started saving the old ones.

Estates in Highland Park and Preston Hollow sometimes include gold and graded coins put away as a hedge during the 1970s and 1980s, along with mint and proof sets ordered year after year from the U.S. Mint. Those sets are easy to undervalue because they look so ordinary in their envelopes and plastic cases, but the 1964 and earlier sets contain silver, and some later proof sets carry collector demand.

Dallas heat also plays a part. Coins kept in a hot garage or attic for decades may come out spotted, green or stuck to their paper. Leave them as they are. Do not scrub or soak them. A buyer can judge damaged coins far better than a cleaned coin, and many spotted silver coins still sell at full silver value. The same goes for wheat cents fused into a roll or proof sets with clouded plastic: bring them as they are, packaging and all, because the original holder often tells us more than the coins alone.

If your sort turned up silver, gold, old dollars or anything you are not sure of, call (469) 754-8608 to book a free appraisal. We go through the coins with you, coin by coin, and give you a written offer with no obligation to sell.