Help w/ Casacius Coin - Value, Selling Process, etc.

[matts_casanova]

Hi all,

I have a single 2013 unpeeled 1BTC Casacius coin that I'm seriously considering selling. It was given to me years ago as a gift for a life event, and while normally I'd consider holding it forever, I'd really like to pay off the debt I accumulated after the pandemic from getting laid off and taking on student debt.

Thing is, I'm really unsure of what the value is and how I could sell this safely.

For value, I've seen valuations as high as 3 BTC and as low as 1BTC. If the coin's rating is MS66, wherein in that spectrum would my coin fall?

For the sales process, assuming the valuation is high enough that I decide it is worth selling, how would I do so in order to make the transaction safely? Is there a trusted escrow agent that people in this forum like?

What do you all think? Is there anything else that I'm missing here? Thanks for your thoughtful consideration and assistance!

[TheBeardedBaby]

What you are looking for is the Collectibles section there you can see the last auctions and what is the price range. You can also check the interest. The problem is that your account is quite new without reputation and you should always use a new escrow, like MJ.

You can move this thread using the "move" link to Collectibles

Edit: thanks Welsh, I think I wanted to write "an" but somehow I ended up with "new" and of course I didn't read it before I posted it as usual.

[Welsh]

Absolutely will echo the need for a escrow here, not only because you're new, but it protects everyone, as well as adding an additional verification step in the process. A escrow who is knowledgable in collectible coins such as yours, will know how to identify if it was fake, and if it has been redeemed etc, so it gives the potential buyer some reassurance.

The problem is that your account is quite new without reputation and you should always use a new escrow, like MJ.

Not a new escrow ideally, someone with a decent history .

[Spokanistan51]

If you are looking for a cash buyer, or high premiums you might explore other options. This is more of a wholesale/collector type environment. Ebay or reaching out to greatcollections or stacksbowers may be a better bet unless you are realistic about a sale here at 1.1 BTC or less. You won’t get any bites at 3 BTC. Good luck with the sale nevertheless 

[BTCOVERFIATS]

You're going to pay off debt with Bitcoin? In this type of inflationary macroeconomic environment? Dude just hold the Bitcoin, and pay off the debt as slowly as possible. If your interest rate is lower than the inflation rate you're actually winning... Hold the Bitcoin until 2036 and you won't need to worry about a credit score

[krogoth]

You're going to pay off debt with Bitcoin? In this type of inflationary macroeconomic environment? Dude just hold the Bitcoin, and pay off the debt as slowly as possible. If your interest rate is lower than the inflation rate you're actually winning... Hold the Bitcoin until 2036 and you won't need to worry about a credit score

   Wiser words have never been spoken. HODL onto your Cas/BTC for sure. Paper FIAT is deteriorating in purchasing power....BTC will moon and shine as time goes on.

[OgNasty]

You're going to pay off debt with Bitcoin? In this type of inflationary macroeconomic environment? Dude just hold the Bitcoin, and pay off the debt as slowly as possible. If your interest rate is lower than the inflation rate you're actually winning... Hold the Bitcoin until 2036 and you won't need to worry about a credit score

2036 is a long time from now. Even if Bitcoin would make you rich by that point, depending on your age you may need to ask yourself if you’ll be in the best position to enjoy the money in your life. I’d rather be worth a million while I was young than 10 million when I’m old… Just don’t forget to live a little. Paying down debt and giving yourself financial freedom is never a bad thing. Even if you’re leaving some money on the table. The peace of mind and security of being debt free is in my opinion priceless. That’s better to me than a collectible sitting in a safe somewhere.

[Steeley]

matts

You have a good decision to make. The collectibles sections of Bitcointalk has a ton of Casacius 1 BTC sales you can look up under search to get a good idea of valuation on this site. You will definitely find these to be suppressed values (someone said wholesale which is a pretty good way to describe it).

Here is a thread of an auction that took place with the Stacks Bowers Auction house. The thread features Lealanas, but if you go to the actual auction site then you will see a few Casascius coins that sold.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392063.0

Steeley

[BobbyCoins]

The peace of mind and security of being debt free is in my opinion priceless. That’s better to me than a collectible sitting in a safe somewhere.

