I was recently contacted regarding emptying a house where the occupant had moved out of state and was not going to return. He had asked a friend of his to act as his financial representative in finding someone to get the house ready to go on the market and the representative had called me.
At our initial meeting I found the house full of about a hundred beautiful antique clocks, but was assured that these were being given away to a neighbor because he had “helped shovel the walk sometimes”, (pick an average price and do the math, a pretty good wage for shoveling)! There were also several containers (bowls, baggies, jars, etc.) of old silver coins that the representative had found in various places in the house and was taking with him. He asked me to keep an eye out for any other coins I might come across. By the time I took on the job there was little of value remaining, but lots of stuff that needed to go to the dump, recycling and charity.
In the process of emptying the house I did pick up about twenty dollars worth of modern coins from the usual places, (junk drawers, under the furniture, etc.). When I completed the job and met with the representative (I always have the person in charge approve the work that has been done), I gave him the bag of coins I had accumulated. At this point the representative said “Thanks for saving those, I guess I’ll have to do with them what I did with the others.” When I asked what that was, he said: “Well, I figured they were too heavy to ship to him, so I put them in rolls and took them to the bank. They came to over $200 and I sent him a check.
Postscript: Even if they have no collectible value, all older silver coins were worth about twenty times face value for their silver content at that time, so the $200 face value was $4,000 worth of silver. I'll bet the guy was thrilled when he found out what the check was for!