Oakton Coins & Collectibles: One of most highly rated coin shops near Naperville.

All forms of gold are valuable, and we are always ready to buy. Whether you have yellow or white gold, estate jewelry, or a high-end designer piece, we’re interested. Broken or unwanted jewelry is gladly accepted, and dental gold also has value. From 10k through 24k, every karat level is purchased. We also buy both gold and silver bullion, and when your gold jewelry includes stones like diamonds, emeralds, or sapphires, we evaluate the entire piece to give you a fair and accurate offer.

Are you looking for a trusted coin shop to sell your coin or coin collection?  We think you will love Oakton Coins and Collectibles.  Oakton Coins & Collectibles has friendly numismatic experts that can help you whether you have one coin or a whole collection to sell.   Our store is a comfortable and professional establishment that you will appreciate whether you are a lifetime coin collector or are the inheritor of a collection. 

Tips for Selling Coin Collections around Naperville

Oakton Coins has compiled this handy guide to help you sell your coins.  Understanding the many factors that determine the value of coins will help you to know if you are getting the value that your coins are worth.  For instance, you could have coins that are worth face value, or ones that are worth significantly more. Collectors vary and some don’t collect based on monetary value.  Some collect coins they consider beautiful, or coins that are from a certain era.  No matter what kind of collection you have to sell, Oakton Coins can help simplify the process.  

Terminology/ Types of value

Clickbait Pricing: Wikipedia defines “clickbait” (aka linkbait) as a text or image link designed to attract and entice users to follow (“click”) that link and view, read, stream or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading.  You may have seen those bait headlines about get-rich-quick schemes or of common coins being worth enormous sums of money. Coin prices shown on clickbait are not real, so don’t fall for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Example_clickbait_adverts.jpg

Real-World Pricing:   Real-world pricing is based on the actual transaction that the buyer and seller agree upon.  This is true market value, and all other prices are only estimates about the possible worth. A specific coin is worth what someone will pay for it, and what a buyer will pay is influenced by both the melt value and the numismatic value.

Melt Value Pricing: Melt refers to the recycling process for metals in which they are melted and later re-formed into something else.  All precious metal coins, have a value derived from the amount of precious metal content, the weight and purity.  Melt-value is dictated by will the precious metals markets, and so will change daily, either up or down.  United States coins made before 1965, and some collectible coins may actually contain gold, silver or copper.  Platinum coins were never circulated in the US but the Mint does release special collector’s editions.    Silver coins and gold coins may also carry a numismatic value on top of their melt-value.  The numismatic value depends on rarity and condition.

Numismatics: Numismatics is simply the study of physical money: coins, paper currency, and related articles such as medals, but it is not so simple at all. The basics are that coin rarity and condition determine the prices that collectors will pay. But the rarity may depend on how many coins were minted that year or how many people hoarded them and requires expert knowledge to assess the value.  It may be that an ancient coin is less rare than a more modern coin, or that a small silver coin is worth more than an equally sized gold coin.  Numismatic knowledge of US and foreign coins is necessary to correctly evaluate the worth of a coin.  Oakton Coins & Collectibles prides itself on understanding the numismatic world.  We can quickly identify coins that are typically desired by collectors and can help you save a lot of time.  We provide a free evaluation with no obligation.  

Coin price guides:  These guides can be referenced to help establish a reasonable price range for a coin. Unfortunately, these consumer guides usually have very inflated values.  If you are seeking to buy coins for your collection, it is great to check to make sure you are not being asked for too much, but if you are selling a coin collection, it is unlikely you will see prices close to those published.  Although a good general reference, this is not real-world pricing. To get those prices it might take months or years of finding the right buyer for each particular coin.

What a Mess!: We Can Help

There are different ways that collectors organize their coins, but often those that inherit them, tend to also inherit a mess. We can help. There is NO need to organize them before you bring them to us.  At Oakton Coins, our appraisal process begins by grouping the coins into several relevant categories.  Although you can organize them yourself, stick to the below categories, as we would not want you to waste your time and effort.  We have seen many collections that were carefully arranged by date and decade into separate bags or tubes, and have needed to undo all that work.  

This text is bold When we appraise a collection, the first thing we do is separate coins by the metal (copper, nickel, silver, gold, platinum). If you decide to organize your collection, sort the coins as below:

• • Gold coins 
  • 9o% silver dollars (1878 through 1935) 
  • 9o% silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars (1892 through 1964) 
  • 40% silver JFK half dollars (1965 through 1970) 
  • Lincoln Wheat Cents (1909 through 1958) 
  • Buffalo Nickels (1913 through 1938) 
  • Jefferson Nickels (1938 and later) 
  • All other obsolete U.S. type coins
  • U.S. Mint proof and uncirculated sets 
  • U.S. Mint commemorative sets 
  • Currency and paper money 
  • Foreign coins/tokens

Understanding the Origins of the Collection

Knowing about how your collection came to be, can help you get an idea of the potential worth.  Collectors might focus on certain types of coins but what they bought could have been influenced on how much the collector had to spend.   The following questions can help you learn more about the possible value of your coin collection. 

How much did the collector spend on the coins?  How often did they buy?  Is there a will that mentions the coins or an insurance policy for them?   Are there any records of transactions such as receipts, bills of sale, invoices, or canceled checks from coin stores or auction firms?

Although these answers can help get an idea of the potential value of a collection, there are other factors.  There are a couple other things to keep in mind.  First, for precious metals, the markets vary daily so the worth of a metal will not be a fixed figure.  Second, the value of coins (and collectible paper money) ultimately comes down to what a willing buyer will pay a willing seller.  

A final sticking point that sometimes comes up is whether to sell the whole collection.   There is no right answer but once you have the information, the decision may be easier.  Some people decide to sell only the most valuable coins and save the others for a memento.  Other people split up the collection between family members.  Sometimes, when the collection is not worth much at all monetarily, it might be better to pass it on to someone young in your family that would appreciate it. 

Places NOT to sell gold around Naperville.

• Jewelry Stores and Pawn Shops – Since they usually only understand the precious metal part of the gold/silver coins, they do not pay for numismatic value and they pay only a small percentage of the melt value.
• Ebay – There are many coin sellers on eBay, but unless you know about coins and know the ins and outs of selling on eBay, this might be too time consuming and risky to be a good option.  Click here for more information.

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Oakton Coins & Collectibles is located near the 94 West (Kennedy) expressway near downtown Evanston, and less than two blocks from the Oakton stop on the Yellow Line CTA (Skokie Swift). It is convenient and close to Arlington Heights, Barrington, Brookfield, Deerfield, Des Plaines, Elmhurst, Elk Grove Village, Evanston, Franklin Park, Forest Glen, Glencoe, Glenview, Highland Park, Hoffman Estates, La Grange, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Lincolnwood, Lincolnshire, Lombard, Morton Grove, Naperville, Northbrook, Northfield, Oak Brook, Oak Park, Palatine, Park Ridge, Portage Park, Prospect Heights, Rogers Park, Schaumburg, Skokie, Wheaton, Wheeling, & Winnetka.