Foreign Coin Collection

Hello everyone,

I have just completed the organization of my foreign coin collection and thought that I would share a few photos to the forum. Obviously, everyone organizes their collection differently and there isn't one right way to do it, but I am quite proud of mine and wanted to share it with the coin collecting community. Keep in mind that there was A LOT of trial and error as well as a lot of expenses that came a long with the building of this collection. The entire process took about a year, mainly because I kept adding new coins and kept going back to change and improve things. All together, there is 6 1/2 binders with 25 pages/binder totaling a little over 2,000 coins.

The collection is organized in alphabetical order by the issuing entity, then in order by the denomination and the year. The coins are separated nicely by labels I made that include the official name of the issuing entity, the flag and to the best of my ability, the years in which the country existed/ was founded. Here are a few examples:



I made a completely separate section for Euro coins as well:



One issue that I came across when trying to organize the coins properly was currency reforms and decimalizations. Putting countries like Brazil in order was difficult because of its many, many, reforms. I fixed this by adding in reform labels as well. Here is an example:



Then, there were countries that, while still the same country, changed its name and or government. Example of this would be a kingdom > people's republic > socialist republic > republic etc. Here are some examples of how I organized these countries:



Another issue was that some coins didn't fit the normal 2x2's I was using. Those were placed in a separate page in the back of the collection with the foreign bank notes I have.



I could go on talking about every little detail, but I figured that showing some photos was the best way to get the point across lol. If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to post, I would love to hear/ answer them.

Also feel free to view my entire collection here on Numista, I have cataloged all the coins but my U.S. coins (which will take probably years lol) so you can see how big the collection is.

Well done! I can see that you've spend a lot of time and effort and you've achieved a good result.
The question now is: what if you get a new coin? Where would you put it? You'd have to really move all other coins, I guess. I think, having some kind of a buffer with empty slots would make sense.

Rather impressive results! Thank you for sharing this inspiring work.

Interestingly, you have more issuing entities and more detailed descriptions than here in Numista. For example, in Numista's catalogue there is no Government of National Salvation.

You used English language everywhere. Didn't you ever have a thought to add partial descriptions or titles in other languages as well?

Looks like something I could've done. Awesome!

Question: Why did you put British Honduras between Hawaii and Honduras? Shouldn't you put it under B, since it's modern Belize?

I think it’s simply fantastic!

Now when do you go on vacation?

Awesome job Matt.

That looks fantastic I have mine organized in a very similar fashion but haven’t gotten around to making the flags/ country names like you did they look great.

Matt

It looks really great and beautifull. But, indeed what will you do if you get more coins?

Quote: "druzhynets"​Well done! I can see that you've spend a lot of time and effort and you've achieved a good result.
​The question now is: what if you get a new coin? Where would you put it? You'd have to really move all other coins, I guess. I think, having some kind of a buffer with empty slots would make sense.

​Yeahhhh that's the only tough part. Whenever I get a new coin, I have to move all the other coins over. Its annoying, but I think its worth it once they are all in order again lol.

Quote: "ngdawa"​Looks like something I could've done. Awesome!
​
​Question: Why did you put British Honduras between Hawaii and Honduras? Shouldn't you put it under B, since it's modern Belize?

​Yeah, I struggled for some time deciding whether or not British Honduras should go with the H's or the B's. I know its former Belize but I kind of ignored that fact so everything would be in proper alphabetical order. It was with the B's for the longest time but I decided to move it after looking at how I placed other similar coins. French Somaliland, for example, was where Djibouti is now. I didn't want to place it with the D's so it was between the F's and the S's. After much consideration, I placed it with the S's and I decided that any entity with a possessive title like British Honduras or French Algeria, I would ignore the possessive part. Only exceptions are issuers like British Antarctic Territories and British Virgin Islands that didn't have any other similarly named issuers. Confusing, I know lol

Quote: "numinis"​Rather impressive results! Thank you for sharing this inspiring work.
​
​Interestingly, you have more issuing entities and more detailed descriptions than here in Numista. For example, in Numista's catalogue there is no Government of National Salvation.
​
​You used English language everywhere. Didn't you ever have a thought to add partial descriptions or titles in other languages as well?

​Thank you! I spent a lot of time researching each issuer to make sure that I was as accurate as possible. Finding the official issuing countries was hard enough sometimes, let alone trying to decipher the dates.

As for other languages, English is my only language so I tried to keep it at that, although there are a few labels that are in a foreign language, merely because the issuing country's official-english name is in another language, such as Sao Tome and Principe and Cabo Verde. The only other true examples of this are with WW2 German occupied nations that have titles such as "Reichskommissariat Norwegen" which was the official name of German Occupied Norway. I hope that answers your question.

Very nice and neat collection you have there. I suggest that maybe you print some little history to go along with it.

The notes you need to sepreate them and sleeve up and seal them. Nice collection you have there.

One on the most interesting thread related to coins collection organization https://en.numista.com/forum/topic39922.html
.
I prefer to rank countries geographically :
- I get rid of changes of names (Swaziland, Zaire, Jamahiriya, etc...)
- it’s easier to understand the history, for example I gather Rhodesia Nyassaland Malawi Zambia in the same geographic group

Hi Matt

very well done...
Using coloured flags for the countries makes it very nice...
And indeed you need the labels for reforms... Brazil...Argentina... Uruguay... Venezuela.... South-America is good at it.
Do you also make a separation when for example a new king shows up?

As said by some others... it is a good idea to leave some open spaces... it saves a lot of time when adding some coins, and it gives you the opportunity to start new countries on a new page.

I have my albums also organized in a similar way but I have them first sorted out by continent and then even further by "north" "south" "central" etc....
It groups the countries with similar history/culture.

and how do you feel about the fact that easily 20% of the albums are labels ?
Somehow it bothers me that for some areas I have more labels than coins...

Very nice