How To Store? What To Grade? What To Keep?

?

DO NOT CLEAN THE COINS as that will greatly reduce their value.

As for storing them, stay away from vinyl The best methods are not without some cost and so....my advice, just organize the coins by value and then by year. You can keep them from getting scratched by using towels. I usually sort coins on a towel and fold them into small towels or wash cloths.

Then, one by one, look them up. For US coins there is Photograde online -- I would expect that there is something similar for Canadian coins. Don't worry about the exact grade just yet. But learn the difference between Good through About Uncirculated.

Along the way you'll learn about die varieties and errors.

Getting them appraised could cost more than the collection is worth and you might find that you enjoy searching through them. If you do, you should get a loupe to get a real good look at them.

Then you can put the keepers in 2X2's or Saflips and those can go into coin boxes or maybe you'd prefer albums.

Just take your time. Even if you decide you have no interest in coins, you may want to keep some to pass down to future generations. Coins make nice, small keepsakes.

Good luck and happy hunting. Hope you find some goodies.

Well, I when I have a jar of coins to go through I lay them out on a bath towel -- from that point on the dining room table is MINE. LOL Then I sort them and sort of roll them into little towels and stick those into shoe boxes. So I might have all the dimes from the 1950's in one little roll. Then when I go to look up values and varieties, I am only focusing on one area at a time.


Vinyl can destroy silver -- not sure what it does to copper.

You write that the coins have been in envelopes. Do you mean BIG envelopes or are they sorted into little coin envelopes?

I wouldn't fret too much about how much they have been jostled about because if your grandmother didn't have the coins in coin boxes or coin albums then she was most likely just pulling coins from circulation and they would have some degree of wear or damage already. It's just that you don't want to drop them into a jar then pour them out repeatedly while you're figuring out what you have.

I've only really pursued this hobby for the last few years but for the forty years before that, I would pull stuff out of circulation -- anything older than me, anything silver, anything foreign -- and I had coins all over the place -- jewelry boxes, pill bottles, jelly jars. Most of what I set aside during those years has a very small premium value and I doubt that they would be worth a lot more had I stored them properly because they were all circulated coins when I got them. There are a few exceptions to that but even those are basically only worth silver melt value.

I just think it's great fun to sort through them and search for varieties and errors.

Hope that helps.

In saskatoon here we were lucky in that the coin club would pay for each member to get one coin per year proffessionally graded.....They stopped it now as too expensive. When we did a requirement was that the coin be worth at least 15.oo,, which was at that time the cost of Certification........The first year I went through my collection and I had no coins worth 15.oo,,, believe ti or not,, It stil takes a little something for a coin to be saleable at 15.oo ........I buy lots of coins for say 5 to 8.oo each. Hope this will help yu a little as to whether or not to Certify...Personally I do not. I do hav say 10 Certified 50 cent Pieces,, that denomination being the highest number of Cert...say 8 25c Cert coins,,,etc....in my current collection....I guess that means I will buy an already Cert. coin....Ha Ha....

C&C.com identifies more varieties that Charlton does. Charlton is considered more authoritative than C&C.com. So you'll hear about 'canonized' varieties (which are the ones that make it into Charlton) and so forth. Prices are comparable but keep in mind that there is no definitive price list for coins. Charlton is one guide, C&C.com is another, Trends is another, ebay completed listings search is another, etc. They all use various sources and update schedules. If you get a bunch of sources agreeing on a price then it's probably a more reliable estimate then when they're all over the map. Very rough guideline these days if you were to sell a coin to a collector (unless it's a particularly rare year/variety) is 40-60% of list price for a raw coin and maybe as high as 70-80% for a TPG'd coin. Selling it to a dealer would be <=50%.

What I'm trying to ask is...
http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins...ts-1953-2013
In this chart, 1963 dimes lower than F-12 are not worth keeping.
I'm wondering if that's also true in all the other books and charts.
Is it even remotely possible that Charlton would say otherwise? Would it be possible that they'd suddenly have an unexpected value?

Yeah, I got that part. But I'm wondering about Charlton vs C&C.