I first became interested in coins around 1946 when my father brought home coins he collected for his insurance company from people who paid him monthly for their dime & qurter policies. He would give me the old coins and replace them with his own newer coins before turning them in. I still have them, Barber coins, Walking Liberties, V nickels, Indian Head pennies. I bought a house in late 1960s. There was an old rectangular side table with a top that rotated on its frame so you could see inside. It contained maybe 10 silver dollars. I recently found the bag of “junk” silver dimes my mother had bought a while before she died in the mid 1990s. There are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 Mercury and Roosevelt dimes. She bought them at a time when silver was selling for under $4 an ounce. Recently silver has been selling for around $30 an ounce. I have checked a random 50 dimes for quality and they range from Good-8 at $3 a coin to Extremely Fine-40 around $5 a coin a few of the most recent Roosevelt dimes from the early 1960s still have their Mint Lustre, so may fall in one of the Uncirculated-60 or higher categories. Now if I can just get a recent copy of the Red Book of coin values. My old one is from the 1990s. but it is still useful for checking the quality and relative rarity of silver coins.
As to the value of my half dozen JFK 1/2 dollars, I grabbed them as soon as they came out so they were minimally circulated. If most of my silver dimes are now worth $3 to $5 my JFKs must be worth more than $25 each. My partner asked what I wanted for Christmas. I said a new copy of the Red Book, hope, hope, hope!
My first season strawberry picking I received a check for $92. I was told to put it in the savings account my folks just opened for me. Before I did so, I decided to see what $92 really looked like, so I got 92 silver dollars. Would be nice to have them now.
My Grandpa left me his collection of Wheat Pennies. Thousands of them. Their worth? About a penny each, LOL!
Here is a helpful site for current “junk” silver value:
https://www.coinflation.com/silver_coin_values.html