World Coin Collectors. How Do You Add To Your Collection?

Use Numista! It's a huge help in organizing your collection and you can easily see whether or not you already have a coin. Personally, I collect my world coins from coinstars, etc, or if I know a friend who's visiting another country I'll give them some cash to pick me up some foreign coins (I actually have someone in Spain right now). Often times you can find people with foreign coins just trying to get rid of them because they feel they have no monetary value. I once met this old lady who was trying to put her foreign coins into a coinstar, and I told them I'd buy them from her for ten bucks. It was probably $50 CAD in different foreigns. Almost a whole jar full.
I never really buy any coins, I'm more someone to find them in coin rolls, on the ground or at coinstars. In the case of an old lady with a jarful, I'll make an exception. Sometimes I'll also buy old coins from friends for face value or a little above.

I haven't collected outside of a few focus areas in a while, but I did like ebay to score some solid deals. I tried to stick to only bidding as much as I would be willing to pay for the handful of coins I wanted, figuring that even making $1 on reselling the rest was a good deal. The coins did eventually stack up to unreasonable levels, so I pared it down to a type set of those countries whose designs I really liked. In truth, those are mostly for my children to light the spark when they are old enough to understand them, but not old enough to be trusted with a "real" collectible coin worth more than a few cents.

I would strongly suggest picking a country or series to focus on, however. I picked Japan for my first serious type set endeavor, and I flip through that binder and admire them a lot more often than I look at the bags upon bags of pre-Euro coins.

Buying coins to flip can also be fun, but remember that when selling world coins that are still legal tender and not collectible, the buyer *always* gets the deal, not the seller. When I gathered up and sold my €25 worth of old Deutsch mark coins, bidding stopped at $17.

I collected world coins broadly as a kid and teen in the 1960s/1970s, inspired by a small batch of coins my dad brought back from World War II (yes, I still have most of them, from North Africa, southern and eastern Asia). With allowance money, and then income from after-school jobs, I bought a mixture of whatever was "old" (17th to 19th century) that I could afford, and recent issues in UNC condition.

I then dropped collecting for about 25 years, until a professional move overseas re-kindled the interest. I narrowed my focus to three places with which I had a personal connection of some kind. And even within that narrow scope, I try to be pretty selective, going only for certain types in certain periods.

Then 5 years ago I got intrigued by the idea of a birthyear collection, and took a couple of years to get one coin from each country (68) that had coins dated in my birth year. All via ebay. My childhood collection gave me a headstart of nice coins from Austria, British Caribbean Territories, British East Africa,Italy, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yugoslavia that had the right date.

While doing that, I got active selling off my childhood world coin collection on ebay. I found it very interesting to see what had appreciated a lot, or was in high demand.

My most recent interest is coins that bear the images of Christian saints, because this connects with an interest in late medieval history.

My "keepers" number under 300 world coins. I probably have about the same number remaining in my childhood collection, very few worth more than a buck or two.

Learning about world coins is a springboard to learning about the world.

Chute72, that sounds great.

I've always thought of buying a 250 coin ebay lot then picking through it and selling the rest at cost to collectors here on CCF. Not sure if other people have done or thought of the same.

My World collection numbers around 1,500 pieces.
If ancients, hammered and milled coins are added, the collection numbers around 2,000 pieces.

My only focus is, and always has been, to cherry pick, always looking for good value for money. With World coins, you never know what may become available.

I don't collect as many World coins these days as I would like to. The problem is mine, due to the fact that I am not really interested in coins that were struck after about 1950, when silver began to be withdrawn from the World's circulation currencies. I am only interested in coins that have actually been used as legal tender.

The vast majority of my World collection was sourced from dealers' high end junk boxes during the period 1975 - 1995, where more than half of the coins I bought were silver. Lower ancients, hammered and milled coins could also be found in such junk boxes. It is almost impossible to find VF (British grading) or better silver in such high end junk boxes these days.

I also tended to concentrate on bronze / copper coins struck before 1900, also in in VF or better (British) grades.

I still troll through dealers' junk boxes and albums, mainly at coin shows, but don't really expect to find much, except for the occasional cherry pick from a dealer's stock album.

That leaves me with attending public auctions and looking for more up market coins. The result is that my collection is growing much more slowly.

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Forget about my problems.

My advice for any collector of World coins these days, is that you should always look for better grade coins, even in $1 junk boxes. That is how I started out. Don't be afraid at looking at the $20 'junk' boxes either; you may even find a really nice cherry pick, and DO include all modern coins including NCLT, if that is what interests you.

My experience is that it always pays to closely examine any coin 'in hand' first, before deciding to buy. If using ebay, then be sure of the reputation of the seller with a good return policy, because you are denied 'in hand' examination of any coin you may be interested in.

@tdziemia




So I've discovered. I also love this forum game

http://goccf.com/t/302056

My geography skills have greatly improved too.