Coin Buyers Serving West Chester, PA

West Chester became the Chester County seat in 1786, and the columned courthouse on High Street still anchors a downtown laid out around High and Gay Streets. The borough has kept its brick rowhouses and stone churches, and West Chester University, which began as a teachers' school in 1871, keeps the streets around it busy.

Past the borough, much of the county is still stone farmhouses and open land. There are horse farms around Unionville, mushroom houses near Kennett Square, and the Brandywine running past Chadds Ford, where Washington's army fought the British in September 1777. Some of those farms have passed down through one family for five or six generations, and the coins in them have a way of staying put too. Downsizing from a farmhouse means sorting through a century of drawers, and coins are often the last thing anyone gets to.

These are the estates where the oldest coins in our service area tend to surface. Half cents and large cents from 1793 to 1857, Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents, two-cent pieces and Bust half dollars come out of tins, desk drawers and old leather purses. Now and then a Liberty gold piece shows up that a great-grandparent kept at home through the 1930s. Every U.S. coin was struck in Philadelphia until the branch mints opened in 1838, so nearly all of the early pieces carry no mint mark at all.

Old copper needs a careful eye. Collectors grade it with color notes, red, red-brown or brown, and a cleaned large cent grades lower than the same coin left alone. If you find a jar of old pennies in a barn or a rolltop desk, leave them as they are and keep them dry. We check each one for date, variety, grade and eye appeal, and we separate the collector coins from the worn ones before anything is priced.

Families in the borough, and retirees in Exton, Downingtown and Malvern, usually call us when it is time to downsize or settle a parent's house. We work by appointment only, and the meeting is set privately when you book. Owners of a farm estate or a large collection can ask about a home visit. You get a written list with a price for every coin, and you are under no pressure to sell any of it. Some sellers bring one tin from a desk drawer, while others have a basement full of albums and loose rolls.