How do you organize your trays?

I know there has been numerous threads on the forum with discussion on how people organize / store / display their collection. However, I am curious how those of you who utilize some kind of a tray system (cabinet, abafil etc.) go about organizing your coins within your trays?

Do you have them sorted by historical categories? (Greek, Roman Republican, Provincial etc.)

Do you organize by size? Denomination? Metal type? Chronologically? Most recently added?

Do you fill all of your trays completely before you start using a new one or do you have multiple partially filled trays to leave you room to add future purchases that fit with the rest of the coins in the tray?

It seems there are a lot of different ways it could be done. I am in the process of moving from flips to trays so I am interested in what has worked best for all of you. Please feel free to share your system and photos of your trays as well if you are willing.

 

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Best Practice: When using a tray; try to leave more than a little extra room for types you're passionate about. Otherwise, you will be doing a lot of shuffling

Exactly! That's my order as well... though, obvs mine starts with my Macedonian shield coins. And then Greek archaic, classic, hellenistic/Diadochi. Et Here are a few of my favorite trays:

 

...3rd century Roman 'tray' with flips...amongst other trays n boxes o' coins ...i've got a nice cabinet stored imma gonna do sumpin fancy with..that's nice @Ryro!

 

Interested to see how others do this.. so many options.

My homemade cabinet has 58 drawers/trays of various sizes..




I first decided to number each compartment in each tray.. using acid free thick stock ..so 8.7.03 is tray 8, row 7, compartment 03 (why 03 and not just 3? no idea - but I am not about to redo this.. it was painful ). This number is referenced in my digital database - so I am not searching through all of these drawers to find a particular coin.



Trays are organized by Greek, Roman, and other...
I do not separate Roman Republic, Provincial and Imperial .. all chronologically.
Works for me - so far... and no, I am not even close to using all of my trays - that will take my lifetime.

Here is my favorite tray (at the moment) - covering Imperatorial, 12 Caesars and Adoptive Emperors:



*the open compartment (5.1.01) is for my new Mark Antony/Octavian that is in the mail...




The tiny trays to the right side of the cabinet house some coins from the Republic of Ireland that my Dad left me - all circulated, ranging from the start of the Republic in 1928 to 1963 (his home country)... stuff he just gathered out of change over the years .. but very special to me.


*very interested to see other ideas

 

My collection is more or less organized the following way.
The Greek coins are divided into three broad categories The West with would include Italy Sicily Spain Gaul and Carthage. Greece which would include the Balkans and European Russia and the East Asia Minor Syria and the levant. Added to this are subgroups of the Macedonian Kingdoms The Seleukids and the Ptolemies. All are more or less organized chronologically with the Archaic at the front and the Hellenistic in the rear. There are advantages and disadvantages of this system the principle disadvantage is that a mint that I have multiple coins of from different times are scattered throughout the box. But it works for me.
The Roman coins are organized more or less chronologically, however All the coins of any one Emperor are kept together. The Roman Provincial series is kept separately again more or less in a chronological sequence. This system works reasonably well over all, however my collection is relatively small with just over 600 coins divided more or less evenly between Greek and Roman. At one time I had a lot more coins and there were some more elaborate subdivisions which included "Special Collections" ( Which would have included my collection of Roman denarii and antoninianii from the eastern mints)
Philip II Antoninianus Antioch 244-249 AD Obv Bust left radiate draped nd cuirassed. Rv. Aequitas standing left. RIC- 3.70 grms 20 mm Photo by W. Hansen This coin moved from one of my special collections back to the main group of Roman Imperial coins. On a side note. While I was collecting these coins I could not help noticing how frequently I ran into the call for Aequitas or equality on this coinage. Coming from Western Canada this appeal does have some resonance for me because I am old enough to remember that for a number of year the cry from out here was "The west want in" Right now with so many divisions we could use some Aequitas.

 

I organised my collection in chronological order. Within this order there are sub-categories according to denominations, reverse types and mints.

I went away from trays years ago and returned to using albums. The simple reason being that they take up much less space in a bank vault and they can be moved easier between the bank and home.

 

I try to leave at least a few empty spaces in each tray so I can add coins without needing to move other coins out of that tray. Even if I do have to move the coins around within the tray. Right now I have Greek and Roman Republican coins in one tray, and Roman Imperial coins in three trays, all in chronological order within those categories. The trays range from 48 to 80 compartments each. I recently moved the Roman Provincial coins out of the Roman Imperial trays into a separate tray, with the Roman Alexandrian coins first and then the others. I decided that I like the way they look grouped together, rather than interspersed with the Roman Imperial coins, where they get kind of lost. So that's five trays in total right now to hold my approximately 230 ancient coins. I posted a photo of my Roman Republican coins in their tray recently, so I won't do so again right now.

In addition, I still have one tray about half full with my remaining British coronation medals, plus about a dozen other trays and one display cabinet partly full of British and other European coins and historical medals -- basically, what I have left after I sold the more valuable parts of my collection a number of years ago. I still have trays full of late 19th and 20th century farthings through shillings, etc., that I began collecting when I was a child.

 

For fear of robbery/burglary I use no trays. Everything at the SDB.

 

I have a small collection and they are held in two Leuchtturm Aluminium cases...

