Got 300+ Countries In Your Ofec Album?

THAT is quite some accomplisment!

How 'bout other forms of OFEC* when the acquisition rate lessens?:

One From Every Century. Only need 26 coins to make your own individual set, which becomes a statement on the development of World coinage, right from the beginning
or,
One From Every Culture? - You will be suckered into learning a lot more about World history, economics and geography.

That will dig you deeper into the World of numismatics as well, into which you have already come.


There are a few quite knowledgeable collectors here in the CCF, that already have a similar approach to collecting.

"Persianate states" are a subject of some drama on Numista, they were recently called "Caucasian khanates". Revisions are ongoing.

OK, I finally had some time to sit down with my database and compare lists.

Here are the countries that the OP has, that I don't:

Alderney
British Antarctic Territory
Lorraine
Northern Marianas
Palau

Here are the countries that I have that the OP does not:

Aksum
Antigua (& Barbuda) (the 19th century token listed in Krause)
Argentine Provinces
Ascension Island
Austrian Netherlands
Austrian States
Belarus
Benin
Byzantine Empire
Carthage
Central African Republic
Chad
Cilician Armenia
Cocos-Keeling Is.
Congo Rep.
Congo Free State
Dominica
Dutch Republic
Equatorial African States
France - Feudal
French Guiana
Gabon
Gaul
German New Guinea
Greece (ancient)
Guadeloupe
Hawaii
Hejaz & Nejd
Hungarian States (Slavonia)
Hunnic Empire (? I have Hephthalite coins)
Isles de France et (Bourbon)
India - ancient
India - Danish
India - Dutch
India - French
India - Mughal
Indian kingdoms
Islamic caliphates
Italian Somaliland
Ivory Coast
Judaea
Kiau Chau
Korea
Leichtenstein
Leige
Lundy
Madeira Islands
Martinique
Moldavia & Wallachia
Montserrat
Nabataean Kingdom
Nauru
Numidia
Persia (ancient)
Persianate States (I'm claiming them)
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (both halves)
Ragusa
Ras Al-Khaima
Roman Empire
Saint Kitts & Nevis
Saint Vincent & Grenadines
Sharjah
Siberia
Spanish Netherlands
Tatarstan
Tonkin
Windward Islands

That's 301 - 5 + 67 = 363.

Going through, I found some "errors" in the listing, which I at least can see need improving.

British West Indies - yes, I know that's what Krause calls them, but even the introductory paragraph in Krause admits this is only partially correct. "British Colonies" would be better.

Byzantium Empire should be "Byzantine Empire".

Central Africa and Western Africa - in order to be consistent with both Krause and the listing for "Equatorial African States", these should be changed to "Central African States" and "West African States".

Comoro Islands should be "Comoros Islands"

French cities - umm, what? I assume this refers to the 20th century notgeld-like pieces listed in Krause, and not mediaeval pieces which would go under "feudal"?

Greece (ancient) - "Greece" is very specific geographically, and politically sensitive too. "Greek" is less so.

Hunnic Empire - the Huns never had an "empire". The Hephthalites (so-called "White Huns") issued coinage in their homeland in Central Asia.

Numidie and Transnistrie - these are their French names; replace the final "e" with an "a".

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and United Arab Republic - as with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these countries never issued a single unified empire-wide coinage; their member-state coinages are filed under Poland and Lithuania, and Egypt and Syria.

Royaume de Lan Xang - delete the first two French words and file this one under "L".

Ruanda-Urundi - these Belgian Colonial coins are actually issued under the name of "Belgian Congo - Ruanda - Urundi". File it under "B".

St Lucia and St Vincent - for pity's sake, either file all the Saints under "St" or under "Saint". Don't split them. I'd file them all under "Saint" to keep the alphabetical order proper and correct.

Finally, some "omissions". No matter how hard I try, I can't find anywhere logical to put these countries I own:

Coins of the pre-Roman Celtic-Iberian cities and tribes in what we now call Spain. They are Celtic, not Greek (their language is even less like Greek than English is), but cannot be filed under the other three possible "Celtic" options (Danube, Gaul or England). As with Greece, I have each city-state listed as a separate "country" in my own database, but as a generic entry, "Celtiberian city-states" couldn't go wrong.

Coins of the hundreds of petty Islamic dynasties that existed throughout the Islamic world, from Spain to Indonesia, in between the fall of the Caliphate and the rise of the European colonial powers. Only some of them (like Crimea) are given their own entries.

Seleucid and Bactrian coins are acceptably "ancient Greek"; the Gupta Empire is definitely "ancient India". But there's a continuum of Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian states in between those two periods, and it can be difficult to judge which of those two categories a certain coin ought to be filed under. Then there's the Kushan Empire, which doesn't really belong in either.

While we're on the subject of ancient Greeks, it would certainly be helpful to split "Roman Provincial" out from "Roman Empire", as they do constitute two separate coinage systems.

The Venetian colonies of Cattaro and Dalmatia & Albania. "Italian states" doesn't really fit, since the territories in question are currently owned by Croatia.

