I Came Into Some Coins And Am Absolutely Clueless About It

At our family Christmas gathering this year, my aunt came up with an old box that she got from my grandfather's house when he passed away in the 1990s. It's apparently just been sitting around in a closet somewhere.

In this box, there was a set of coins. It seems he had a small collection of coins (possibly from his travels while in the armed services), ranging from some Nazi coins to a "coin" with a sexually suggestive image on it (no, I'm not joking -- it's not currency, but probably some sort of token from somewhere). These coins range from the 1920s to probably something like the 1960s.

We were all very curious about the whole thing, so I decided to take the lead on trying to sort it out. There are maybe a few dozen coins. (I'm traveling, and won't really sit down with them until I'm back home.) This isn't really about trying to sell them to make money, but just to learn some history. (I'm not a collector or a history buff.)

They were all just loose coins and not stored in a way that indicates that he was a careful collector. But it was clearly a box of coins that he had collected. I'm doubtful that any of this is particularly rare or special, but I won't know until I go through it. In the event that there's something interesting here, I wanted to at least try to find some people who can give me some basic tips from people who are interested in this stuff about moving forward.

For example, my first instinct was to try to clean up the coins a bit, but a brief search yielded a very clear warning against cleaning coins.

http://coins.about.com/od/caringfor...eancoins.htm

So rather than potentially screw things up, here I am as a total dunce looking for any guidance at all. This forum appeared to be sufficiently busy that I'm optimistic that I'll get some good advice relatively quickly.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.