Looking for help: offering $500

I need to figure out how to access a physical Bitcoin, get it into Electrum, transfer it to Coinbase, and then sell it. If you’re a trusted member here and can help me out with this, I’ll pay you $500. I need someone to walk me through it over the phone. Once the funds are in Coinbase, I’ll send $500 your way. I won’t share the private key, but I just need guidance on how to access it and complete the sale. Honestly, $500 is a worthwhile investment for me to avoid messing things up by trying to do it solo. I know I mentioned $300 in the title, but I’m willing to go up to $500 for someone reliable in this community. I might not be super active here, but I was around back in 2012-2013, so I’ve got some level of credibility. Just looking for some technical assistance. Thanks a lot!

First things first, make sure you've downloaded Electrum from the official source, and verify it using the GPG signatures.  More information here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0 It's really quite simple, and you probably don't need (or want) anyone helping via a phone call.  Not to mention, sharing a phone number is not secure or private.  Here're the steps needed: Once you've installed Electrum and launch it for the first time, this is what you'll see: Click next then select "Import Bitcoin address or private key." Click next, and enter your private key (or keys.)  You can list as many keys as you'd like.  Here's an example: Click next, and then enter a strong password, Click finish, and you'll be taken to the address's history tab. Once you've reached this point, you can click on the "Veiw" menu and enable all the tabs you'd like to see.  The "Addresses" tab will list all the addresses for the keys you've imported. The rest should be pretty straight forward also.  Go to your Coinbase account, and select Depostit > Deposit Crypto.  Search for bitcoin, and select the Bitcoin Default chain.  They'll provide you with an address.  In Electrum select the "Send" tab, enter the address provided by Coinbase, and double check it to make sure the address hasn't been altered.  Fill out the amount you want to send, and then click "Pay"  follow the prompts and your bitcoin will be on it's way to your Coinbase account.  Be patient, Coinbase requires six confirmations before they post your coins in your available balance.

I hope you are aware that physical bitcoins are categorized as "collectibles" and because of that, they usually have a higher value than the amount of coins they store. Meaning if you "peel" it and spend the coins, you are destroying that collectible and missing on some extra value. There is a board for it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=217.0

A post with step-by-step instructions with screenshots should suffice. Electrum supports mini private key so there shouldn't be any issue with import if it's one of those old coins. Basically, you'll need an offline (Air-Gap) PC and an online PC to do it safely; But if you want to risk it, you can go straight import online then send to Coinbase (not recommended). If you don't have access to an Air-Gap PC: since you're going to send the entire amount anyways, you can temporarily set a secure machine's connections off to be used as the "offline PC" and keep it offline just until the final transaction has 6+ confirmations. Here're the steps: Pre-requisite: Use a USB flash drive to store a copy of Electrum from https://electrum.org/#download (you may verify it to check for additional safety check) In your offline PC: 1. Install Electrum from the USB Flash Drive, Open it and create a new wallet (type a wallet name, click 'Next') 2. Select the option, "Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys", click 'Next' 3. Type your Coin's Private key, the sample is a "Mini Private key" that's common on those old coins. Click 'Next'. 4. Type a strong password for wallet encryption: That'll will finish creating your wallet. 5. The wallet will open but will not sync since it's offline, just get your address from the 'Addresses' tab, to enable it, tick "View->Show Addresses" 6. Open Addresses tab and copy your address, that's case-sensitive. 7. Then you can shutdown the offline PC while you setup the online PC. In your separate online PC (I used a different address in this part and the rest): 1. Repeat steps 1-3 from above but instead of private key, type the address that you've copied instead. Then finish creating the watch-only wallet.2. Let it sync to view your balance, then prepare to create a send transaction by getting your recipient address.Go to "Send" Tab and type/paste the address and click "Max", that will automatically send the entire amount adjusted based from the fee that you'll set. Clicking "Pay" will display the new transaction window below.3. In the 'new transaction' window, set the fee slider to set the 'mining fee' to about 5~10 sat/vBytes for a relatively cheap but higher than the priority transaction fee at the moment, then click 'Ok'. 4. In the unsigned transaction window, click "Share", then "Save to File" then save the '.psbt' file to your USB flash drive. 5. Transfer that flash drive to your Offline PC. Back to your offline PC: Open your offline Electrum wallet and click the menu: "Tools->Load transaction from file", then select the .psbt file that you've saved. The transaction will open, click "Sign" and type your password to sign it. Once it's signed, broadcast button should be available and sign will be grayed out, that's an indication that it's ready to be sent to the network using your online Elelctrum. Redo Step4 above to export the Signed transaction '.txn' file and save that to the USB Flash Drive. Shutdown the offline PC for now. Last step, Back to your online PC: transfer that Signed transaction '.txn' file to the online PC and load it using the options in step1 above ("Tools->Load transaction from file")Triple check everything specially the amount and address, check all of the address' characters, not just the first and last.Last step is to click "Broadcast".In case that you've used a temporary offline PC instead of a dedicated Air-Gap PC, wait for the transaction to get more than 6 confirmation before using the offline PC where you imported the private key to be safe.

Before you peel it, try to sell it, you might get 20-40% premium on the value...

@DireWolfM14 (and @TadpolesIsAWinner): Entering a valuable private key from cold storage into an online computer is bad practice. If there's malware on the system, the Bitcoins will instantly be stolen. To add to the pile of suggestions from people who don't like phone calls, this is what I wrote years ago:

Any reason you are going with Coinbase? There are lower fee places. I do use them but accept the fact that it's costing me a bit of $. Where are you located? In addition to what @LoyceV said about doing it offline, there are some other tools out there that also work offline but are a bit more difficult to use. Keep in mind that for what you are doing you really have to be moving the entire balance to the exchange. Otherwise you have to worry about where any change from the transaction is going. What type of coin and what amount? As others have said it might be worth a bit more $ then just face value. -Dave

check address on send. can be changed during copy-paste

I also suggest doing it on an offline PC just to make sure you are far from online attacks; if not, you might end up like others that I heard before after pasting or typing the private key to Electrum, all funds are sent to a random address. Usually physical Bitcoin private keys are mini private keys. Electrum should support it, but if you are having trouble importing the mini private key, you may need to download and run bitaddress.org offline to convert the mini private key to the WIF key.

Thanks for all your guys' help, you're the best 1btc Recalescence Physical Thanks. I posted here a few months ago and people were saying the premium would only be like 5% over BTC value and recommending just peeling it because 5% isn't worth the hassle of trying to sell a coin for $100k when I can't ship it since they won't insure that much value. [moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Just follow the excellent step by step guide made by nc50lc and you're set. To make it more foolproof, the private key that you need to insert in step 3 within the offline stage, is the one that appears on the back[1] of your peeled hologram. [1]https://cryptonumist.com/coin/recalescence-coins/