Ofec List

Wow. 1733 "countries". Now THAT'S a list.

I'm in awe. Thanks so much for sharing all your hard work!

The only list I've ever seen longer than that was C.L. Coffing's checklist of world notgeld, with some 3,600 towns.

Of course, you wouldn't want to include all those, too... would you?

WOW!

I dabble in African stuff. I'll check some of your info with what I have. But I'm a thinkin' you done did a good job here!!

But if I see anything that clashes with what I have, I'll let you know.

Thanks for this!

I don't think that notgeld should be included. That would make it too specialized when the point of the list is generality. As for micronations, I'm personally not interested as my main interest in collecting is the history. I really like and pursue old nasty coppers that might grade G if you are a generous grader, as long as I know what it is and what the date is. Because of this, commemoratives and micronations don't really appeal to me but as long as the list of micronations is not too long, I'd definitely include it.

However, there are a few things I would like to include that I do not have adequate reference material for. I would like to include newer stamp issuing entities (after 1995), newer coin issuing entities (after 2001) as well as older coin issuing entities (from 1600-1700). Additionally, I'd like to include some of the "places" that issued tokens that were readily accepted at the time, perhaps by province (as in Trade tokens from Tasmania, which already has been included), those that occasionally get included in Krause. I have already done this for GB, Australia, and Canada. Are there others along a similar vein?

I updated the list using a 1988 edition of Unusual World Coins which contained several of the more famous micronations.

I collect OFEC coins but only countries that have existed from 1900 onwards. I also only try to include real countries, but do allow the odd officially unrecognised one (such as Cabinda). I think the problem with a list like this is that 10 people would come up with 10 different lists. Lets face it, even the governments of two close allies such as the US and the UK have a different list of current countries of the world!

I for my part, and time period (1900 to date) have narrowed my personal list of countries (including different political periods, such as, Afghanistan - Kingdom and Afghanistan - Islamic State) to 287 current countries of the world, and 307 now defunct entities. Of these, 454 have issued coinage. When you add in the coin issueing unions of which there have been 18 in the same time period, I have a list of 472 countries or unions that I use.

The main problem with any list of countries is what your definition of a country is exactly. Everyone has their own preferences and mine is that I don't include regional issues of a country, such as China, India, Germany, Mexico or Spain for example, and I don't include things like leper colonies. But that is my preference, I am sure many would see these as legitimate separate countries.

I also don't include most of the micro-nations, I think the distinction between Cabinda and Sealand for example is an easy one to make.

This is an excellent forum, and absorbing thread. I look for ward to reading others thoughts on the matter of what constitutes a country.

By the way for my own collection I also then have tried to collect a coin from each major coinage change a country has had in my given time period. Such as a change like the UK had from LSD to Decimal, or like France from Francs to Euros, or even like Brazil who because of inflation has had no major political changes since 1900, but has had 8 different major reforms due to devaluation. So I would count 8 different coinage periods to collect for them. Keeps it interesting. There have already been 3 changes this year that I am aware of. Malta and Cyprus changed over to Euros and Venezuela devalued. So there are 3 new coins for me to acquire!