Information To Record For Cataloguing World Coins

Hey all!

I am trying to get down to cataloguing my collection on my computer. While most of the people here seem to prefer spreadsheets, I think I'll go with making my own database instead. The main information stored, however, will be the same, so I could use help even from you guys who use spreadsheets instead.

My question is, for world coins, what information should I record? I've seen a couple sample spreadsheets around here and elsewhere on the web, but they always seem focused on US coins or UK coins, but not being more "generalised".

For example, how would I store the printed value on the coin? Most countries today follow the decimal system, but if you go just a couple decades earlier you had all sorts of confusion, for example with the pound sterling being divided into crowns, shillings, pence, sixpence, and all the rest.

So I'd assume I'd have a "currency" as well as a "denomination" field, but how would I store the "amount" of the denomination (no idea how to better explain it, but hopefully you get what I mean), especially for these non-decimal coins?

One of the spreadsheet templates I found on the net also had a field called "Variety", where, as a sample, VDB was filled in for the coin where the Denomination/Type field was set to " Lincoln Cent". This seemed confusing to me, because I thought it was redundant. Victor David Brenner WAS the designer of the Lincoln Cent? And what would I put under "Variety" for wheaties, or commemorative coins, or such, or coins that have the obverse and reverse by two separate designers? Or coins which used a specific design of whichever designer, but added or removed one thing? And while it would make sense to use the designers name under "Variety" or whatever, what if the same designer designed different coins for the same denomination?

What I had initially started with (which I am now realising may be a bit inadequate) was AMOUNT (which I ended up using for the denomination), DENOMINATION (which I ended up using for the currency), COUNTRY, OBVERSE TEXT, OBVERSE DESIGN, REVERSE TEXT, REVERSE DESIGN, EDGE TEXT, EDGE DESIGN and YEAR.

Even this one stumped me with the problem I mentioned about denominations and amounts and stuff not being the same for different coins, as well as confused me as to whether to take the elaborate calligraphy in the background of some of the coins as "TEXT" or as "DESIGN", and whether to write the text shown on the coins of non-english countries translated into english, or transliterated into english, or try to find a way to include them in the original language (in which case I'd need a separate field for the translation) and those countries which use a different Calendar system from the usual one, would I include the year using their calendar system (in which case I'd need a new field for calendar systems) or use the gregorian one.

So what I'm basically asking, is if someone could provide me with the relevant fields that would be most suitable and standard for world coins, without me having to resort to writing essays in a COMMENT field for each coin, but still covering all the necessary detail, so it could be reasonably searchable and sortable.
For stuff that exists in some countries but not in others (for example, countries that have no mintmark, because they only have 1 mint), I can leave those fields blank for those countries, but include them in the other ones, so that is not a problem.
Also, most of my coins I collect from the coins in circulation (aside from a couple of commemoratives) when I visit that country (or ask someone to send me some coins of that country), and I rarely ever "purchase" coins, so as I don't expect to ever have the desire (or money) to spend on buying some ancient roman coin, and it is extremely unlikely I'll ever be gifted or randomly find any of these, I don't THINK it is necessary to include the fields that would be required if I was collecting such coins.

Thanks in advance!