I've been carrying this box of coins and bills around for as long as I can remember from apartment to apartment, to condo, to house, to house. The best I've managed to do was combine them all into one container.
Well, today I finally took them to a local coin collector and he confirmed what I always suspected. 99% of them are just worth the currency as printed. I sold twelve $2 bills for $3 a piece and a silver half dollar for $7.50, bringing my grand total to $43.50.
People hold onto coins and other collectibles way longer than they should, believing that there might be that one item that will fetch a high price. It doesn't help that a story comes out every few months where someone found a rare piece of art worth money.
The coin collector told me I might want to hold on to some of my silver certificate dollar bills (he didn't specify which ones). He agreed that I'm just as well off either taking everything to my bank and depositing it or reintroducing everything back into circulation. And that's what I will do. There is no point in passing these coins on to Moose and Squirrel, hoping they will be worth something more one day. If they only increased 1% in 30+ years, there is no need to keep them around. Is it possible they could become more valuable in a Twilight Zone screenplay sort of way? Perhaps, but that would be such a strange set of circumstances that it isn't even worth entertaining.