To be honest, I'm having trouble understanding this. Consider, for example:
I have a collection of 100 coins which has a basis of say $1000. If I sell this collection as a set for $1200, I have a taxable gain of $200. If instead, I were to sell each coin individually and I lost $5 on each coin except for one, where I gained $695, I would have a taxable gain of $695 and no benefit from the $495 lost on the other 99 coins. It wouldn't even matter that the collectables were of the same type? I know there are a lot of things that don't make sense when dealing with tax matters, but this seems beyond extreme.
