Are Canadian Coins 2nd Most Popular Internationally ?

It's not so much that canadian coins are popular in the U.S., it's more because Canada is a country where coin collecting is a big hobby, just like the U.S. Same with many of the other countries on the list.
Take a country like Cambodia or Ethiopia, just for example. These countries don't have very many collectors due to the economic and other factors, so most collectors who end up buying their coins are from other countries.
With U.S and Canadian coins you have plenty of people with the time and resources to be a collector, thus you have a strong market. And, as you know, when demand is high so is the supply =)

Something also to consider with Canadian issues are the low mintages of some coins even into the 1950s--and could be currently undervalued in the long term if the collector base grows and demand changes. Here's just a few modern, low mintage coins I'm familiar with and their current prices from Charlton's:

1907H 1c, 800K, EF-40: $55 (A similar mintage to the Lincoln 31-S, but probably not hoarded in its time)
1925 5c, 200K, EF-40: $350 (half the mintage of the Lincoln 09-S VDB, which was also hoarded in its day)
1948 10c, 422K, EF-40: $25
1947 50c ML, 38K, EF-40: $85
1948 50c, 37K, EF-40: $200 (sorta pricey already)
1954 50c, 500K, EF-40: $12

Those are just a few, and there's numerous die varieties with unknown mintages and a lot of NFL coins that have fairly small issues. I just picked up a 47C 1c with a mintage of 313K! Not that I'm pursuing the money angle here...I like these coins in of themselves--but it sure can't hurt to collect coins that are low mintage.

Yes, even Canada 1c mintages were up to 4M by the late 1800s, including all the varieties for each year. So coins around 1M or less could be relatively scarce today, especially as during wartime they're remelted for ordnance. So I suspect surviving mintages for some years are much lower.

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from grmike's original post:
ebay.com, heritage coins, google.com Canadian coins come up I think with the 2nd most search results behind US coins. Is that just because Canadian coins are popular in the US or are they also popular outside the US ?

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I don't think so.

I suspect part of the problem here is your skewed data set. I can see three reasons why you might conclude this:

1. The three websites you list are all American-based. That's unavoidable when using Internet statistics, I suppose - America is still by far the most net-connected country.

2. Your search is presumably skewed towards the English language. I'm sure if you searched for "Deutsche Münzen" and "Kanadische Münzen", or even "Amerikanische Münzen", you'd find the German coins normally come out on top.

3. Coin collecting is simply far more popular in the US than it is elsewhere.

All things being equal, here are the places I can think of where collecting Canadian coins would be popular:
- Canada (for obvious reasons)
- United States - you're next door neighbours, and you frequently find their coins in your change.
- Great Britain - Canada is one of the more prominent members of the British Commonwealth, and there are lots of British Commonwealth & Empire collectors in Britain.
- the rest of the British Commonwealth (eg Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) - for the same reason as British. I know here in Australia, Canadian coins are probably just as popular, if not more popular, than American ones. Of course, Australian and British coins are more popular than both.
- France - thanks to Quebec, Canada is part of the French-speaking world, too, and many of their commemorative coins are bilingual English-French. This would appeal to collectors in France.

For everywhere else, Canada would be just another "weird foreign country".

Since most (maybe even over 90 percent) of the world's coin collectors live in the US/British Commonwealth/France, the most popular coins in that whole area would have to be the most popular coins in the Coin World.

Even in contries where Canada 'is just another foreign country', a real coin collector should be focussing on coins that are in the highest demand (if the collector considers his collection some kind of an investment). If he's been to any kind of major coin show he has got to be somewhat familiar with the coins that attract the most attention on sites like ebay and heritage coins.

Even in Germany most people speak English. Most sellers of German/France coins also have an English version of their site.

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That American/Canadian/UK coins are the most highly sought after worldwide?

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Canada did make the world's first million dollar gold coin

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Hey Kurt, your local dealers should get an ebay account. Canadian coins do real well in my experience.

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Well, that's good to hear about Canadian...maybe more US collectors are starting to collect?

As for dealers around here, they mostly care about selling bullion to everyone who thinks that's a "sure thing". ebay and especially Canadian is a "waste of time" to most dealers--which is why I still find good stuff in California!