How Do You Store Your Collection ?

I keep them in the plastic ones also. In binder pages. For the same reason,universal sizing. Also, ability to remove,hold,photograph. And best of all, no hideous staples, can't stand staples. Although the paper self stick ones do look good together in a binder sheet.
And everything in binder pages, even slabs. I like to flip through a binder nearly daily.

When you use the plastic ones especially when it contacts the coin, make very sure it is not PVC or you will ruin the coin over time.
For storage for me I use 3 different ways
1. OGP
2. Dansco albums
3. 2x2 for low value coins.

I do not use plastic flips ; I use 2x2 cardboard holders , then they go either into plastic sheets ( 25 2x2's per sheet ) into a looseleaf binder ; or they go into 2x2 boxes specially made for the cardboard holders . If you go this route make sure the staples are flatten as to not damage other coins next to them .

I thought that in America all coin collectors and dealers keep coins in flip.



What is OGP?
PVC is one of the reasons for my choice of "Flip" (if I used this term correctly, it applies to method 1). I'm buying a flip from a German company. They are very good and their plastic is hard (this
indicates the absence of PVC).


As far as I know, the cardboard 2x2 is intended for temporary storage of coins (1-2 years, maybe 3, but this is the maximum period). I'm worried about this window (it's plastic and I think it reacts with metal + air). I know that many collectors and dealers store in 2x2 (cardboard). For them, this is the cheapest way to store and they have a huge plus. There is a place for information. Price, country, denomination, year, etc.


Perhaps flip costs you a couple of cents and therefore for you it is the cheapest way of storage and you store coins there with low cost.

Do you buy such sheets and put your 2x2 cardboard there ?

"Original Government Packaging", like for mint sets, proof coins etc. The plastic case and/or the box the coins were shipped in from the Mint.


Technically, "hard" or rigid plastic indicates the absence of plasticizers that make the plastic soft. For PVC it is the plasticizers, rather than the PVC itself, that causes the damage over time. Nevertheless, it remains true that, as a general rule, "hard plastic = good, soft plastic = bad".


Cardboard 2x2s are perfectly fine for long-term storage. How "good" they are depends entirely on the manufacturer. It certainly is possible to buy chean'n'nasty 2x2s that are either made of PVC or are made of something else that's laced with plasticizer. All of the ones I've been using for the last 20+ years are fine.


No coin dealer I've ever found in Australia sells the flips. The flips I buy are imported direct from FORVM, an ancients dealer in America, so they are not my cheapest option, which is why I only use them for coins that warrant it. By which I mean, ancient coins (which are usually too thick and awkwardly-shaped to fit into a 2x2 easily), worn coins (which often become unreadable if sealed up inside a 2x2), and mediaeval coins (which often need to be examined in hand up close, to read the legends, determine varieties and types, etc).


The sheets I buy hold 20 coins (5 rows of 4). You can see examples on the Print File website. There used to be a local supplier for these, but with the demise of photography supplies shops as everybody went digital, I have to import these from America as well. A pack of 100 pages usually lasts me several years.

I do find it interesting that that website, even though the company aims itself at phographers, also includes pictures of coins in 2x2s in their pages. They have finally realised that coin collectors make up a significant minority of their customer base.

Do you use albums to store coins ? Just sheets for storage ? Question to all Forum participants.

I buy all of them. Folks who collect just one series (like "American coins" or "euro coins"), can afford to just get the coin sizes relevant for that series. But as I collect everything, I need all the sizes. I keep them in a drawer next to the computer where I sort and catalogue all recently-acquired coins. When I have a coin that I think needs to go in a 2x2, I just open the drawer and pick out one that fits best.


Anything that isn't actively outgassing corrosive substances is fine. But rigid plastic boxes are the best, simply because you can stack them up on top of each other and they don't "squeeze" the albums at the bottom of the pile. "Squeezing" a page full of 2x2s, especially if either the 2x2 film or the album page is poor-quality plastic, can result in solvent transfer of plasticizer between the album page and the film - which is what causes the films to turn "sticky" and hard to remove from the pages.

To demonstrate what I mean, let's go back to the Print File website I linked to earlier, and check out the albums that I buy in bulk: Safe-T-Binders. They're rigid polypropylene; they come in ringed and ringless versions (I buy the ringed ones) and they clip shut for transportation if you need to carry them around the place. You can put them on a bookshelf ring-side-up so you don't have to worry about the pages sagging inside the album. Finally, they're more or less a loosely-sealed box, which helps reduce atmospheric exposure. It's not airtight, but it's better than an open binder. The main drawback with them is the clips are just plastic, so tend to break after prolonged use.