All of the bb shells are old, 1950's or older by the look of them, (all have the oil port). From what I gathered, he was pretty old when he died, late 80's or better.
He passed away nearly 10 years ago according to his daughter.
If he was doing it for scrap, why bother saving the bottom brackets and shells? T Every one of the cut bb shells have 129mm long crank axles, that tells me that these were most likely double chainring bikes, not three speeds.
There were very few derailleur bike parts compared to the amount of coaster brake and three speed parts. There were some early Suntour and Huret derailleurs but only a few boxes of them.
There were complete wheelsets and complete framesets in the attic, most were mid 50's to mid 60's 26x1 3/8" or early 26" balloon tire frames. None of the cut bb shells were American. I thought at first maybe he just didn't know how to take them apart, but we did find boxes of used bottom brackets bagged and tagged in the basement. Nearly every bb was from English bikes. All but a couple of wheelsets were steel. Even after all the parts were removed, the house still smelled like grease and mineral spirits. He had several small plastic one or two gallon parts washers he was using to clean parts with. We found several 1 gallon jugs with chains in them filled with gas, and a few more in the house filled with kerosene or diesel fuel. There were two bike stands, one in the breezeway and one in the basement. It also looked like they were heating the house with kerosene heaters, there was on in each room and several electric space heaters. All the plumbing in the basement was wrapped with heat tape.
There were piles of rotten tires up in the attic above the garage. both garage door were bolted shut and there were bikes hanging from the door tracks. There are hundreds of boxes and dozens of barrels that I've not even opened up yet, it'll likely take a year to sort through it all.