Questions
Asked by everyone holding a jar.
Why is the dealer price lower than the “asking & guide” price?
Because the asking price is what a collector pays at the end of the chain, and the dealer stands at the start of it — buying your coin, holding it, and reselling it at a profit while carrying the risk that it sits in a case for a year. Estate guidance puts typical dealer offers at 20–50%+ below guide prices. Neither number is “the real one”; the gap between them is simply the dealer’s margin, and knowing it in advance is what stops a lowball from sounding reasonable.
Should I clean the coins first?
Never. Cleaning is the single fastest way to destroy collector value — a polished coin can lose half its worth instantly, and no cleaning can be undone. Handle coins by the edges, keep them dry, store them in plain flips or tubes, and leave toning and dullness exactly as they are. Dealers expect old silver to look old.
How do the 3 free scans work — and what happens after?
Your first coin gets the complete verdict, dealer price included, so you can judge the tool on a real number. Coins two and three still get their pile and their melt and asking figures, but the dealer price unlocks with a plan — it is the number the tool exists for. After three coins, sorting more requires Monthly ($6.99/mo), the one-time 30-day Jar Pass ($14.99), or Yearly ($39.99/yr). No free trial, no surprise second charge, cancel anytime by email with your Stripe receipt. Choosing a plan opens Stripe checkout in a new tab — payment is taken by Stripe on its own page.
Is this an appraisal? Can it tell me if a coin is fake?
No, and no. JarSort produces sorting estimates from stored reference data — it is not an appraisal, not an authentication, and not investment advice. A photo cannot prove a coin is genuine; weight, diameter, and an in-person expert can get much closer. Anything sorted into “worth a closer look” should be verified in person before you sell it, and the checklists show you the first tests to run at home.
Why did my 1965 quarter get “spend it” when my 1964 one didn’t?
One year changed the metal. US dimes, quarters and halves dated 1964 or earlier are 90% silver; from 1965 they are copper-nickel clad, worth face value in circulation. The edge settles it in a second: a solid silvery band means silver, a copper stripe means clad. Half dollars have a middle step — 1965–1970 halves are 40% silver — and the catalogue treats them separately for exactly that reason.
Why do I identify the coin myself instead of the app scanning it?
Because honest guided identification beats pretend photo AI. The leading apps’ angriest reviews are about photo scans returning the wrong year, the wrong mint, and a different price every time. JarSort asks you to confirm four things you can read off the coin with your own eyes — denomination, design, year, mint mark — and then computes the verdict deterministically from stored data. Same coin, same condition, same numbers, every time.
What should I do with the “worth a closer look” pile?
Keep it separate, don’t clean it, and don’t sell any of it on a first offer. Download the dealer sheet from your jar, take it to two dealers, and compare their offers against the dealer-likely range on the sheet. If a coin might be genuinely rare — a key date, a doubled die, a wartime mistake — an in-person grading opinion comes before any sale.
Half my jar is Canadian. Are those coins covered — and are they silver?
Yes — the catalogue now carries 40 Canadian series alongside the US ones, from Victorian large cents to the loonie and toonie. The silver rules differ from the US, and the difference matters: Canadian dimes, quarters, halves and dollars dated 1966 or earlier are 80% silver (.800 fine — US silver is .900, so a Canadian quarter holds a little less metal than a US one of the same weight). The changeover is where jars go wrong: 1967 dimes and quarters were struck in both 80% and 50% silver, and 1968 dimes and quarters come in both 50% silver and plain nickel — same design, same date, very different value. The catalogue lists those years as separate entries and the checklists give you the magnet test that separates 1968 silver from nickel — for 1967, only an XRF test separates the two silver recipes. Canadian face values are in Canadian dollars; JarSort shows every figure in US dollars at a stated exchange rate (CA$1 = US$0.7141, Oct 24, 2026).
What if my coin is not in the catalogue at all?
Then the tool says so — and treats that as a finding, not a dead end. Not in the catalogue does not mean not valuable: early, foreign and commemorative coins are exactly the ones a jar catalogue misses, and uncommon can mean scarcer, not cheaper. When a search comes up empty, JarSort walks you through the fallback: photograph both sides, copy down the four identifiers (country, year, denomination, design), optionally leave an email so the gap gets catalogued sooner, and park the coin in your jar as an uncatalogued placeholder — kept out of the priced totals, listed separately on your exports, and free: placeholders never use your free scans. Until it is identified: don’t clean it, don’t polish it, and don’t sell it on a first offer.
Ready when you are: sort your first coin — free.