Coin Buyers Serving Lincoln Park

Coins and gold from Lincoln Park homes

The neighborhood takes its name from the park along its lakefront edge, home to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the blocks west of it are lined with graystones and old brick row houses off Clark Street and Halsted Street. A good share of those homes went up in the decades after the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Plenty have stayed in one family for decades, and when one of those houses finally changes hands, the family often needs a coin buyer for whatever turns up in the closets.

Long-held Lincoln Park homes give up a recognizable kind of collection. A parent who ordered a proof set from the Mint each year leaves behind a shelf of flat plastic cases, and the silver proof sets among them hold 90% silver coins in many years.

Gold tends to show up as jewelry more than coins, such as rings stamped 14K or 18K and a gold pocket watch with its chain. We sort jewelry by karat and weigh it on a scale you can read, and anything marked gold-filled is set aside because it holds very little gold.

Many of our calls here come from people downsizing. Someone leaving a three-story graystone for a condo has to decide what to do with a coin album nobody has opened in years, and a small group of coins takes only about 10 minutes at an appointment.

That fits between a closing date and a moving truck. For a full estate with heavy boxes of silver dollars, ask whether a home visit is possible so nobody has to carry them down the stairs.

Grown children who come back to the streets around DePaul University to settle a parent's house often find coins the parent never mentioned. Leave them exactly as they are.

A cleaned coin loses grade, and collectors pay far less for one that has been polished. We look at each piece under a loupe for date, mint mark, grade and eye appeal, and anything with collector value gets priced apart from its metal.

Our written list is useful when brothers and sisters are dividing an estate or an executor needs a record of what turned up in the house. It shows each coin, set and piece of jewelry with its own price.

Accept and you are paid that day; turn it down and the list goes home with you at no cost. Sellers need a government-issued photo ID.