A Question About Identical Coins From Different Years

Both options are possible, depending what you're aiming for.

Here, the common choice would be:
- if you collect world coins (all of them, or all coins from a certain period regardless of origin), keep one coin of every type. It is not really feasible to collect everything that was ever minted by date or date/mintmark, even if you restrict yourself to one century. In that case, choose the coin in the best condition.
- if you collect a certain country (or region), keep all dates.

That however, is a must. There are people who collect a single country by type only. Consider how many US date/mintmark variations there are - or check what the monetary situation in Germany before 1871 was. When the amount of material is extensive, or when funds are low, one per type is a good solution.

Of course, you may combine both. Collect UAE in detail, but other Middle Eastern states by type. Or collect by type at first, then expand to a specialized collection.

There isn't one correct answer to this.

OFEC:

1. One From Every Country

2. One From Every Culture

3. One From Every Century


It is well enough to collect a representative coin from each country, but if several coins are available, include them all in your collection, even if your collection in some places may seem a little lop sided.

I don't do 1, but I have fun with 2 and 3 - all three metals represented. Of course my collection is lop sided, but it must be expected that is the natural outcome of how I collect. I don't mind that at all.

You get to learn a heck of a lot about the histories of various cultures and the development of the coinage systems they used over the last 2,500 years, and I illustrate that with the coins that they would have been familiar with.


THEIR coins take me back into THEIR times and places.

I think I never developed much of a system myself. I collect some series by date, some by type, and some by whatever catches my fancy.

I did try to get the century set - but 5th century BC and up tends to be quite expensive (I did get my 4th century BC coin a few weeks ago, and even that one cost $8), and some medieval periods are tricky to find (I think I'm still missing 10th, 11th and 14th centuries).

Not even trying the "culture" set (at least, not consciously) - some stuff just doesn't come up easily (if at all), and I'm probably not enough of an expert to tell 5th century India from 19th century India, either.
(But one shop I've been to had a nice assortment of bull-and-horseman jitals - maybe I should check out those?)

Oh, and of course I'm working on the country count (currently 283 as far as Numista is concerned - a few more should be there but for various reasons aren't).

Personally, I keep every different date I obtain - but I do not actively seek out different dates, or try to "complete a date/mintmark set", of any country.

Coin collecting does not have hard and fast "rules" about what you can and can't collect. This is a hobby; it's supposed to be fun. If hunting down dates and seeking out the rare mintmarks sounds like fun to you, then go ahead and do it. If it sounds more like hard work or a chore and something you wouldn't enjoy, then don't.

I think it completely depends on what you want to collect. There are no laws for how a coin collection should look, so there is no punishment if you make your own decisions which may not be according to someone's standard.

I think there are just a few possibilities:

- collect one coin of each currency
- collect one of each coin type within a currency
- collect every year of the coin types within a currency
- or a combination of the above...

What you should check is whether a coin type might have been altered anyway. I do know that some coins have changed metal composition, for example, while still looking the same on the outside. This technically qualifies as a different coin type.

Bottom line: do as you please, it's your collection.

To continue with the One From Each Century quest, on Thursday I successfully bought a Northern Song coin from the 11th century, and today (on Saturday), along with a few more Northern Song coins (I think I'm getting sucked up in that series - fortunately they're, mostly, relatively common and cheap), I managed to find and buy a Prague groschen of Karl IV/I - which, despite its ludicrously worn condition, definitely counts for the 14th century.

It was a complete accident, which I most definitely didn't plan for, but as of approximately 8:15 AM, Saturday, June 3, 2017 (forum time - it was afternoon here in Moscow), I apparently have at least one coin from every century back to the 4th century BC - and of course until I get an awful lot more money I don't really plan to go any further.

As far as I can tell, the most expensive to get was the 9th century (the coin was a Cherson cast AE, and I paid $10 for it).
However, IIRC, in a few more cases, I paid a lot for my first coin from a certain century, but got a cheaper one later (and this might well happen to the 9th century too eventually).

That said, my 8th and 13th century coins are still waiting for more precise attributions (though in both cases I'm fairly certain of the century).