Thursday 22 October 2009
Oct 22
I always have people asking, "How should I sell these on eBay?"

When it comes to coins that can be a tricky question. Especially if you have a lot of coins that you want to sell. If you don't know the values then it can be even harder to decide the best way to sell them.

You have 3 options for listing the coins. You can list each coin individually, which can be expensive and your chances of selling everything you list may be limited by the demand of those particular coins. If you are unsure of the coins' values, then I don't recommend listing the coins individually unless they are at least 40 years old or older.

Your next option is to list the entire collection in one large lot. This is a great idea if you are fairly certain that your coins are not worth a lot of money individually. If you have an exact count of the coins you are wanting to unload that is great. If there is too many for you to count, I recommend weighing them on a scale. Be sure to list that weight in your listing's description and even the title. I've had people approach me and ask, "well I'm pretty sure 990 of these 1,000 coins are not worth much, but these 10 here are worth more than the rest put together." To those people, I recommend you list the bulk coins in a lot and sell the other 10 individually, if their value is significant.

You can also list coins in partial lots. If you have a mix of coins from various countries you can consider separating them by country. There are many collectors out there that only collect a specific country. I sell Grab Bags of mixed world coins on eBay and have had some good luck selling them. Sometimes I get too many coins from the same country so I've sold lots of just that specific country to collectors looking for just those coins. This makes those specific collectors happy and allows my grab bag customers to end up with a better mix of coins because I have less duplicates to give them. It's a win-win-win situation for all of us. :)

If you do decide to sell grab bags, don't be one of those sellers promising gold coins unless you really have them and plan to give them away. I'm fairly certain I've never had a gold coin in one of my grab bag lots and I don't even hint at the possibility.

Reading the above paragraphs might not have helped you narrow down your options at all. The next step which will help you get the most money for your items is to research Completed Listings

By searching the Completed Listings you can see how much coins in similar condition are going actually selling for. Some people get excited when they see someone auctioning a coin and their asking price is ridiculously high. Who cares how much someone is asking for a coin? I only care about how much a buyer actually pays. eBay color codes sold items using red and green prices. Green prices mean an item was sold successfully. Red prices are items that did not receive any bids. The green prices are what really matter when determining value.

When writing your description, try to be as honest as possible. I do not recommend listing the grade of a coin unless it has been professionally graded. Take good, clear pictures of both sides of the coin and let your buyer decide the condition of the coin. Avoid sob stories about being a single mother with 12 kids and 4 cats to feed with just a disability check coming in, or that you were laid off and are desperate for money. Those stories tend to scare off some buyers because they know desperate people can do bad things out of desperation. It also invites unscrupulous buyers to come along to try and take advantage of you and your situation.

Be fair with your shipping charges! It should not cost you $5 to ship a coin within the same country unless it's slabbed and/or you are sending it priority(expedited) mail. Offer combined shipping and charge only .10 to .50 for each additional coin purchased. If you are listing many coins at the same time, you may find many buyers bidding on multiple coins you have listed because of the combined shipping deals. So even though you might not be pocketing extra money on shipping, your coins are selling for more money.

Other places you can sell coins: Craig's List, Bonazle.com, eCrater.com, eBid.com, OLA.com and of course the Coinbrag.com Coin Market which is free to list in our forums.

written by Nicholas

News Categories

Current Coins in Circulation Among the Republic of India
Monday 15 April 2013 - 14:56:14

Here's a fairly large article covering India's modern coins. Starting with the fading 50 paise coins to the 10 rupee.