Make it easy on yourself, just clean the tubes they are in. Looks like the coins were placed in plastic tubes and the tubes were placed in a square aluminum pan that had high sides. Then someone buried the pan with the coins. At any rate, have fun with them.
Over 30 years ago I was helping a really cool old lady close her husbands coin shop. Her husband had passed and I was trusted to come in and help. I worked for free and she needed help. I found about 100 nice coins I wanted and paid her well over market value. We found about a 1000 coins with nice value that were not even on display in the glass show cases. Her sales went way up and she was really happy. As I was cleaning I made a pile of about 1000 Lincoln cent rolls. About half were UNC and half of that were UNC Wheat cents. She offered them to me at face value and would not take no as an answer. I told her that I could get her much more than that but she said no. I took them all home and stored them anywhere I could find. The box I posted was found under the bed of a back bedroom. I'll post more images later today.
Hello Idhair, Out of 1000 rolls I can't imagine you NOT finding numerous RPMs & other varieties. Happy hunting during this Winter...Ha! J.T.
Hopefully none of them are M. MEGHRIG & SONS. Those are the ones that shrink, Be prepared with a pipe cutter to remove them from the roll.
Before you use a pipe cutter, put the coin tubes that are very tight in a plastic container and seal it. Then put them in the freezer for a day and then the top of the tube containers usually show little resistance. Metal reacts to temperature changes more ( shrinks in cold, expand in heat) than the plastic tubes. Jim