Thanks for the welcome! Here are a couple of pics (attached).
OK...Thanks for posting the pics Mark. Firstly what you've got there is a Piano Accordion - not the main interest of many in this forum which is primarily buttons and diatonic-ness. However there are plenty of us PA players here so we may be able to help a little. However you may find it more helpful to ask on web forums like Accordion Freedom Forum which is a very good Yahoo accordion page.
For what it's worth after having had a look at the pics I would say that it looks a very nice instrument. There is a problem with the bass buttons (if you look closely you can see a couple of the bass buttons sticking out much further from the instrument than they ought to be). It looks elderly and will almost certainly need reed re-tuning, re-waxing the reed plates, re-valving etc. This is a very large job on a Piano Accordion and will not be cheap. My gut instinct is to say "Paperweight". What I can almost categorically say is that it needs more than just a new strap and a clean up.
Again my suggestion for an instrument to learn on is to go to a shop and buy a relatively cheap new instrument rather than a second hand box that will probably end up costing you more to make it playable.
AL