Barnes & Noble, Borders - most bookstores - carry a weekly paper called Numismatic News. That would be a good place to start to try and familiarize youself with goings on in the coin world - probably give you the best idea of what values are and who might be out there looking for what. Lots of info on the internet also - but would use caution there because the proof sets, etc. were minted in extremely large numbers and sold more as collectibles than as an avenue to retirement. And there are a lot of inflated prices and real gouging floating around.

But look around at www.lynncoins.com too to see what old sets are selling for.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Coincidentally, my father-in-law was also employed by the postal service and was another coin "collector"!

This is an almost identical post to the one I made over a year ago, especially the description of the coins. (See link below).

There ARE valuable coin collections out there, I'm sure. Perhaps your father was more informed than my FIL, but . . . our outcome was not good. My FIL was, frankly, scammed by various "coin of the month" club organizations.

I spent a lot of time cataloguing and doing spreadsheets. I then took the spread sheets and a few samples to coin-dealers, went to a couple of coin shows, and also spent a lot of time on ebay. I got consistent feedback from the dealers. All said that any appraisal should be done by an independent appraiser not a potential buyer.

Many were also incredibly nice and looked at my lists, spread-sheets, the "certificates of authenticity" from various *dealers* and sale receipts. They did not look that closely. Just the names of the companies made them shake their heads.

They were very sympathetic, but told me not to waste money on an appraisal. Bluntly: face value.

My FIL was conned by glossy ads in TV Guide.

We learned that state quarters --"proof", rolled, displayed, "mint", uncirculated, boxed, whatever ... are worth face value. You may get a little more than that if you have the pristine "mint" coins in display boxes and a gullible buyer on Ebay. Frankly it was more work than it was worth to sell on Ebay, so we eventually chucked the boxes and got face value at the bank.

He did have some bullion. We watched the market for the price of silver and gold and sold at a reasonable price. A reasonable price for the gold and silver content, not for the coins. We sold when we did to partially fund his nursing home costs.

He had a huge collection of coins from one specific company, conditions variously described as good, fair, excellent, etc. We are hanging on to those for the moment and checking the books -- just in case. We are not optimistic because these coins were thrown in "free" with the display cases he bought.

I'm sorry for ranting, but this situation infuriated me, because my FIL thought the coin collection was his nest egg. He is too deep in Alzheimer's now to know or care that he was wrong. Perhaps that is fortunate.

I hope your experience is better. Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: my coin post

Tia, where do you live in Texas? I know of an old and very reputable coin dealer in Ft. Worth, R.E.Wallace Stamps & Coins. They have been in business since 1948 and list themselves as "serious buyers and sellers" and offer professional appraisels. Their number is, 817-338-4631. I have sold elements of my stamp collection to them.

Condition is everything as well as age and rarity. Any serious buyer is going to want to see the collection. In this regard, an inventory would be helpful.

I am working on an inventory. Apparently my DB has "found" more coins. And he is not sure whether we should sell the coins or just divide them up for the grandkids; there is some documentation that my dad perhaps intended the latter.

Fortunately my dad bought almost entirely directly from the mint. And while many of the coins have not gone up in value very much, now that he is deceased, the profit to whomever they go (or the proceeds of the sale of them goes), it will seen as profit to those persons. I am glad neither my dad nor his family depends on the increase in value of this collection. But we still need to know what we have and what its value is should we decide to sell. Thanks for any information you can give us.

We continue to work on an inventory and then we are adding, when we are fairly certain the item described is indeed the same as our item, the highest value ever sold on Ebay and the value assigned in a major coin price reference we found in our libary's reference dept. Sometimes these are fairly close, sometimes not. The good thing about the inventory, once complete, is I can give it to dealers to see what they can offer. And it might, at least, help us make somewhat equal portions for grandkids if we do not sell.

What you are going to find is there are wide variations in values so you will find it difficult to equally divide the collection. A friend's father recently died leaving several million dollars in stock and no will so she and another sister are in court against the third sister. The father did it on purpose as he was abusive to his three daughters. My suggestion is to sell the coins and divide the proceeds as you and your siblings agree.