Need Your Aesthetic Opinion / Thanks

Way, way back I first made an Excel spread sheet for my coins. I HAD columns for type, date, mint, grade, present value, price paid, date purchased, where purchased and lots of other things, even location such as in an Album, 2x2, etc.
Originally all sounded like being important. Then one day I realized that with virtually thousands of coins, all this made no CENTS, so to speak. Since never planning on selling any, why worry about date purchased or from where. So those got dropped. Then I wondered why worry about the original cost? So those were dropped too. I could put the type of coin at the top of page so that column now dropped. Where they are kept, dumb so that too was dropped.
Eventually I realized that all such info is nice but sort of a waste of time so I then just kept track of what was in Albums and only date, mint, grade.
All I'm saying is to sit down and ask yourself what are you getting into. Keep any records that you think are important. And mostly remember that once you attain possibly thousands of coins, your book keeping will be possibly more massive than the coin collection.

Just carl is right. If all of the info relating to the coin is written on the 2 x 2, and if you need to re arrange the collection, all of the info relating to the coin goes with it.

YOU WRITE VERY tiny.

I agree the presentation can be a little messy when noting information for ancients, but at least that information can be retained with the coin.

Modern World coins, (which I collect as well), present far less of a problem.

If I had to choose one of the two methods I would go with country - denomination - date

With World coins, on most of them, the date is not worth noting, because it is self evident on the coin. With Arabic or Japanese coins which are dated the script for the date needs to be translated, and the translation noted.

Same applies to the country. In most cases, information on the coin makes it's country of origin obvious, but in other cases, the country of origin may not be obvious at all.

Ancient coins, are for me are in just an earlier epoch in a collection of World coins. In most cases, the exact year of minting cannot be known, and can only be tied down to a period of years, which may be a little as two years, or more than 100 years. The approach to providing information that relates to a particular coin has to be varied.

Due their style, a Roman coin may be obvious that it is so, but with ancient Greek coins, issues are by cities, not countries. A proforma which asks for a country of origin is just not relevent. In most cases with ancient Greek coins, there is absolutely no indication of a date, and a period of issue which may cover many decades, has to be inferred by reference to a atandard text on the subject.

Hammered and milled coinages (which I also collect), are another area of numismatics which would require a different approach as to how information is provided.

Coins can be issued by traders (usually tokens) cities, countries or empires.

Coins can be like people, and can be very different one from another. It is that individuality that can help to make the study of ancient coins so interesting. That does not infer that the study modern coins is less interesting.

A lot of really interesting responses!

And, as we are gravitating to the 2x2s, someone earlier mentioned, instead of staples, they found a glue/adhesive that would not corrode the coins. Do any of you know about that/where to find it? Or, what I would go hunt for? I really like the idea of using adhesive and not staples.

Yeah, I think it looks wonderful compared to dulling cardboard. I could even seal the actual pages at the top as well, but thats taking it a bit overboard. I like to feel a coin in my hand, and as funny as it sounds, even with the cardboard 2x2's, I didnt like it. The extra mylar on the Saflap keeps them in place just as well if not better then the 2x2's. They're also rated archival safe, I'm not so sure on the 2x2's.