Which World Coins Should I Look For?

I have been collecting world coins for more than 20 years now. My collection grew out of ancients as a base about 40 years ago, and now includes all world coins of all centuries and eras. A by product of this type of collection is that I never stop learning about World history and cultures.

I went down this track, simply because I knew that it would be impossible to complete this series!

When my coins are to be sold out of my estate, they will be sold as single items, because the next collector will be looking for particular single items for his own collection. This is one of the reasons I acquire world coins as singular items.

After some years, collecting patterns emerge naturally, and interesting sub series within the collection have appeared. Quite often, a single coin can have a legitimate place in one or more sub series, and so links between the coins become obvious.

When I am considering a coin to buy four criteria are applied;
1. Has this coin grabbed my attention?
2. Is it good value for money?
3. Would someone else want it when I kick the bucket?
4. Is the condition OK?

The result of this strategy is that the value of my collection seems to be rising faster than the value coin market generally, and there is a broad cross section of the numismatic community that seems to be interested in at least some part or other of the collection.

I only collect coins that were issued for circulation, in other words, have actually been used as real money.

I do have interesting small collections of medals, tokens, NCLT's and stamps, but they all have been given to me.

The holy grail of Aussie coins is the 1930 Penny

sel_691, thanks! I have lucked out finding some nice predecimal coins.

So much for that. Two Canadian nickel quarters and mostly zinc and lunarmum Asian stuff.

It's an interesting question. I've always loved world coins due to the history and imagination of some of the coinage. I went to my local coin dealer last week and he had a bin of foreign coins I could search through. 25 cents a piece. A lot of early 20th century Great Britain copper pennies and half-pennies. Other miscellaneous stuff, but I think all the silver had been picked through already. Do you think 25 cents per coin is a waste of money? Most were pretty circulated.

Over here, when faced with a huge bowl of world coins at 10 cents each, I usually go for small to medium sized coins which are basically unreadable, I just look for that little white metal sheen at the edges or on Obv/Rev, then I just buy it. It's a game I call a 10cent bet

I have found some 7 silver world coins along the way, reason is the dealers dont really have the time to clean a coin to see what it is or read from what country it comes from, so when they see an unreadable, blackened, tar coated with very dark patina on it, & it's shaped like a coin, they just throw it in the huge bowl

I have so many world coins that I forget, you see a nice coin you have never, ever seen in your life before, buy it for hardly anything, go to put it in the folder and there is a better one staring out at you.

The last one was a candian state coin of Sasakawiggin or whatever that province/state/region of canada is called! (just hoping no canadian sees this!)