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Posted 04/13/2008 06:39 am
1900 seems to be a popular starting point for OFEC collections, and is what I use for mine.
As others have stated, everyone's list would be different. Even different countries recognise some countries and not others. The thing to do is to put together your definition of what qualifies as a country and apply it to Krause, Wikipedia and the CIA list. (Note that the CIA notebook only includes current countries, and only those that the USA officially recognises!)
Personally I have identified 475 different past and present coin issueing entities including unions since 1900. That doesn't include the 111 that haven't issued coins for various reasons.
I don't include regions of countries, as Sap mentioned, such as the individual princely states of India, or regions of China, Mexico, Argentina, Germany (apart from the 4 separate kingdoms) etc. Or special coinage for leper colonies and so on. I only concentrate on coinage issued by the whole country or dependency. It depends on your feeling on this?
For the 475 entities I have then identified 609 different coinage changes/reforms. I include changes in coinage such as changing from francs to euros or decimalisation. As well as if a country reforms its coinage due to inflation, a change in their political designation or achieves independence and so on.
It's a daunting, challenging but wonderfully rewarding task. And can take years to achieve. Even with unlimited funds, it's unlikely all these coins would become available to buy before August! You may want to make it your 28th birthday instead!
You may also want to start with the 245 current countries in the world (by my definition), of which 227 have issued coins. This list of 245 is made up of 192 UN members, The Vatican, 43 independent territories/regions etc of other countries and 9 partially recognised countries (i.e. recognised by many countries but not all)
If you would like a copy of my lists (on excel) as a starting point then let me know your email address and I will be happy to send it to you.
How many do you have so far? Of my complete list of 609 I now only need 2, but they are pretty hard to come by! One is a certain period of Bhutan (You should look up their coins they are very interesting!)
The other is for Italian Somaliland for 1925. These come up at auction once in a while and generally sell for about $1500 each!
Good Luck!
As others have stated, everyone's list would be different. Even different countries recognise some countries and not others. The thing to do is to put together your definition of what qualifies as a country and apply it to Krause, Wikipedia and the CIA list. (Note that the CIA notebook only includes current countries, and only those that the USA officially recognises!)
Personally I have identified 475 different past and present coin issueing entities including unions since 1900. That doesn't include the 111 that haven't issued coins for various reasons.
I don't include regions of countries, as Sap mentioned, such as the individual princely states of India, or regions of China, Mexico, Argentina, Germany (apart from the 4 separate kingdoms) etc. Or special coinage for leper colonies and so on. I only concentrate on coinage issued by the whole country or dependency. It depends on your feeling on this?
For the 475 entities I have then identified 609 different coinage changes/reforms. I include changes in coinage such as changing from francs to euros or decimalisation. As well as if a country reforms its coinage due to inflation, a change in their political designation or achieves independence and so on.
It's a daunting, challenging but wonderfully rewarding task. And can take years to achieve. Even with unlimited funds, it's unlikely all these coins would become available to buy before August! You may want to make it your 28th birthday instead!
You may also want to start with the 245 current countries in the world (by my definition), of which 227 have issued coins. This list of 245 is made up of 192 UN members, The Vatican, 43 independent territories/regions etc of other countries and 9 partially recognised countries (i.e. recognised by many countries but not all)
If you would like a copy of my lists (on excel) as a starting point then let me know your email address and I will be happy to send it to you.
How many do you have so far? Of my complete list of 609 I now only need 2, but they are pretty hard to come by! One is a certain period of Bhutan (You should look up their coins they are very interesting!)
The other is for Italian Somaliland for 1925. These come up at auction once in a while and generally sell for about $1500 each!
Good Luck!
