I've just gotten some coins from a grandparent (or the coffee tin on the top shelf, or an old box in the basement...) They look interesting. What do I do with them?

This could be the start of a beautiful hobby. Alternatively, you could just fob 'em off on the first coin dealer your finger lands on in the phone book. More seriously- regardless of whether or not you want to keep them, I'd suggest sorting through them and identifying them, and getting a rough estimate of the price. Once you've done that to see if you have any extraordinary or rare finds you can decide what to do with the collection: keep all of it, keep some coins and get rid of the rest, or get rid of all of them.

When sorting the coins, the easiest way is to start with the most general category and work your way down to the pickiest category:

Separate all the coins by country if you have any foreign money in there.
The next step is to look within each country and sort them into denomination (dollar, 50 cents, 25 cents, 10, 5, and 1 cent).
In each denomination, look at the types. The type is just the design.
The designs change over time so you'll find that sorting by type is the first step to sorting by date. Now try to put each type into chronological order (Mercury dimes before Roosevelt, for example) then the coins within each type in chronological order.
Once they're sorted by type and date the last detail is the mintmark. Some coins have a small letter that tells which mint the coin was made at (D, S, W, or O).

Depending on how many coins there are in your new-found stash this may take you a while. However, the effort is worth it since you're now ready identify these coins and get a price estimate much more quickly.

For more detailed information on ways of identifying coins, look under What is this coin?. For American coins, the quickest way to learn at least the name of the coin is to go to CoinUniverse and look at their price guide (the link is on the left side of the page). It goes by year and denomination when you search but gives the names of the coins along with the prices. The prices listed there are given in a range, depending on the condition of the coin. To get an exact figure you'd have to get the exact grade (rating of the condition) which is complicated. The range of prices in the online price guide will at least give you an idea of which ones are valuable. For world coins, you'd need to check the Krause Standard Catalog of World Coins, by Krause Publishers. The local library usually has a copy of it, although it may not have the most recent edition.

At this point you can decide which coins to keep for your own sake and which ones to get rid of. If you decide to keep the coins- welcome to coin collecting! Take a glance through the rest of this site since it's geared to beginners.

If you really don't care about the silly things and want to be rid of them, you might give them a friend or family member who's interested in coin collecting. Children in particular make great recipients for coins- often, receiving coins from a relative sparks their interest in the hobby of collecting. If you would like to sell them, I've devoted another section of the FAQ to that: How do I sell my collection?