Info Insert Template For 2x2 Coin Flips Available

@mrw, I've moved your thread over here to the supplies subforum, but am open to moving back to main if you feel strongly that it should be over there.

I really like what you are doing here with this template--well done. A couple pieces of information that I also try to include is the amount that I paid for the coin and its provenance (if I know any of it).

Looking good!

These flips look great, and if they work for you, even better. The layout isn't quite my cup of tea, and that's primarily because of what and how I collect, rather than any flaw in the OP's system.

Here's my personal attitude when making flips:

For the "front" side of the flip - the side which you're likely going to be reading through three pieces of plastic and (normally, when the flip is closed) you're peering around a coin in order to read, I try to keep it simple essential details, and also try to keep all that information up the top of the flip and around the margins - where I can still read it without having to open the flip to get the coin out of the way. Having the big bold, serif-less font is also important here, due to that reading-through-layers-of-plastic thing.

Your very first picture is a good illustration why I do it this way. If this were my coin, just looking at that closed flip with a medium-sized coin in it, I can see it's a 15 kreuzer from somewhere, but I can't tell what country this coin is from - that information is hidden underneath the coin itself. So I can't tell which album I need to put it away again in, since my world coins are sorted alphabetically by country. Or if this flip is itself sitting like this in a coin album page; I'd need to take the coin out of the album, then open the flip up, just to see what country it's from.

So for me, that essential information is country at the top, then immediately below that the denomination (over on the left) and the year (on the right); if a mintmark is critical to note, then also the mintmark underneath the year. Bottom right in small print goes the price paid. Small, and slightly encoded, just because I'm often showing these coins at coin club meetings, where discussion of how expensive or valuable coins are is generally discouraged.

The exceptions to this "keep it simple" rule tend to be my ancient and mediaeval coins, because (a) they're normally physically smaller, so don't block the view so much, and (b) they're much less intuitive for a modern English-only person like me to interpret at a glance.

On the back of the flip is where I cram the other details: reference catalogue numbers, my personal database number, provenance, and (crucial for quality control) the date on which I put that coin in that flip, if that date was some other date than the date I bought it or received it. That way, if I happen to buy a bad batch of flips , and if I notice some time later a coin starting to turn bad inside a flip, I want to know how long it's taken for it to get like that, and what other coins I might have used that particular batch of flips on. Other pertinent information, such as it being a certain variety, would also likely go here on the back.

I tend not to include things like the identification of the people depicted on the coin, the obverse legends, and other information I can more easily glean either from looking at the actual coin or looking the coin up in a book or online. After all, the coin is literally sitting right there next to the flip. I'd only include such information on the flip if the coin was too badly worn or damaged for this information to be readable on the coin itself. And I also don't tend to include things like weight, fineness, mintage, designer, rarity or such. All that information can go in the database, if I think it necessary, otherwise I can just look it up if I need to know such things.

The general principle of "keep text away from the centre" also lends itself to employing the exact same annotation system for coins that are sitting in cardboard 2x2s. In my albums, coins might be in 2x2s, they might be in flips - and this way, I can still look in the same place at a coin, and find the information I need, whether it's in a 2x2 or a flip. At one stage, I was even taking a picture or scan of one side of the coin, and including that in the centre of the back of the flip, just so the coin album page all looked consistent - but I gave up on that as it's a lot of effort just for a cool aesthetic.

All that being said, the OP's system with all of this information can also double-up as an excellent "record of the collection", either printed out or just saved on the computer and stored online. You can look through your set of flips, without actually having to go and get the actual coins - which is great if your coins are in a bank deposit box or otherwise inconvenient to get to. Though if it's going to have this dual-purpose, you might want to avoid using the half-the-info-is-upside-down format, as that's hard to read. Back when I was printing out a lot of my own flips, I was printing double-sided and printing on thicker cardboard. But the folded paper option is certainly a much cheaper and easier option for actually making flips.