Reply from CoinfullyMay 13, 2026
Hi Janet, we were surprised to see your review and regret that we have not been able to connect with you again. Your note here suggests that the coins are part of an estate. First and foremost, we want to express our deepest condolences to you and your family for any loss. We understand from personal experience that the estate process can be incredibly stressful and often occurs during an already difficult time.
As this is a public forum, there are several items in your review that we feel obligated to comment on for future readers.
As you correctly sate, we sent a free appraisal of the coins’ current value and not a purchase offer. There is no charge for this service and no sell obligation. While we do also work with high value numismatic pieces, we buy damaged and cleaned silver grade bulk coins like the 5 referenced here every day.
Damaged and cleaned morgan dollars are currently trading back of melt. While it may seem counterintuitive that a coin would trade below its melt value, it happens often (more on this below for the interested reader). While we recognize the appraised value may be below expectations, we feel very strongly that it is accurate. Our goal is to provide comfort through transparency. Where the information we can provide alone is not enough to achieve this, we would encourage any appraisal recipients to receive multiple appraisals or offers in order to make the best decision for their collection. In this case, we are very confident our numbers are in line with where the market is trading.
It is an important point of clarification here that the coins referenced are damaged/cleaned and that is not accounted for in the NGC number. Additionally, while price guide numbers may be good for ballpark insurance values, they are rarely representative of what an item can actually be sold for. A logical question a reader might ask is why would a coin trade for less than its melt value? This is a very reasonable question. The vast majority of buyers can’t actually melt coins and so they must re-sell. If demand for those coins is high, they may fetch a price above melt. If, however, demand relative to supply is lower (as it is in this case), dealers may be forced to sell below melt and must buy below melt. Even buyers that have the ability to extract the metal from the coin will incur some cost to do so. Afterwards, they would only be able to sell that material at the “melt” value. In order to cover their costs, that buyer would also need to buy back of melt.