Yepp, reaching the point of being dept free IS priceless!
But for those caught in the economic circumstances of our time + credits/loans on housing + children to raise +... who are not willing to go all-in on BTC/crypto other strategies may calm the peace of mind: waiting at least for the next real ATH and selling 100% of fork-coins and a portion of BTC for paying back dept partially at this point (releaving downpressure from the debtor's shoulders) while holding on to a percentage of remaining BTC for later... and stacking Sats from now on.

@matts_casanova: don't expect an auction here or even on ebay get you anywhere close to the Stacks Bowers auctions but if I would live in the U.S. or close to it I'd also go that way if I wanted the coin get sold for FIAT solely.

On the other hand just by shipping several coins from CH to AUT (which is exactly 1 border) I got them "destroyed" by customs throughout the last year (they pinned holes through the holograms although I clearly communicated to them, that they have numbered collector items in front of them and that there have to be non-destructive methods to check whatever they want to check... what they rigorously ignored   ) so for me shipping over any border symbolizes a possibility where my collectibles can get destroyed/conviscated/lost/whatever story they come up with...

Redeeming is always an option... the option any collector would want to avoid but also have to admit that by redeeming a Casascius coin all other still-funded coins of the same series theoretically will gain a ridiculous small percentage in worth.
For doing so I've got Ballet's cardwallets in mind: I use the free app all the time when public keys/QR codes come up but since I got such a cardwallet at home I haven't redeemed a private key... so no first-hand experience from me.

@matts_casanova: no matter how tech-savvy you are or believe to be: when redeeming a coin funded in 2013 you've got forks (BCH, BTG, etc.) on the same public key which you probably will want to access BUT HERE CAN BE MADE BIG MISTAKES: either by involving the wrong wallets/third parties, sending coins into Nirvana and even exposing your private key to others who can redeem your BTC while you are busy sending BCH or BTG to an exchange or another wallet of yours! The decision which solution you utilize is crucial here!
=> any first-hand experience of redeeming a pre-fork privKey using Ballet's app & card wallet from any member?

[Cryptogreatdane]

If customs pokes holes in my holograms im gonna lose my shit.

[BobbyCoins]

...which brings you exactly nothing... all you get is a form with which you can hand in a complaint... which brings you exactly nothing, again => they didn't even tell me with what they poked the holes in the holorgrams nor if they injected any liquids... they took a metal sample and also managed to break hard-plastic cases surrounding the bars *facepalm*

Edit: This tells me everything about the difference how things are supposed to work in this world... and how things go in reality: as soon as any state agency is involved, you'll always come off worst => so those agencies can't be trusted and you can't fight back: destroyed is destroyed.
2 possible outcomes: either customs has no respect for arts and/or they do it deliberately...

[Eclipse33]

Bobby,

Why did customs poke holes in your hologram?

Where can I read the full story on this?

[BobbyCoins]

The full story is: when parcells cross economic borders (like from the USA to Europe or even from Switzerland to Austria because CH is not in the EU) customs wants more information for calculating import taxes... and like most trades here, buyer is responsible for paying these. Ebay incorporated automated taxing about a year ago (so import taxes are collected the same moment you pay for the item+shipping) and I belive that I never had to deal with customs when shipping services like DHL or UPS (not USPS) were used.

So I sent them a pictured 2-site description with ALL information for taxing the collectibles correctly: how to handle such a numbered cold storages, how to verifiy balances, what a security hologram is, price & bills & who produced them and the ways to verify my words without destroying or damaging the collectible. No big thing at this point.

But on the picture you can see what they decided to do with all the information I gave them:
The needle-holes tell me they were looking for drugs. The metal sample tells me they were looking for real gold. The broken case(s) tell me they were absolutely incompetent and handled it brutally.

So I wrote a complaint... and several weeks later I got the answer that I should have made the complaint not to the very same customs department which handled the whole process but to another department of the very same state's postal service... and that I must have done this within 7 days after the delivery => that's the way they get rid of you in bureaucracies... no chance from this point on because you oversaw the deadline; it wasn't them who informed you way too late that you must have sent your complaint somewhere else.