 

- Trays are great, I have two standards so the tray becomes a great display and I can look at the coins all the time.
- I use two trays, two display cases and some coins - that either don't fit in the trays or cases, or are really cool - are kept loose in a plastic flip and a small standard.
- I collect republic/imperatorial/imperial chronologically. I have a small collection, so silver (and 1 provincial) in one tray, and sestertii in the other. The travel series denari of Hadrian are at the bottom of the tray, together.
- Middle bronzes and some coins of the constatine era are kept in the two display cases.
- Coins of the same emperor are placed together. I try to have at least one coin with a great portrait of the emperors/rules/dictators, so at least one portrait can be seen.
- I have a wishlist, and accordingly I leave some empty spaces between coins in the trays.
- Some times I deviate from the wishlist. And then I have to re-arrange the coins in the trays. I really like to do that however, holding the coins and arranging them. So I enjoy that, and it doesn't bother me.
- Most importantly: It took some time to find the perfect display manner that I enjoy. So, try some ways, and find the one that suits you the most. It may be different for everyone, and there's no right or wrong!

 

My whole collection neatly fits into the three trays of my wooden coin cassette (Leuchtturm Volterra de Luxe):

- The first tray holding 20 coins of up to 48 mm size is filled with the matching number of as large as possible bronzes of the 12 Caesars and their family members.

- The second tray holding 30 coins of up to 39 mm perfectly matches my 30 Sestertii of the Adoptive Emperors and Severans including their families.

- The third tray fitting 48 coins of up to 30 mm is holding the 23 Sestertii of the soldier Emperors up to Postumus and their wives and Caesars now plus some space left for silver (or maybe someday gold) coins that later Emperors issued.

Sounds good but there are a couple of issues:

1) I still have not found a "perfect" chronological (or other) order for the coins the Julio Claudians issued for their (deceased) family members!
Would you arrange them according to
-the minting date (Caligula before his Grandfather Nero Claudius Drusus)?
-according to the lifetime of the people depicted (first Drusus, then Germanicus, and then Caligula)?
-would you place portraits of wives next to their husbands no matter when and by whom the coins were struck?

2) Several of the later Sestertii mus be squeezed into the small cases of the 3rd tray (and my sole medallion does not fit at all). Would you solve this problem by partially arranging the coins by size or denomination instead of date (i.e. moving the Julio-Claudian middle bronzes into the third tray and the larger late Sestertii into the second?

 

I arrange it by their age!

 

I love the way coins look in these trays. I wish I had space to put our coins in them.
As it stands, the illustrious FF collection is in a 3 ring binder

 

I always keep a few "trays" in my living room for the curiosity of the visitors at my place. Considering nobody visited me for almost a year, the truth is: my showcases are only there for my own pleasure...

 

So many great answers I feel pretty lazy. I just place the coins in the order they’re purchased and that’s that!

 

I love this topic! Particularly love the cabinets & other furniture. Sadly, under my current quarantine housing situation fellow members of my household wouldn't consent to me bringing in CNG's amazing ex-Joel Malter Galleries coin display cabinets (two of them auctioned in November). I'll be stewing about that for a decade!

Also, I have so much trouble shooting a whole tray! I guess my camera isn't set right for this size photo, everyone has such great tray photos.

I tend to mix it up a bit, but I only use the trays for my "showcase" coins and aim for just a couple trays at a time (usually keep these ones in safety deposit box, though). I just happened to have more out recently for photographing. Always start by trying to do gold/electrum at the top, and then chronological from left-to-right, but as you can see below, I haven't stuck to that very well. Separate tray for Byzantine and Roman. Silver below. Bronze below. (Imitating HJB Catalogs arrangement.) Then ad hoc division by kingdom/period/theme.

 

Trays on top of each other oldest to newest in Thompson order (modified), in case. Same with individual coins in trays in individual floating display cases.

 

Yay, "Binder Buddies", nothing wrong using binders. All my ancients and medievals are in binders. No room for tray storing. I enjoy looking at them too much.

I organize mine by minting date, should it be a coin issued by another emperor honoring someone else already passed. Only lifetimes will be placed on their respective dates.

And for the wives, they get placed next to the emperor they are married to. I don't have them by date.

Now I admit when it comes to having multiple coins of say, Hadrian, then date doesn't matter to me. I just put them in by denomination.

 

Good idea for a thread, @Curtisimo! I store my coins in three Beba Maxi boxes holding ten trays each. Each tray has 36 compartments (2x2in).

The first box contains all my ancient Greek and "Eastern" coins organized geographically according to the Eckhel system (basically a clockwise tour around the Mediterranean starting in Gibraltar and ending in Morocco). You need to know your geography to understand this system, but it makes a lot of sense to store coins from neighboring mints together. This system also works for Roman provincial coins. The Hellenistic empires starting with Alexander have their own tray.


The second box contains Roman Republican and Imperial coins in order of their RIC numbers (i.e. in roughly chronological order):


The third box has my European medieval, early modern, and Islamic coins. I sort the medieval and early modern ones chronologically for each country, and arrange the countries in geographical order from west to east. The German-speaking regions (my main medieval collecting focus) are organized separately from from north to south:


My eastern medieval coins are divided into an Arabic and an Indian tray and organized by dynasty :

 

Wow! I'm not an ancient coin collector (though I'm trying to get a collection started, and I'm having trouble) but you guys are super organized