The other day, I picked up a coin album containing a short set of all coins from 1955 to 1964 from penny to half (including the 1955 "Bugs Bunny Half" issue!), all in decent shape. I paid about $210 for it and today, it all arrived! (Albiet illegally shipped in a "media mail" box)
Pics below.
However, this brings me to some questions about how I should deal with these coins. Being that the set is mostly AU to MS and a lot of moderns can be got in high condition for an affordable price, I do foresee myself attempting to upgrade all of the coins in the set to BU eventually.
However, the album is not in the best condition, and the format of the album does not match with my usual collection format of 2x2's arranged in pages of 20, with pages arranged from smallest to largest denomination and with dates increasing within each denomination. Then again, though, my main collection barely has any moderns and this album would represent some of the first numismatically-significant 50s modern coins I have actually purchased in my life.
Additionally, I am concerned with the album gradually tarnishing the pennies, which, although red examples are very plentiful and inexpensive, would be bad for the preservation for the pennies. On the other hand, some of the silver coins have toned rather favorably in the album, so there is some conflict with the album being good for some coins and bad for others.
I was thinking of these kinds of senarios for integrating this album into my collection:
1. Keep the album as is and in a seperate part of my collection. Maybe repair it up a little bit and keep on upgrading the coins
2. Move all the coins into a new album. (Note that I do not usually use albums for collecting, but rather like to keep things in 2x2s)
3. Move all the coins into 2x2s and into my main collection (However, this costs a lot of flips and space, a valuable resource in my collection, plus it destroys the "date set" as it will now divide all the coins into different pages and will make my main collection difficult to handle)
4. Keep all the coins except for the pennies in the album, and move the pennies into 2x2s (However, I don't usually waste 2x2s for modern pennies, and these pennies will probably be upgraded, anyways)
5. Something else?!
I also usually like to write grade, silver content, and date of purchase on all my coins, which the album would handle badly. However, I do not like cluttering my main collection with moderns and taking up too much space with 2x2s.
What do you all think?
Posted 10/26/2016 09:19 am
