I own a variety of old coins related to various currencies, passed on to me by grandfather. I want to sell/auction the coins, however I need to understand the official process to sell/auction old coins. On top of my head, the first question that I can face is the Provenance Certificate, showing the authentication of coins. Anyone please help me understand the process of getting authentication certificates, and the procedure to follow in order to sell/auction the coins. Coins are as old as 1950's-1990's. Thank you.
Coin purchases are as old as 50's-90's or the coins are that old? The latter of course doesn't qualify as Ancient and the process of selling Ancients compared to moderns can be a bit different.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "Provenance Certificate". Provenance is a record of past ownership, and if you have bills of sale or other documentation of your grandfather's purchase of them, that's your provenance. You indicated that this provenance dates back to between the 1950s and 1990s, which tells me you must have some kind of documentation. Provenance and authentication are two different things. If you want professional authentication, then one of the big names for that is David Sear, through his Ancient Coin Certification Service (ACCS). This is expensive, however. I have never used Mr. Sear's service but can attest that he has a solid reputation in the field. An alternate route would be to submit them to Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC Ancients) for encapsulation and grading in plastic "slabs", though this is also expensive, and NGC does not actually offer an ironclad guarantee of total authenticity on ancients. However, since they will not encapsulate a coin they know to be fake, they do offer one layer of protection and professional opinion. Also note that slabs for ancient coins are controversial and disliked by most traditionalists, though they can certainly help boost the resale value if you're selling via auction sites like eBay. I do slab my own ancients with NGC, personally, but mostly just because the rest of my collection is in slabs, and I'm admittedly in the minority there.
Actually I never purchased them, rather these coins were given to me by my grandfather. He had collected those coins throughout his life. I don't keep any documentation for these coins.
Mods=moderators. You posted this in the Ancient Coins forum, so I assumed you had ancient coins, with provenance dating back to the 1950s-1990s. If the coins you have were themselves made from the 1950s to the 1990s, then they are certainly not ancient coins. They are modern coins, and should be posted in US Coins forum (if they are US coins), or the World coins forum (if they are modern non-US coins).
What he said. Moved the topic to Coin Chat and removed the "ancient" from the subject. Without images we don't know whether the coins are US or not, so Coin Chat should be safe ... Christian
Hey, it's nice having a European moderator online in the hours when most of the folks in the USA (myself excluded) are asleep.
I want to sell/auction the coins, however I need to understand the official process to sell/auction old coins. There is no 'offical' process, you just offer them for sale and people buy them or not, depending on the items offered and their perceived value. There is no need for any certification, it is usually pretty obvious to any experienced collector if the coins are real or not. In most of the world, the US style grading services are unknown, so this is not something needed or useful if you are not selling on the US market. If selling online, your success rate will depend on the quality of your pictures and description, more than any 'certificate of Authenticity' which is easily written and printed off and generally not worth the paper it is printed on. Most modern coinage, which could be said to be anything later than 1900 to 1950 depending on who is saying it, was produced in huge numbers and with little or no intrinsic value from precious metal. If your grandfather paid good money for the coins he collected, then you probably have some valuable items now, but if he simply accumulated anything that took his fancy when it came along for next to nothing, you may have coins you could give to your children to play with. Clear pictures of some of the coins would be essential if you want some specific help with what you have. When posting poctures, resize them on your computer to about 600 to 800 pxels across, multi megabyte pictures will not post, and use the 'upload a file' button by the 'Post Reply' button below your new post. Posting as 'full image' is preferable to posting as thumbnails which is the default choice.
There is no official process. Depending on what you have, you could either sell on Ebay, sell directly to a dealer, or consign to an auction house. The auction house might have their own procedures, but every company is different. If you tell us a little bit more about what you have, we can help guide you down the right path. By the sounds of it, you might be thinking of antique auctions? Or art auctions? Provenance is more important for those types of collectibles, less so for coins. Depending on what you have, professional authentication may be desirable. There are two primary companies (NGC and PCGS) which perform this service, for a fee: if your coins are valuable enough, this is an important thing to pursue. In order to help you any further, we will need to know more about what you have. If you could take pictures of some of the things, that would be best. If not, tell us more detail about your collection (what countries, what dates, what denominations, anything you can about the coins).
handle coins by the edge of the coin as to not get finger prints on the coins. do NOT clean any of the coins as it will kill their value. a super shiny coin that looks cleaned will be very hard to sell. if you know this already great if not then I saved you a lot of money in reselling these coins.
