What can I do with foreign coins?

Answer

That depends quite a bit on what you have! Are your foreign(*) coins current circulation pieces? What country or countries are they from? If they're current issues (e.g. Japanese yen, British pounds/pence or EU euros/cents), your best bet would be to find someone who's travelling to one of those places and sell them at the current exchange rate. You can find rates posted on line or in the financial section of any major newspaper. Unfortunately most exchange agencies (American Express, Deak, etc.) don't want to exchange coins, only bills, so you'll have to trade them privately.

If they're older coins or very mixed, you'll need to take them to a hobby shop or somewhere similar to have them looked at in person. In most cases they're probably not worth more than their face value, maybe less if they're no longer used (e.g. francs, marks, lira, etc.) but you still ought to make sure you don't have some more valuable piece mixed in. If they're common, a dealer will only pay you a small amount and will probably put them in a grab box.

(*) Please note that I had to make a minor spelling correction to your posting so that the word "foreign" could be found by a standard search.

First answer by JayKay. Last edit by JayKay. Contributor trust: 1736 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 13 [recommend question].