1986 Monster Box Of Silver Eagles?

to the CCF - your valued question is beyond my expertise but I'm confident that some experts will be along shortly to help.

If they are bullion silver eagles there is a small premium for 1986 ASE, but honestly you won't know until you open up the box.

I have a customer that purchased some monster boxes and gave them to his kids as well, but I'm not sure of the years.
I recently asked him about the value of a monster box and he thought they were north of the $17,000 range (+-$34 each) for current years. Price per coin tends to drop with larger quantities.

Sorry for the loss. I don't know of any way to distinguish the actual mintage year without opening the box. But my money is on 1986 since they didn't start striking them until almost November 1986 and the order was placed in December.

Looks like you have a monster box of bullion 1986 silver eagles (ASE's). There are alot of people getting them slabbed by mint, as in "stuck at the SF Mint or West Point Mint" since the US Mint released information how many ASE's were stuck each year and by which mint facility. None of the bullion ASE's have any mint marks, and can only be identified by the serial number on the monster box. So it is very important not to open the box or cut those straps until you talk to a few people who can tell you what you have, as they might be worth more in it's original un-opened monster box. So sorry for your loss, but happy your Dad purchased that box and kept it that way for you.

Bump111- I'm a novice here. What does "early releases pedigree" mean and how could that be a "gold mine?"

Since you said you were a novice...
Understand that to get a premium price there will need to be a lot of work involved. It appears that ungraded (what you have) 1986 ASE's are selling on ebay for about $40 to $50 each. If you extrapolate that to 500 coins, you get $20,000 to $25,000 value. But, you would need to make 500 ebay listings, pack 500 mailers, etc. If you sell them in bulk you will get less per coin, with less work for you. Someone may make more money by sorting through the coins, and finding suitable ones to grade, and getting a high premium for perfect or near perfect coins. That takes expertise, time, and some cash outlay for the grading company, with no guarantees that the grades will come back as expected.
The lure of an original unsorted box like this is that it may be loaded with a lot of perfect coins! Sometimes that leads people to pay more than the normal value on the hopes of hitting it big.
I am not an expert on ASE's, but this is how the collecting field works.