How Do You Organize Your Collection? (A Beginning Collector Question)

How you organize the collection may vary a bit depending on whether you want to collect only U.S. coins, world, or ancient/medieval. In my opinion organization should be first by country or kingdom, then by either ruler or denomination. It can be chronological, if there is a long time period with many rulers or denominations (in other words, coins simply in order of date, regardless of denomination). Within a particular denomination coins are normally ordered by date and, within date, by mint mark. Hope this helps a little.

Also you'll need to decide how to store each coin. Cardboard/mylar 2x2" holders stapled then placed in 20-pocket plastic pages in 3-ring binders provide good inexpensive protection, visibility, and room to write attributions on the holders. But it's also possible to store the 2x2" holders in long boxes, and it's also possible to use clear flips, with the coin in one side and a 2x2" piece of heavy white paper with the attribution on the other side. If you use flips be sure to use archival quality because cheap ones will leave PVC residue on coins over time.
You can also put coins in hard plastic covers with top and bottom pieces.
In any case happy collecting to you!

What do you collect? US coins, world coins, tokens?

For me, personally, a disorganized collection is an unenjoyable collection. I have over 12,000 coins; if I didn't have a good organization and storage system, I'd never be able to find any one specific coin if I needed or wanted to, and that would frustrate me incredibly.

I am a fairly generic collector; I collect all coins, foreign and local, ancient through to modern. So, my sorting goes like this.

Most of my collection - what I consider my "main collection" - lives either in 2x2 cardboard holders, or those 2x2-sized plastic flips, which I use for coins that are either too oddly-shaped to fit into a 2x2, or are so badly worn that you couldn't see the coin properly if you sealed it up into a 2x2. The 2x2s are housed in album pages. The pages I buy in bulk are designed for old 2x2 photographic slides; they're perfect for holding 2x2s as they never "stick" like some cheap designed-for-coins pages can tend to do. The pages then go into albums; the albums I use are also designed for photographic slides, with snap-lock covers.

Ancient coins (600 BC to 500 AD) go in one album (well, there's two of those now), mediaeval coins (500-1450) go in one album, and all the modern coins go in albums (about 19 of them), alphabetized by country. I'm from Australia, and my Australian coins in 2x2s go in with the rest of the world coins, under "A". I have two more albums for tokens, and one for medals.

For countries that have long date-mintmark series which I have hundreds of coins for, such as Australia, the USA and Germany, they don't all go in 2x2s - that would take up way too much album space. Many of these coins end up in "ordinary" plastic-page coin albums, sorted by continent.

Coins that are too big to comfortably fit into the largest 2x2 size I put in those larger maxi-crown-sized 2½x2½, and put in album pages that fit these at the back of each of the albums. There aren't that many of these; my collecting creed is "if it doesn't fit in a 2x2, I don't really want it".

My banknotes go into albums, kind of disorganied as this isn't my main collecting focus (they don't fit in 2x2s, after all); the more valuable notes get put into "Hagner" brand note pages.

Finally, the "odd things", such as mint sets still in packaging, or my one and only slabbed coin, get tossed into bags and boxes and stored however they can.

I collect the same broad range of coins that Sap does.
The way my collection is arranged, has turned out the same way as his, for exactly the same reasons.

thank you all for your input... this is very helpful

I store all mine in 2x2s, which are then stored in cut-down A4 paper boxes. Stored alfabetically for most of the world coins, but larger countries have their own box or boxes. You can store 500 to 600 coins in each.

A4 box cut down to about 60mm.


The extra from the side makes dividers.


Load them up with 2x2s.


Stored on a shelf in a cupboard.


Over 12,000 coins stored on one shelf. :)
Best of all, no cost except the 2x2s which cost
a fair bit down under, but you guys get them cheap enough.

Steve :)

Looks great!