We are definitely NOT all sitting on a small fortune. I had a coin collection as a kid in the 1980s. A few years back my mother, cleaning up her house, return

We are definitely NOT all sitting on a small fortune. I had a coin collection as a kid in the 1980s. A few years back my mother, cleaning up her house, returned it to me. It was all face-value or specie-value for the silver coins. I spent the non-silver coins, except for a handful of ones with sentimental value, and the neat foreign coins, like a British 6 pence. The rare coins like the 1943 Copper Wheat Penny mentioned here, are truly rare, and those few occasions where someone has one simply lying around is itself newsworthy. I remember reading about people who would get masses amount of coins to scan then, only to find essentially nothing valuable. Like, in general you can buy a 2000 year old Roman denarius for something like $100, and a US silver dollar from 100 years ago for about $30. The odds of you having a coin worth far more than that is really low.