I am in the process of going through all my random foreign coins and trying to identify them, place them in 2x2s and in a folder. One of the pieces of information I want to put on the 2x2s if at all possible is the mintage. I have the Krause 20th century book and that has most of the information I need except for the 19th & 21st century coins (obviously), some right at the end of the 20th century and a few coins that just don't have mintage's listed in the book. What I am looking for is a online resource that I can use to find some of these mintage's along with the the Krause book. Is there a website that lists general information about world coins? I know that is a tall order...most of what I am looking for is European.
Google "countryname mint" and in most cases you'll find links to the national mint website. Mintages are probably shown there, and if not at least you have a contact point to inquire. In general, if reliable mintage figures are available, they will be in Krause within a few years.
OK, that is kind of what I expected but I thought I would ask. The mintage's aren't that important anyway...all my world coins are super common circulation finds for the most part. Thanks!!!
That was my first instinct. I would think they've kept good records in recent years, and those mintages should be public knowledge. I understand some underdeveloped nations contract with US and European mints to manufacture their coinage.
It has been my experience that most national mint web sites actually have very little information. About the only thing they do is offer to sell the coins. And unless you can read several languages, they're not gonna do ya much good anyway for only a few have their sites set up in more than their own language.
I have found the Bank of Japan's site most informative, it would even be more so if there was a lot more English. The Japanese portion of the site has awesome pictures, which are about all I can understand of it.
