Paddy

I hadn't realised GIV Crowns had got so high! This is my best, picked up about 15 years ago as part of an old family collection:

A nice selection! What dates on the Charles II and William III?

I was fortunate enough to pick up mine before the prices went completely crazy:

I had a very similar experience in about 2018. I spent best part of £1k on a huge collection of 50p, £1s and £2s with multiple duplicates. The scarcer pieces sold fairly easily - one Kew Gardens and a handful of Jemima Puddleducks, some of the £2 coins. The rest became a millstone around my neck and I ended up taking the bulk of them to the Post Office in 2023 at face value. Hence my advice above.

There are four approaches I can see: 1. Break it up and sell it in single lots or small groups on Ebay. This requires quite a lot of effort on your part and will take some time, but gives you the best chance of recouping your investment, or even making a profit. The Coin cases and storage materials my do best. 2. Sell it through a local auction house who will break it down into maybe a handful of lots. It will be bought by dealers, who will break it down and sell to private collectors to make a margin. (Collectors don't generally buy bulk lots at auction.) By the time you have allowed for auction commissions and dealer's profit margins you will be lucky if you get face value for the coins. 3. Find a dealer who is interested and do a direct deal. The price will still not be great but at least you take the auction house commission out of the equation. 4. Sell the best pieces - some individual coins and the storage material - on Ebay and take the rest to the Post Office at face value. It sounds brutal but you will save yourself a lot of effort and end up with broadly the same as options 2 and 3. You have to look at it as making the rewards from enjoying the collecting process rather than profit. Sorry if that all sounds a bit disappointing but I think it is a realistic answer.

Those are much better pics - well done. As to the original question - whether it has been cleaned - still seems unresolved. I can see no hairline scratches, but it may well have been dipped at some point. It has some wear, so short of the higher grades but very presentable. I am not sure what one would dip Nickel in. It stays so bright anyway, I'm not sure it is necessary...?

Acetone is very expensive from chemists! Try Ebay/Amazon or some hardware stores. Don't use the Nail Polish remover, which is Acetone based but has other chemicals added.

I think it depends a bit on your mindset. I get more pleasure out of filling a gap in a difficult date run with a reasonable example than I do from picking up a common coin in Unc.

Not a file format my Windows machine can recognise. Is it possible to convert it to jpg or something similar?

I think you need to Scale your image down rather than just crop it, so we can see the whole coin. As to whether that Nickel has been cleaned - difficult to say from that pic. It would not be surprising if it has. There is quite a lot of wear, but equally Nickel doesn't tarnish so the surfaces are likely to remain quite bright.

You need to ensure the photos total no more than 500Kb per post. You may need to acquire a suitable photo editor to achieve this - On Windows machines Photoscape, which is free, is a good option and the one I use. Also, once you have posted a picture in a particular thread, the system remembers that and won't let you post another straight away. Simply come out of the thread and back in and it should then let you.

Tins are very tricky! I have a few, but most are near impossible to make out from photos. This is probably my best farthing 1684:

Welcome to the forum! Storing a growing collection is always a headache and largely done to personal preference. I have a very similar target collection to yours and have kept mine in a growing number of the WH Smith's "Magpie" albums, which are reasonably cheap and secure. The double action ensures coins do not slip out, and the plastic is coin safe. They are not good for display and the folders gradually fail under the weight of coins. The range of Lindner coin trays are another alternative. They are good for display and very adaptable, but each tray is expensive. Many new collectors start with coin flips and long boxes, which is simple and practical, but viewing your coins becomes tedious. Traditionally the serious collector would use the custom made coin cabinets. Others may be able to point you to current suppliers, or you can keep an eye on the auctions. These are much better for display and the cabinets look appealing, but the coins are more open to the environment, and they can become inflexible as your collection expands. Of course if you are following the American trend towards graded and encapsulated coins, you need an entirely different approach and I have no idea how they tackle that. P

I'd say definitely 1735. This is what the 1733 date looks like:

I am pleased to discover how scarce the Farthing is too! I have this one in my collection. No idea when or where I picked it up.