Michael Ammars intro to coin magic as someone suggested is good for beginners. He teaches different sleights and teaches good tricks using just the sleight taught and then goes onto another sleight and teaches tricks just using that sleight. If I remember I think he teaches holdouts first, which he spends the most time on, like several different palms and clips. Then he goes onto like false transfers like put, takes, retention vanishes. All the tricks taught on that dvd are good and pretty easy. That kinda also answers the question wether to learn sleight first or tricks. With this dvd its like doing both. Learning a sleight and then doing the tricks it gives you motivation to pefect the sleights because of the tricks you want to be doing thats taught as soon as possible. I still use coin thru pants, coins across and coin flury from that dvd. The sleights taught are from guys like bobo, roth, ramsey, malini, schneider and others.
As for like an ACR type of effect using coins you might want to look into Dan Harlan and Joe Rindfleisch's material. They have like an effect thats like ACR with coins.