Application To Apprenticeship -- Canada

I'd appreciate a bit of sage guidance as to how to proceed with my Canadian coin holdings. I purchased a coin collection from my closest friend, thirty years my senior in the late 1970's - an extremely busy period of my life. The collection was founded on that he'd inherited from his father. I put it in the attic where it sat untouched until 2017. I find little difficulty figuring out what I have in U.S. coins, but Canada is another story.

Google Earth places my little town in NH at 164 miles south of the U.S. Canadian border by land. It's only 13 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. There's been a lot of interaction down here with Canada and its Maritime Provinces for a very long period. It's no small collection.

Each year, beginning in 2017, I join PCGS. They give me eight grading vouchers for joining. I join because I know so little (but that alone is worth knowing - it's what brings me here). In 2019, I decided to learn a little about a few of my Canadians and my Great Britain. Studying online for guidance, I submitted four of each. Here's my Canadian result.

1858 1 cent Genuine Cleaned-XF Detail / Canada / Bronze Medal Alignment
1861 1 cent XF45 Nova Scotia / Small Bud
1862 1 cent VF35 Nova Scotia
1967 5 cents MS64

Is Bronze Medal Alignment a big deal? I looked it up -- learned a little.I DO NOT clean coins myself, but I may have let my guard down at some point in the last sixteen decades. Forty bucks to grade that clad nickel deserves explanation. It's a representative of a larger group. COINS AND CANADA tells me the thing would retail for $8.00 (is that eight bucks Canadian, $6.50 USD? Doesn't matter for now). It's no loss, because now understand the worth of the lot. Anyway, I'm still an outsider on CCF, but I've been inside long enough to discover CCF offers a much better and a much less expensive road to the learning I need.

Assume, please I have something like what you advise me to show on the forum for discussion. I probably do if it's not a four to five figure specimen. Eventually, I'll catch on to a trend of what's more or less interesting in the Canadian phases of this hobby and be able to remove the training wheels and ride the bike on my own. If anyone cares to look at one or more of my slabbed Canadians, I can post it. I just don't want to waste anybody's time with my ignorance.

Gratefully, Kevin