And because Austria declared Bitcoin being something money-like (but they do not even have a name or word for it and as money is defined here they are legally not allowed to call it money... so they really use the term 'money-like' in the laws) on 1st of march 2022 after being private property for 8 years now and by forcing everyone here to tax our cryptos as these new laws were enacted on 1st march 2021 (which is pure theft because the population here got informed of this move just 2 weeks before the laws were enacted)... You see: we Bitcoiners have bigger problems here in Europe right now than my collectibles. Bitcoin being not private property here is kinda catastrophic and works against all definitions and physical laws and has far reaching implications: Bitcoin being not private property here anymore means it's legally not yours anymore!

Edit: And with all the economical shifts and wars (now and in the past) and not that far away from me I guess we're playing hide&seek now with cryptos like it was done with gold in the 1930's and 1971 when it was confiscated in the USA but with the disadvantage of having the blockchain leading up to single individuals while gold could at least be burried somewhere in the ground.

[ChiBitCTy]

@Bobby..that’s some corrupt, amateur bullshit they put you through. My first two thoughts for the holes were gold  and drug testing. Then I thought logically.. you can measure and weigh the bar which would show it’s not gold, or use another non invasive test such as the ping test. Using a pin test means they had dies on the tips to test the metal, if it’s gold it’s unaffected, but if it’s not..could discolor the bar.  Now to drugs..how on earth are drugs of that size going to weigh that much. Who would go through the effort to cast metal over say cocaine of that size..A dog could have told them in a couple seconds there’s no drugs. Simply incompetence/not giving a shit all around.

[BobbyCoins]

Excuse me OP for kinda hijacking your thread.

I know that for any kind of testing there are non-destructive ways to do so and which customs for sure is also aware of and this is what I also mentioned in the tax statement sent to customs BEFORE they did testing (or at least they should or must have waited for this statement from me for further proceedings).
Whatever they believed to find => they didn't because the product is a 100% legit (as most of you will have figured out alone by looking at the hologram and who made the bars...) and I fully informed them what it is to tax & handle correctly...

Reason for coming up with all of this is to help OP making the most out of the coin considering actual/fork-related/geographical problems that can easily come up... last but not least we are talking about serious money aka. years of work, debt vs. no debt, having a legit coin vs. having nothing (worst case).

Edit: Frank AlpenCoin offered me a whole series of solutions but after several weeks of no change in the shown areas and considering the relatively small risks involved (compared to the Cas of OP) I let them fund... knowing that a funded resell from now on is more or less out of question but also not wanting to compromise the series of bars in any way whatsoever.

[Eclipse33]

@Bobby

Your story is disconcerting to me, what if this was a rare cas or something historically priceless? Poking holes in holograms and taking metal samples is madness.
I like how you mentioned you went through the effort to educate and teach the customs about the collectable but instead of learning they decide to smash the case and destroy the bar.
I think you would have been better off just sneaking the bar though customs and not even mentioning what it was, this may have caused less of a scene. Someone probably saw all the paperwork and got curious.

[BobbyCoins]

Sneaking in when they already had the bars in their focus? And the text on the 2 pages was less than my lengthy explanations here... and with pictures  
I strongly believe it was because of the big difference in paid money (FIAT over paypal) vs. the actual costs of the bars => approx. CHF1400,- vs. CHF200,- because of the 2x0.01BTC.
They must have thought that this difference in worth must be somewhere IN the bar... not believing the part that it gets funded after arriving at my place.

Funnily enough another parcel from Switzerland with unfunded collectibles went through the very same customs department some days ago and should arrive today. this time I paid with BTC and I haven't heard a word from customs  

Edit: parcel arrived and was opened by customs but if testing was done then way more sophisiticated. By charging me €9,87 import tax (LOL) I strongly believe: they have no clue what they are doing there; that's about 3% 'tax'... or as I would call it: guessing. Or they chose to tax based on the silver price, who knows? Then it would be close to 30% which sounds more like what greedy states would do...