I could use some help...

Meltdown

I aquired a pile of foreign (mostly) silver pieces and I know nothing about them.
My father picked them up cheap at an estate sale a couple weeks back and gave it all to me to puzzle over.
Short of buying a World coin book, Is there a website I can visit where I can look up some of these things?
I thought maybe someone on here can help me with some general information.
Thanks in advance!
What are these? What's their silver content? I assume they are no too rare...

There were quite a few pieces... here's a smattering of some of them



There were about 30 Mexican quarters from the early 50's...

Some Asian pieces?

This one is neat... 1939 Portugal?

satootoko

Personally I've never had much success navigating the websites that supposedly serve the purpose of the Standard Catalog of World Coins. I have a set, but for the casual researcher my best advice is a place near you - your local public library's reading room! (If they are missing any necessary volume they can usually obtain it on fairly short notice through inter-library loan, but chances are that all or virtually all of your coins are 20th/21st Century and the books will be in your branch library).

If the coins in your two top photos are abut 23mm, 4.95g, they are Japanese .720 silver 50 sen, from Taisho 11 (1922)-Showa 13 (1938), worth a couple of bucks at most (unless they include coins from the final production year, which are worth at least $50 if they grade F or better).

Your group of three Asian pieces are Chinese. Assuming that the bottom one is about the same size as, or just a tad smaller than, the Japanese coins, it is a Taiwanese aluminum 2 chiao dated Republic Year 39 (1950) with a bust of Sun Yat Sen. I am making the size assumption because that coin was dated Year 39, although a virtually identically designed, slightly larger silver 5 chiao was only minted in Year 38 (1949), and the brass 5 chiao with that reverse was only minted in Year 43 (1954). It too is worth a couple of bucks.

I'm not really familiar with Imperial Chinese coinage, so I'll leave the other two, (along with the rest of your hoard), to those more knowledgeable than I.

wildjag

I see the library is already suggested, but Barnes and Noble has them as well. and just sit their and use their books

If you have an German coins I can help you with them, but besides looking them up I am not much help with any of the other countries.

BillyKingsley

try World Coin Gallery to figure out more about them, it looks like you will be able to figure out the country on most of them.

You could always post the ones you can't figure out on here. Somebody is sure to know.

Nice purchase, I'd love to have an opportunity like that.

Meltdown

Thanks for the link and information so far. The pics posted are about half of what I have to go through.
It's become a "as I get some time" project for now. I will keep this updated with what I find and if any turn out to be really unique.
Oh yeah... in the bottom of the pile was a tiny little coin in a "cointainer"... it was small & grey so I just threw it in with the rest of the circulated
dime size pieces. After looking through them again today, turns out it's a tenth ounce platinum eagle.
Not bad... The whole lot of stuff cost $25 at an estate sale.

Bjorn

The Mexican 25 centavos aren't worth much unfortunately - they are .300 fineness as well. The Japanese pieces were probably the better of the two.

The Mexican 10 centavos is pretty, but probably only worth about $5 or so.

The last coin I believe is a better date Philippine 20 centavo series for Alfonso XII. Value several years back was $25 in F and $45 in VF, but probably much higher today.