USA coins versu International

My question is, what is the difference between going after international coins or North American? I have mostly North American coins, but know there are people out ther specializing in international coins. Of course with the international you can go back more years, but what does this group think about the two.

 

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USA coins are a darkside to me, I have a few significant pieces, patterns, and 1790's coinage. But for me my main passion are Scottish coins. They are scarce, and often a direct connection to Scottish history, for instance the life of Queen Mary of Scotland played out with all her marriages, etc on her coinage.

I also delve into English and British coins, Portuguese coinage, Russian coinage and some ancients mainly from Syracuse and the Black Sea regions of what is now Ukraine.

My collection would be best described as on focus with the Scottish, and more eclectic and ADHDish with the rest of it.

 

The only difference is personal preference. Of course there is more variety with world coins than U.S. coins. Its all about what you want to collect. I personally mainly focus on U.S. coins, but I do collect ancient and world coins as well.

 

What other countries are of interest?

 

To whom?

Some people are interested in all of them, others specialize. He who pays his/her money takes his/her choice of what coins to spend his/her money on.

 

Uh, that is pretty much the same as asking what the difference is between, say, Ford cars and all other vehicles in the world.

Christian

 

I completely agree on the aesthetics of world over US. Though the US has had some historical beauties here and there, they don't compare to the design effort that most of the rest of the world puts into their coinage. That goes almost double for paper money as well. In general, US coins, especially today's, are overall "blah."

 

GD and Adam both nailed it.... the artfull designs, the history, the variety, the cost... and it all boils down to prefferance.

 

I was referring to USA, Canada and Mexico. As you may know this week I was posting some of my international coins that I had no idea about. I got great follow up and yes I noted that some of them are really neat looking. I like their addition to my coin collection. Your above answers are what I needed.

 

I personally LOVE world coinage. Yes, the majority of my collection is from the USA, but, I have pulled most of it from change. I've been able to find every year and mint dating back to the mid 1930s in change or rolls in the past year for cents and nickels, and for the quarters and dimes, to the beginning of the clad age. That's two or more per year, over 4 denominations, for a lot of years, equalling a lot of coins.

Anyway, with American coins, they are expensive. More so then they should be, taken on their age and issue numbers. It's because of the demand, there are a ton of American collectors out there. With world coins, they are not too expensive. Just yesterday at CoinFest I purchased a problem free silver coin that was issued in 1623...for under $10. IF American coins had been made yet at that time, of the same material and condition...that coin would have been probably 4 digits or more. And there were other coins even older at the same table for less or comparable prices.

With World coinage, you can cover the entire planet for really, a small output of your money. In my collection I have coinage from 75 different countries. Take out the US and Canada and it's 73. For ALL those 73 countries combined, I have 162 coins. (not counting the 60 or so I bought at CoinFest, 10 for a dollar) For all 162 of those coins, I have paid roughly $40. (not counting shipping, which in some cases costs more then the coins) Of those 162 coins, the dates range from circa 300 BC to 2008, eith the majority being from the 1900s. About a half dozen are 1800s and one from the 1700s, plus three ancient Romans and one ancient Greek. Metals include copper, silver, bronze, aluminum, steel, zinc, nickel, and maybe a few others. (I collect coin designs, not metal content). No gold though, that's too pricey for me. However, if I ever do get into gold, it will surely be world gold.

And there's many ways you can collect world coinage. You can collect by country, by design markers (IE collect coins with lions on them) collect a specific metal, You could collect as many different coins from a specific year or decade, or even just collect whatever looks good to you (what I tend to do) The possibilities are endless! And most themes you could still find coins from the USA that fit the theme as well, too...

 

For me, American, Portuguese, Russian etc coinages in my collections are historical, artistic, rare etc. Scottish are personal.

 

Though my collection is almost exclusively U.S. coins, I don't have any rule against buying world coins. I just buy whatever I like. That seems to be the best rule to follow

 

Not exactly a surprising result when one puts the coinage of one single country only into one scale, and everything else into the other. Keep in mind though that "the world" does not issue coins.

Christian

 

Watch it Chrisild, your country issued the infamous 10DM commemorative with the television on it.

 

Sure, they have issued a lot of pieces with dull or bad designs ... My point was merely that, if you lump the pieces from all countries (except one) together, you will end up with lots of thrilling pieces. Yeah, tons of trash too, but that was not the point.

Christian

 

I just like picking on you because of that coin. Fortunately there are many much nicer German coins than that abysmal TV thing.

 

It is my belief that World Coins are going to jump in value over the next 25-40 years. The biggest thing that has kept them down in the past decades is that establishing a value was difficult in the early 90's and 80's and 70's etc. The Internet is still globally a new thing in history and I believe that collecting as many key date pieces from as many different countries as possible will pay off big with in my life time,, and I just have a lot of fun collecting them and I can find tons of them in every antique shop, pawn shop, etc.. for well under their value.. and I can always have fun at shows or shops because my area of interest is so Broad that I am happy getting a great coin from any country for cheap and going home happy,,, instead of pawning over that 1 U.S. coin that will complete my set but cost $1000.00 to get
I have examples of the coins I have acquired in my gallery attached to my signature.

 

The Zen of Collecting

Supply and demand, of course, determine price. With "world" all coins compete against all others, Tibetan against Italian States and so on. Moreover, with world, themes are a possibility: turtles, ships, flora...

Often, you will find that world collectors know more and are motivated more by pure history, whereas with US, the focus is almost exclusively on the coin itself: grade, strike, luster. Few US collectors care who was Secretary of the Treasury when a coin was struck, whereas with world, often, the Mint or Mint Master, is as important to the attribution as the king in whose name it was struck. British coinage of the Middle Ages is a perfect example of that.

Another example are the Bank of Upper Canada pennies and halfs struck at the same time as US Large Cents. Though of much smaller populations, the beautiful, medallic pennies of BUC sell for much less than the US of the time. Demand trumps supply when determining price. So, world coins tend to be more affordable for the history that defines them.

Also, with world, the longer timeline opens more doors. World includes ancients and within Greek and Roman are broad contexts into which all of "America" would fit, hundreds of years of changes, empires, people and places. A large silver coin of Alexandria, Egypt, might be pursued because this coin represents the Library. On the other hand, no one pursues a US coin because the issue paid for The Library of Congress. The two are not commensurate. It is a different way to think about collecting.

One of the reasons that drew me to ancients was that these are the models for the US coins we accept almost uncritically. The Seated Liberties, Walking Liberties, all the eagles and wreaths, they have antecedents in the ancient world that were known to the designers and artists for the US Mint. The Mint Cabinet always held ancients. Perhaps one of the iconic collections (now long dispersed) was that of John Quincy Adams. The Founders of our Republic knew their ancient history from Greek and Latin texts they read.

I recently got interested in the Middle Ages specifically because the economic and financial histories foreshadowed our own globalist society: a plethora of coinages at a time of increased trade. In response, the bankers of the Middle Ages invented "pounds shillings pence" as an abstract money-of-account, much like "Eurodollars" and "Euroyen" today, money from one place used as money of account in a different place.

You see, that paragraph above has nothing to do with resubmitting a coin to get a higher grade.