Thank you for the answer. The stamps and books were all purchased by my father but records are limited as they were collected since at least the 1960s and some as early as the 1930s when he was a kid. He always referred it as being my inheritance but he decided to start slowly giving it to me before he passed. When my father and his wife passed away in 2013 some items were still in the house but were not listed on the wills. My stepmom, who was sole owner of the small house, had her will stating me as the sole inheritor but since nothing was specifically listed when the will was processed through an attorney since all went to me and the entire estate was worth just around a couple hundred thousand max. I assumed all the coins were my fathers but there were several bags of coins that were found my my stepmom's closet when the house was being cleared out after the estate was closed and my dad's townhome still had a few dozen boxes of books and stamps in it but they were nothing special as he had already sent over the bulk of everything to me.
I was executor of all of the wills. My dad, mom and stepmom all passed away in the span of a year so there was a lot going on at that time. My dad and stepmom died a month apart... dad fell and broke his hip and my stepmom was already in a nursing home with advanced dementia. That was a bad year for us all.
Is it correct that long-term capital gains taxes on collectibles is still 28%? The books will be difficult because if I sell them as per my father's wishes (which I plan on doing) this would mean slowing selling them one at a time which could take at least 20 years. There's no way to individually determine the book purchase price because it was common for my dad to buy out entire collections and pick out a few for his private repository, then dispose of the rest. I did find records of 90% of the shipping costs. My dad wanted to repack the boxes so he could go through them one last time so we slowly shipped them to me by USPS and UPS between 2005 and 2010, which was a longer time-span than what I originally thought and mentioned in the initial posting.
I read where the tax laws on deductions were slashed in 2018 as far as some investment expenses under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 but would that include the costs I had to pay regarding having the books shipped to me and the additional costs I had to pay to have them shipped to a new address when I had to move because of my job? That cost me an additional $8000 in moving costs because of the weight alone.
Does it also mean it is incorrect to determine the fair market value (FMV) of the coins at the time they were given to me? I have received both yes and no answers on this one when I asked on other forums, which is why this is confusing. The FMV on the coins would be determined just by the price of silver at the time of the gift was given. Does it matter that my dad considered everything part of my inheritance even though most of it was placed in my possession prior to his death?
Sorry about the long posts but this is all pretty overwhelming.
