So What Are The Most Popular Countries To Collect Nowadays ?

@crok My own opinion is to collect what you really like, within your budget.
Banknotes with Queen Elizabeth II on will always be popular, small islands' currency, birds/wildlife etc. Certain oil-rich Middle East nations like Kuwait have very strong currency & will easily hold it's value if that's your angle.
There is a ton of choice out there, something for everyone to be honest, some of my nicest looking banknotes have only cost a couple of pound sterling.
Good luck

- I try to cover this (& other topics) in my videos (& on my Notaphylic site https://sites.google.com/view/notap...ng-banknotes)



- I started out as a "hobbyist" & discovered (over several years) that most of my higher grade Canadian banknotes rose in book value (& I could exchange them for rarer examples). So my "return" was strictly a better collection (in my eyes). I still have some circulated (lower grade) CDN notes which may be a loss (for me in terms of investment) since inflation (& cost to sell them) will outstrip what I paid for them (& BV doesn't go up much for these). Inflation, banks micro interest rates (& pay that never keeps up with inflation, cuts to my benefits/investments, as billionaire politicians continue to successively bully governments into union- bashing). Several brokers are on the take from our stock market investments. World markets will continue to rattle from the world's slightest problems, so I have been forced to re-examine collecting banknotes as an investment- but I have had to change the way I approach the hobby. I've learned that there's many pitfalls I must avoid (costs add up) and to try to think clearer (more like a dealer) than a collector.




IMO: absolutely paramount to collecting well. It's not quantity but quality. If you collected books would you pay top dollar for one that was missing pages or had a torn jacket? Would you buy a stack of mouldy ones just because the seller reduced the price? (Now apply the same analogy to anything delicate like vinyl records, dolls, toys, etc). I truly believe that many of us collectors start out with hardy coins, or the odd older note we find in circulation and fool ourselves into saying "that's not in bad shape." We tuck it away thinking we got a good investment (when in fact if you inspected it carefully it may be VF -EF). Millions of people do this (so theres so many VF-EF examples out there)! Its essential that you get a good idea how to grade a note yourself (so you don't just rely on TPG/other's opinions). It's easy to be "penny-wise but pound foolish."

A wise collector from CCF once posted that the secret to collecting well is not just "what you collect" but how you go about it (approach) that will also determine whether you will make (or lose) money on your acquisitions down the road. I completely agree with this maxim.