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Wisconsin Treasurer to Auction Collectible Coins and Currency
Wisconsin State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass is auctioning more than $2,000 worth of abandoned collectible coins and currency on eBay.
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1 Comments 
Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 --- 8:35 a.m.
Press Release:
Today, Wisconsin State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass is auctioning more than $2,000 worth of abandoned collectible coins and currency on eBay.
“An auction is both an exciting and poignant event,” said Treasurer Sass. “I would prefer to have the rightful owner or heir come forward and be reunited with their valuable coin collection, but after several years of abandonment, my office has to auction off the items in the vault due to capacity constraints.”
Among the current items up for auction are: a $50 Civil War note; gold bullion; United States Proof Sets; Singapore Mint Proof Set; dozens of Silver Dollar coins and much more.
Each year, the Wisconsin State Treasurer's Office receives the contents of safe deposit boxes from banks and other financial institutions that have been abandoned for at least five years. The names of the contents’ owners are published in local newspapers and entered into Wisconsin’s Unclaimed Property online database. The contents are then stored in the state's vault for at least three more years.
If the owners or their heirs do not come forward to claim the contents, the Treasurer's Office holds an auction of the contents. The proceeds from the sale are held for the rightful owners or heirs for an indefinite length of time.
“The exciting part of the auction is the potential for the forgotten item to have a second chance at life and either expand an existing collector’s set or hopefully help those wanting to start a collection,” said Treasurer Sass.
The auction starts today, Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at noon (CST) on eBay and ends the following Tuesday, May 5, 2009. You can access the auction by visiting the State Treasurer’s website and clicking on the eBay logo.
To find out if you or a relative might have unclaimed property from a safe deposit box, search Wisconsin’s Unclaimed Property database at www.statetreasury.wisconsin.gov.
Latest Comments
Honestly, this doesn't seem like news. The government has been auctioning stuff like this for years, but just in local poorly advertised auctions that typically drew crowds of a few dozen. Although few people know how to do it well, and it can be pretty complicated for coins, selling at national auctions and online auctions is just about the only way to get anything close to retail price. I saw there was actually a consulting service that started in Madison recently called Cannon Coins Consulting and Consignment and their website was something like "coinsignment" or something like that with a lot of "C's" that essentially just works with you to navigate selling valuable coin and currency collections through national auctions and apparently they're pretty successful. I say kudos to the treasury for finally wising up.