The fantasy "coins" of Easter Island, Galapagos Islands, Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus and others. If the fantasy "BES Islands" and "Nagorno-Karabakh" coins are on the list, then so should mine be.

There is the issue of whether countries with the same name at two different time periods with radically different borders should be separated. Examples: Armenia (ancient Kingdom / modern state), Bulgaria (mediaeval empire / modern state), Colombia (pre-1831 / post-1831), Italy (Napoleonic Kingdom / modern state), Palestine (British Mandate / modern fantasies), Serbia (mediaeval empire / pre WWI state / Nazi puppet / modern state), South Africa (Boer Republic / modern state). The point is, if the different incarnations of the countries had happened to have been given different names, there would be no question - they would all have been given separate entries. Of course, the whole issue of whether a mere change in name alone qualifies as the creation of a "new country" is dealt with inconsistently by this list.

Krakow - a nominally autonomous "free city" in what is now central Poland, but at the time (1815-1846) was on the border between Austria, Russia and Prussia. Filing it under "Poland" seems mundane, and it certainly doesn't belong under "German states".

The Majapahit Empire was a pre-Islamic state in what is now Indonesia. There are a few other early coin-issuing empires in Southeast Asia that could also be added, though I don't own examples from them; Lan Xang is the only one of these listed there.

Mauretania, like Numidia, was an ancient puppet state supported by the Romans in northern Africa. Note this isn't quite another "new country with old name" thing, as Mauretania (ancient) and Mauritania (modern state) have slightly different spellings, in both English and French.

The Sabaeans were an ancient state in what is now Yemen. Filing them with the modern Yemeni states seems a bit... broad.

The Empire of Trebizond was a piece of the Byzantine empire in what is now northern Turkey, that broke away after the Crusaders occupied Constantinople; they stayed independent until a decade after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, a period of over 250 years. Their coins are not listed in the mainstream Byzantine catalogues.

Congratulations! 300 is quite an accomplishment.

I have 290 countries in my collection according to numista standards. I have a few more according to my reckoning. But I am slowly making my way up the list and hope to have 300 countries soon.

There are several things numista does that irritates me to no end. The French people are very difficult to deal with. Very difficult.

Some categories that don't make much sense:

Judea is a little strange. Some of the coins are listed under Roman, like the coins of the First Revolt.

Not sure how useful these are:
Argentine provinces
Canadian provinces

Newfoundland gets stuck in Canadian provinces but based off how other things are in the catalog it could almost be independent.

Stupid little miconations:
Hutt River
Micronesia
Northern Mariana Islands
Sealand
Seborga
Lundy

Italian states, this category covers several independent nations over the course of centuries.

Malay peninsula. What is this? Not a country, just an area. There are many countries listed in here that make no sense, some going back millennia.

Persia (ancient), Persianate states. There are many different countries here that have been condensed.

United States - Pre-Federal, not sure how this is useful.

Yemen is all messed up.

India is broken out into categories that don't make much sense. Why Ancient, kingdoms and states?

France is a similar mess (Feudal, kingdom, cities, etc.).

My OFEC collection is at 248 by Numista's count. However, Numista has certain inconsistencies, as previously discussed. My biggest objection is that "German States", "Indian Princely States", "Canadian Provinces", etc. only count as one country - so, doesn't matter if you have 20 coins from 20 different German states or 5 coins from 5 different Canadian provinces, you're only getting +1 to your Numista country count. If all of these instances were separated out, I think I would have about 15 more countries added to my list.

Then there's colonialism. "India - Republic" and "India - British" are kept separate. But! What about "South Africa - British", "South Africa - Republic"? There is no distinction to be seen! Same story with Mozambique, Angola, Cabo Verde, Seychelles, Mauritius, and many, many more. If you also separate out colonies and independent republics, the count jumps ever higher.

And, if you choose to make a distinction between Kingdoms, Republics, and People's Republics (as seen on the Numista listings for France, but no other country), that's even more.

So, if I were to make my own count of what I consider to be radically different countries, my count goes above 300. Or, that's what I tell myself, anyway...

I'm a fairly regular Numista contributor, lots of scans on that website are mine. Recently, the flags next to the icons were all updated, and now the Tokens section is being slowly fixed up as well. Maybe the country list will be next.

By the way, the U.A.R. is also a recent change and a subject of some controversy. To me, it depends what those coins say on them. If they say "United Arab Republic" instead of Egypt, I think they belong under the United Arab Republic - but - few collectors can read Arabic (myself included), so the lack of familiarity leads to bitter arguments.

I'm going argue for Lundy, simply for the fact that Harman had the cohonies to buy the island, name himself king & illegally issued his own currency.
the fact he chose his currency to be named "Puffins" seals the deal.






micronesia counts as "tokens", not as a country (or at least it did last time I was on numista)

There is not, and never has been, a place called "British Guinea". There was a place called "British Guiana", in South America next to French Guiana and Dutch Guiana; British Guiana is now called "Guyana". "Guinea" is a region in Africa; it is also the name of two separate though neighboring countries in that region, neither of which were ever owned by Britain (one was French, the other Portuguese).

Yes, I meant British Guiana.