Are These Medals Worth Anything? Should I Buy Them?

At a local estate sale, I came across these 3 types of coins/medals:

One is a 1977 Commemorative Jimmy Carter medal. It seems to be bronze. A picture of the back and front: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/694/jc1u.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/jc2s.jpg/

They have a whole box of these...probably 100+ or so in there that they would sell for about $50. Tomorrow is their last day, so it may be even less since it will all become half off.

They also have two full cardboard boxes full of hundreds of these "American Revolution Bicentennial Medals" (here's a quick picture that I took with my cell phone of one of the boxes: http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/...oto0438v.jpg ) dated with the typical 1776-1976 in the original packing and sealed. They are a mixture of various types of states: Front http://imageshack.us/f/140/24239516.jpg/
Back http://imageshack.us/f/713/81901828.jpg/

Both boxes probably contain a total of like 400 total of these, which he said that he would sell me for about $100 today. But tomorrow, it's half off again...so probably $40 to $50 for all 300 or 400 of them. Again, these are antique bronze.


Finally, I came across this box. with a set of 6 coins in it (also apparently bronze). It has the original packaging: http://imageshack.us/f/404/js1g.jpg/ and these double-sided medals: http://imageshack.us/f/411/js2u.jpg/ This "Joseph Smith" guy was apparently the guy who started up the Church of Latter Day Saints and was martyred when he was shot in some jail I think a couple of hundred years ago. I don't know anyone in that religion or anything...we just figured they might be worth something. Somebody came up with these medal-like coins as some memorial I guess. I have looked online, and all that I see is a silver version (which goes for almost $400 on what appeared to be the original website of the people that made/sell them). Mine are not silver, they are the bronze, as pictured. There were only two boxes of these 6-piece coin sets at the estate sale...somebody else bought the other box and I got this one for literally a couple of bucks.

The people working at the house making up the prices for this stuff...I was listening to one guy who said that he "has been on Craig's List and ebay for years, and knows what is valuable and what is junk." He's the one that quoted me the prices the first two.


Obviously, none of these appear to be "coins" per se. I see some people listing things like the single Bicentennial medals on places like ebay for $10 bucks each and such. But would they sell? If I bought a box of these, are they even worth trying to sell or is he trying to sell them to me because they are junk? He knew nothing about the former owners of the house (since he apparently works for some company) when I asked why the original owners had these boxes of these medals just sitting in their basement and if they worked for some kind of mint or something. They have other things like silver-looking bronze coins inside of clear crystal-like paperweights and all sorts of stuff just sitting around new in the box.

Any ideas or suggestions? Is this all just crap that won't sell? Since tomorrow is their last, naturally they are in a panic to sell this stuff off...thus, the half-off day tomorrow.

This is a 7-room, 3-bath mansion-like house. They have stuff in every room and these medals are in the basement...not many people go down there to look at stuff. I don't think they have the time to mess with an auction. The guy said tomorrow is the last day from 9 to 5, and then after that (even with the house still full of stuff), they are going to leave it up to the daughter of the owner to figure out whether to sell the house, how to clean up the stuff left over, etc. There is a TON of stuff there. I heard the estate sale guy (there are many, many of them in the house) state that the house itself might sell for $850K, even though it is in poor shape. So it made me wonder if these people worked for a mint or WHY they have hundreds of these things like this all around in their basement. He said he had no info on who they were and he apparently just works for the real estate company or something, when I asked why they had that many in the basement and if the owners worked for a mint. I learned earlier that the house has not been inhabited for 20 years. To my understanding, the owner/s of his house passed away. Real estate listings state that it is a 1940's house. So they seemed like really solid, rich people. I don't know of many rich people who would stock up on hundreds of medals like these and just stash them in a basement, however. I do see the message on one of the packages that says, "Offered through participating institutions as a community service"...a bit of a puzzling statement. So it also made me wonder if they somehow were given these for free or something. I found a legit letter in some other things (paper weights with a brass coin inside) dating back to 1977 from where they apparently purchased those weights directly from the company.