great great grandmas shell collection

[sarah]

Hello, im knew to this forum, my name is Sarah and i live in Melbourne Australia. i have recently inherited my great great grandmothers shell collection which has been sitting in a cupboard for around 80yrs. initially i thought there were a few hundred shells but on closer inspection there are at least a few THOUSAND!

i have started sorting them into families (at the rate im going its going to take a couple of years  <img src="images/icones/icon9.gif" alt="images/icones/icon9.gif" style="border:0" /> ) What is the best way of sorting the shells and howon eart do i store them, at the moment they are in old cardboard boxes and only a few of them are named. Im sure most of them are common boring shells because that side of my family is known for hoarding, but out of all those shells at least a few of them must be valuable, i know my great great grandmother did a lot of traveling. i dont really wanna throw any of them out, but i live in a tiny house and dont have any room for thousands of shells. Maybe one day i will sell them but i want to knwo what im dealing with first. are there any shell valuers in Australia?

please help, any good books around with big pics? ill probably start posting some pics to get at least a few of them named, and to make sure the ones that are already named are correct.

thanks for your help

sarah