1854 Gold Half Eagle

Hard to tell from the pictures.
If you found this the way you claim you did, that coin could be worth a minimum of $600 and the morgans countless more. Please post pictures of the other coins because you may have come across quite a few rarities, as many morgans have low mintages.

As far as I know it has never been cleaned...the majority of these coins were covered in dust, in the back of a packed closet.
As far as I know they haven't been out or touched in decades.
More pictures are forthcoming

First and foremost, many condolences on your loss. I trust the family is doing well.

Secondly, based on initial appearance the coin looks to have minimal wear and may have been cleaned by some method in its past therefore reducing the value of the coin.

The other posters claim of minimum potential value at $600 is not nearly accurate. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when assigning grade and overall value.

I would encourage you to search the forum's topics by utilizing the search feature and key word for items like "cleaned coins" "grading coins" and of course, always ask questions.

For now, I will defer to Indian's expert commentary on your coin and assign and value of approx. $325 in today's market. If it turned out to not be cleaned and was in a authentication company's conservation holder, you would have a near $475 - $500 coin.

Best of luck on your journey sir.

Congrats on your discovery.

Mike - go to this link

http://www.numismedia.com/fmv/fmv.shtml

find what you have in any given category, locate your years and mint marks. On the valuable ones, post pics, both sides, HEAD ON, not angled and try to get some lighting but not too much on the silver so you do wash out the detail in the photo.

yes sir DIVE on in their, I'm excited and I am not even looking at what you found.

Ask any questions. But more importantly, READ!! and then, READ SOME MORE. Keyword search, you'll get it sooner than you think and who knows, we may be welcoming you in a more permanent standing to the community as your aspirations in Numismatics grows.

Your Grandparents may have been more "accumulators" rather than "collectors".

If the coins were just dumped together and stored by denomination or metal they were accumulators. If they were sorted by series, dates and mint marks then they would fall into the collector category.

Either way, should be fun going they them. Be sure and post your super duper finds.

I agree that they must have been accumulators. The coins should have been identified and sorted by date/mintmark if they were collectors.

Unsorted...stupid autocorrect...I suppose they may have been unworried as well....