[villagetinker]

Pre 1965 coins are typically silver, and will get at least 10 times face value just for silver content. You could be lucky and there may be a few rare coins that would be worth a significant amount of money.
You should be getting some recommendations from your post, I would contact at least 2 of these, and arrange to take the coins to that person for evaluation. I would be upfront and tell them that you are taking the coins to at least 2 or more dealers. Hopefully this way you will get an honest evaluation.
You may have to pay for the evaluations, especially if the collection is large, and will take a couple of hours to go through.
Be careful, DO NOT DEAL THROUGH CRAIGSLIST.
If you do not need to sell this collection immediately, you may be able to save some time and costs by presorting the coins (Harbor freight typically has nice plastic containers with about 30 or more subdivisions each) by type, (penny, nickel, dime, etc), and then by year.
NOTE: selling to a dealer you will NOT get the value shown on various websites, you should get more than 50% IMHO. A private sale may get higher prices, but you will probably have to pay for the evaluation.
Hope this helps.