Thanks for all the responses. Right now to start I took some pictures of all the coins spread out. I'll post those when I get my darn owncloud upgrade working again. They seem to be mostly all American US coins. Some I can't even tell. None of them have been cleaned and they all have been sitting in plastic bags for about 30+ years.
Well, here are some really bad pictures of the coins I have. I have a nice powerful camera and don't even know how to use it. What a sin. I do have a scanner, which I never thought of using until someone mentioned it here. I'll need to take my time, learn of course and see what my next step is. Getting them out there for everyone to see clearly is my goal and I will most likely get that red book just to see ball park figures. Just click on the filename and it will take you into a slide show type of look for easy viewing the rest of the files. I do apologize they are so bad. I'm not looking to make a quick dollar either. I'd first just like to know what I have and possibly just keep them myself or start getting into coin collecting myself. Then there's the stamps. A ton of stamps I'll need to sort through and deal with. Some visually look very old, but just as in coin collecting I don't know much about it at all. Thanks https://www.diggscloud.com/index.php/s/R00NxE5fikiytMx
It looks to me as if he kept any unusually new looking coins he found in circulation, rather than deliberately collecting specific coins. It is possible that anything from the 1970s onwards is still worth just face value so the first sort might be to sort by date into a pre 1970 pile and what I suspect will be a far larger pile of later coins.
I agree ^ it looks like he just kept the coins he liked. I think my grandfather in law does the same thing. You ought to try sorting the Eisenhower Dollars by year. Any State quarters and dollar coins can most likely be spent at face value. Any silver in there is worth holding onto. This collection looks more like something he did for fun and I don't think he spent any money acquiring the coins. Unless there is more somewhere, it looks like most is worth face value.
Just curious. Why not use the red book? I don't really use it myself I tend to watch auction prices, but what's bad about red book? (Not meant to be a snotty question, it's hard to gauge attitude in text)
Indeed it is hard to judge attitude in text. I do use the red book and always have, but not for valuing particular coins. For that I do as you and check auction prices. I hope this answered your question.
sorry for your loss take your time and research each there is alot of references out there the internet has info and this forum has lots of info go to auctions like ebay it will give you an idea of what they are selling for
He worked at a bank for 40 years, so I think he had access to whatever coins he wanted. He was a very humble man, so I know he did not do it for any money.
