What to do with Grandpa's coin collection?

[Kalvin K]

My grandfather passed away this summer. Going through his treasures, and we come across his massive coin collection. There must be a few thousand coins in there. 90% of which I'm pretty sure have little value other than their face value which isn't much - no gold coins or anything like that.

I don't think the family wants to sell them. We're just going to split them up, but want an idea at least for what is worth what so they are split up fairly. Problem is that they don't appear to be catalogued or even sorted in any way. It's just jars and cans of mostly mixed coils. Some I think he collected as he came across them, a large amount he inherited from his uncle. There are also some pretty cool coins there as well - Pre 1900's silver dollars, lots of those old pennies that are the size of quarters, etc.

Some questions:
- At what point do old Canadian coins have value outside of their face value? 80% of this collection is just regular Canadian coins from the 40's to the 70's. Anything I should keep an eye out for before taking everything newer than 1940 to the bank?
- Cataloging and sorting the rest of the collection is going to be a monumental task. Any tips or tricks? Is there a good simple guide resource I can reference that will help? I want to do a half decent job at this, but don't want to invest dozens of hours into it either.

Thanks!

[Lady tehMa]

My daughter has started collecting interesting coins. None of hers are worth much (she loves them anyway!).

Try here http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php

[I Think]

Pre 1967 dimes, quarters, 50c pcs and $1.00 coins have a silver value that is around 10 times the face value depending on spot silver prices.