Classifications

Agree with Sap on most. I have to split my collection into continents, besides I'm not an OFEC kind of guy, I have multiple pages for some countries. I personally have a harder time to draw a boundary between N. and S. America.

By the way, "my" Cyprus is in Asia.


I believe the sole reason for that is that both Georgia and Armenia are christian while the surrounding is predominantly muslim.

No list as such; my general knowledge of geography lets me know roughly where each country is situated, and which side of the line they fall on.


The Order of Malta is an interesting case. I consider them a "government-in-exile", having been evicted from Malta by Napoleon. They have attained Observer status at the UN, but in recognition of their charitable transnational medical aid they offer, rather than in recognition of sovereignty. Krause's attitude to them has changed over the years: my 1987 edition didn't include them, my 1996 edition did, and my 2006 edition did not.

And like Hutt River, they have also suffered from "unofficial" pretenders issuing bogus coinage in their name. Coins denominated in scudi, tari and grani are legitimate SMOM issues. Coins denominated in "liras" were struck by an American pseudo-order with no formal ties to the Italian order; see this old thread. I own a silver 3 scudi, which I bought off forum member Angielczyk (and which is filed under "O" in the primary albums, in between Oman and Overyssel).

Kosovo, to my knowledge, has not yet issued any coinage. Kosovo has unilaterally adopted the euro as its currency but cannot issue euro-denominated coinage without joining the Eurozone or signing a treaty with it - neither of which are likely to happen this decade.


I have to admit, my secondary folder organization is a bit higgledy-piggledy. Once upon a time it was neatly, alphabetically sorted, but a couple of deluges of bulk world coins blasted away the veneer of organization it had, as coins got shoved in every which place, wherever they would fit. I've never motivated myself enough to give it a proper sort-out.

For Transnistria, the question is moot, because they're all kept in the primary albums, which are fully entire-world alphabetized with Transnistria sitting in between Tonkin and Travancore. The only Transnistrian coins I own are a type set I bought from ebay stalwart diggafromdover a few years ago, and a couple brought back recently by family and friends that had actually visited the place.

I love the geography lessons! Thank you.
For me though it is much easier to just put my coins in the same order as Krause lists them. I probably don't have nearly the quantity but this helps me to keep track of what I still want to acquire. I'm an OFEC collector(which I don't think actually means just one but that is another topic...)and I use Krause to determine what is an is not a 'country'. I do keep a note that tells me where they are in the world so I may go back and reclassify some based on this discussion but I don't have to move them in my binders - just on my excel sheet

... Not all francs end up under the France heading.

Are you counting the Vatican as a mini-state that issues Yurros?

I classify my coins by geographic region, but not strictly by continent.

Examples:
Central America
Caribbean
South America
Sub-Saharan Africa
North Africa & Middle East
Central Asia
Southeast Asia
...

Even then it's a judgement call as to assigning certain countries.

I keep colonies in their geographic area, so Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong would be near the coins of China, and Netherlands Antilles is in the Caribbean section.

I (try) to only collect circulating coinage, so that takes care of some problems from non-entities. I do have some coins from Andorra and Nagorno-Karabakh, which I'm not sure if they really circulate in those areas or not.

Also most of my coins are after 1850, so there aren't a lot of principalities and states to deal with.

-wheatiefan

Is it worth mentioning that the Krause banknote catalogue seems to classify countries differently than the coin catalogue (just to make things slightly more complicated )

The UK section, for example, is disaggregated in the Banknote catalogues, while united in the coin catalogues. A different approach to "purely alphabetical" is really needed for it.

Usually I have no problem spending my Northern Ireland banknotes in Scotland - and northern England for that matter - but shops (or should I say pubs ) in the south of England don't like tham at all. I got the funniest look when I tried to spend one of our plastic "space shuttle" Northern Bank £5 notes. They thought I was "having a laugh"?

I've tried to spend Scottish notes in England too and again - shops in the south don't really like them.

While not strictly speaking legal tender outside England and Wales - the Bank of England notes are accepted throughout the UK with no problems.

Isle of Man notes are also readily accepted here in Northern Ireland (I've even got notes from Jersey and the Falklands in my change before). I think they are less readily accepted in England - again - because they are not realy used to accepting anything that is not "Bank of England".

Wikipedia has a reasonably good explanation of the difference between promisary notes and legal tender - it's quite a subtle difference to do with settlement of a debt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankno...und_sterling