there's steps to make it manageable.
step 1. Sort the accumulation by denomination.
cent, nickel, dime, quarter. there's 4 piles now.
a 5th pile for foreign (it's bound to happen).
step 2. sort by design or composition,
with cents, yo can sort by wheat/memorial/shield so that 3 piles from that
with nickels, you could do a cut off at 1950 lets say or wherever you like really. 2 piles.
with dimes, silver is before 1965, then it's clad, 2 piles.
with quarters, silver before 1965, then it's clad, 2 piles.
Piles for wheat cents, and silver will be small, there isn't that many of them out there anymore.
Now that you've got it to this point, it's now a bit more manageable. Depending on how you want to do it from here, you can sort by year or decade, and by mint mark (you can do the mintmark sort in step two even with nickel/dime/quarter) instead of the silver search not a big deal.
No idea how big the accumulation really is, but if we are talking literal TONS of coins, I know people have had success making a rack of coin tubes dated current to 100 years prior, and sort them by mint into the tubes by date, or 10 tubes and sort by decade, and then tackle the tubes of coins one at a time looking for errors or varieties, and using their book and/or online resources.
So they'd start with Philly or denver cent pile, sort by year or decade, depending on how much, filling tubes and when full, marking what it is, and moving on or seaching it once the cents are sorted, then moving on.
The basic premise is to take the mountain, and break it down into rocks that can be moved in an organized and efficient manner, can be picked up and put down without a big problem and you can get through it on your own time without a scatter mess. Like if you sort by year you can open to the information and have it side by side while looking, or by decade but it's more page flipping, literally all sources of info on errors and varieties are organized by date and mintmark as a search function, they may have a unique catalog number, but they are general searchable by date and mintmark.
here's two sources of info picked at random, of the top sites, one is just as good as another but I like the function of these two sites personally as they are pretty comprehensive.
http://www.varietyvista.com/https://www.doubleddie.com/58222.htmlthere's also books (even Ebooks) for "The
Cherry Pickers Guide".
there's really no way to do this without learning as the #1 thing that has to happen.
As far as sorting the accumulation, you will find what works for you, I'm just suggesting what likely should be done to make it manageable, so you actually can examine and be thorough, so you don't feel like you missed something at the end, or don't feel like you accomplished what you set out to do.
And yeah, a lot of times, it's a big NOTHING for all of it. that's just the reality for circulation hunting for errors or varieties.
Good luck!
Is there a list somewhere of the years for each coin that are most likely to have some kind of error or value above face? 
I've searched online for some kind of comprehensive list of the years I should be keeping aside to inspect further but most of what I found is what the most valuable ones to be sold at auction went for but I know I won't find those kinds of specimens in my pocket change. I'd appreciate any help with this
to CCF. You need to check all years and mint marks for varieties, I am guessing that is what you meant when you say errors. Error and varieties are two different things. Check these sites and bookmark them:
Posted 04/14/2021 09:14 am
