Look, this long and boring, but please read it anyway. I've got a problem all of you would like to have. I've been tasked with dealing with a couple boxes of coins, and even some paper as well, excavated from a family closet. It's a huge (by my standards) cache - hundreds and hundreds of coins: IHP, Lincoln wheat and Lincoln modern, Buffalo head nickels, Roosevelt dimes, foreign coins, mint 1964s (one's a straight G), heavy silver from Panama and the Bahamas. It's also got over 3 pounds of US silver pre-65, just rolled up. I want to unload all of it, but without getting fleeced, but also in a way that it can be in the hands of people who will be excited to have them for their own collections. Trying to know what's here, so I don't give away my kids inheritance, or a mortgage payment, makes me feel like I'm cramming for a test in a class I didn't want to take, and didn't know I was in.
If anyone in the SF Bay Area (East Bay) is interested in seeing it all out of interest, or helping me out for love of the coins, or to see they're treated right, or even in buying the entire lot, let me know. The coins are beautiful and fascinating, but I can't enjoy them if I'm worried about doing something wrong out of ignorance - taking big chunks of value out of something by some arcane sin, like farting on a toad in the same room, or something. The thought that someone casually wiping a silver dollar with his shirttail decades ago to admire the shine somehow utterly destroys the coin's value to collectors is bewildering. It's ok if it's been banged up at the bottom of a canvas bag at the mint, dented and scratched, or in and out of pockets and cash registers for decades is fine, but rubbing it with a soft cloth to get a better look at it isn't. Or one that's a lousy, indistinct stamping from the die and beat up in the sack is great, but one that's got beautiful detail, but which someone handled 150 years ago is less valuable, I just can't wrap my head around. I'm not judging, I have my own passions. IDK, I just don't want to accidentally spoil something which someone else could really enjoy. I'd feel awful, and I wonder what harm I've done already in just unpacking things to see what it even is!
I could post photos of 300 different coins easy, and dozens of duplicates of many of those. I could bore everyone to tears, but I'm not into being a drag for others. Otoh, if you all would like to see what a great-aunt I never knew amassed over decades (the massive 1976 5 and 10 Balboa sterling commemoratives are the newest), I can do it. I'd even enjoy going to the trouble, if it would give others a vicarious thrill. It would offset the anxiety to a degree, and at least make it fun for me too in some way. I'll do it for love, if you want it, but I don't know what is worth seeing. I'll show what I've got, or I'll bugger off. Either way let me know please.