I know this is a bit of a newbie question, and I know it's been touched on a lot in previous threads. Trust me, I've run searches, but it's mainly manufacturer websites I'm having a problem with. I need a generic album (or just pages) that'll hold 2x2's. It's probably from my baseball card days that I love albums. But, I can't find anything that simple, or at least I can't decipher Dansco's descriptions sufficiently... Also, knock-on question. I'm not a fan (aesthetically) of the cardboard/mylar 2x2's. I found these (http://www.coinsafe.com/pictures.htm). Any reason 2x2's are better, or that these are bad?
If you go to jpscorner.com and click on "coin wallets" on the left side, you will see a variety of storage methods for 2X2s.
Directly above the coin wallets on jpscorner.com you'll find notebook pages designed to hold 20 2x2s. Jake, Brent-Kreuger, and just about any other supply house, also carries them.
I have seen those before and I have been wondering what they were called (coinsafes). They seem like very high quality products. I would consider them if I was putting a high quality set together. Coinsafes are too expensive to be used for every coin in a collection. A pack of 100 coinsafes cost about $23 for a pack of 100. If you want to mount them in a binder, it will cost you an additional $3.50 each for their 9 pocket pages. Coinsafes are a direct fit holder which means they are designed to only fit a specific coin. They aren't sold individually on their website. If you only need one of a certain size, you are stuck buying more than you need. I would recommend coinflips like saflips for bulk storage. They are affordable and much safer than cardboard 2x2s and they can be inserted into regular binder pages. They are great for coins that don't necessarily need to be displayed but need to be protected. Sometimes you are better off getting a coin album. There are a wide range of them and some companies have customizable albums so you can mix and match the album pages. 3 ring binders can damage coins if you arent careful, the pages tend to pop out and coins can get scratched by the metal rings. The pages also have a tendency to rub against one another and the pages tear easily. If you were planning on going with a binder, find one that zippers. They tend to be higher quality and offer more protection than a traditional 3 ring binder.
Okay, coinsafes for valuable coins, got it. Pyro: Do you know of any examples online of the type of binder you're talking about? Most of the ones I saw seemed to be for specific series (ie: all US pennies, all Canadian quarters, etc)...
I think you have binders and albums confused. Binders have 3 metal rings which binder pages snap into. They are commonly used for sports card collections. They typically are not heavy duty enough for coins which weigh much more than cards do. Coin albums are completely different. They have holes made in a certain size for a coin to fit. Albums have slides so you can see both sides of the coin. They are also not limited to the 2x2 size so you can fit more coins per page compared to binder pages. In the small cents albums, you can fit 30 coins per page instead of 9. This is where things get a bit complicated. If you are tring to put a set together, I would buy a high quality coin album such as Intercept Shield. There isn't enough I can say about them. They are by far the highest quality product I have used and they have anti-corrosion technology to prevent your coins from toning. They also have some drawbacks. You cannot customize their albums, at least not yet. You cannot update the album by adding more pages because the pages are glued in and they don't offer update pages. They are great for sets that will never change such as franklin halfs, walkers, barbers, indian heads, merc dimes, buffalo nickels, etc. If you are putting a set together that is still being made, which to be honest not many us coins are going to be around within the next 2 - 3 years. The Quarter program has been announced and will end in a couple of years, Nickels have already changed, Lincoln cents will change in a few years, the sackie golden dollar will change or be discontinued by 2010. I haven't heard anything about the rosie dime or the kennedy half yet. Then you should go with either a Dansco album or a Whitman Classic album. Both of them are customizable so you can add updated pages in. Whitman also sells blank pages and rub on decals so you can update the albums yourself without having to wait for an update. Whitman and Dansco have a program where you can buy an empty coin album and pick and match the pages you want to put in. Even though Lincoln Cents are still being made, I still would go with the Intercept Shield folder because it's the only one that goes from 1909-2007. The rest of the albums made for Lincolns are in 2 parts so you have to buy more than 1 album for the whole series. For the bulk of your collection, I would get 2x2 boxes for the coins you dont need/want displayed. You can get a cheap cardboard 2x2 box for about $2 and they typically hold about 100 coins each. You can always get a better 2x2 box. Whitman sells plastic 2x2 boxes which are much nicer than the plain cardboard ones. Intercept Shield also sells 2x2 cardboard boxes, but they have the anti-corrosion stuff in them like their albums do. For your proofs and highly valuable coins, I would get whitman 2x2 snaplock cases and store them in a plastic whitman 2x2 storage box. Their 2x2 are similar to grading company slabs. I believe they offer the best corrosion protection aside from having sonically sealed slabs. I would store proofs in these because it protects the coin faces from contact abrasion which breaks the lustre in proof coins. They are also quite a bit more durable than coinsafes. You can actually step on these without harming the case or the coin inside. That cant be said for cardboard 2x2s, mylar flips, coin albums and coinsafes. As of yet, there aren't any album pages made for the whitman plastic 2x2s, but you could probably put them in coinsafe pages; however I have not tried it myself. Intercept Shield also sells snaptight 2x2 cases. They are probably the best quality made at this point, but at $3 each they are a tad bit expensive. If you have extremely rare and valuable coins you can put them in these. For "Ultimate Protection" you can put these into the Intercept Shield storage boxes. Personally I think the Intercept Shield stuff is a bit over the top besides their albums. For coins worth more than $5,000, then I would go that route. They are also great for storing coins that are highly susceptible to corrosion such as zinc, copper and bronze coins. Full red cents are worth quite a bit more than toned ones are. A common year Wheat cent or Indian Head in full red is worth several times more than one which has been toned and has been circulated. For instance, a common year Indian like the 1893 in G condition is only worth $2. In MS67RED it's worth over $30,000 and going up! Sure it took over 100 years to hit that price, but it has a 3,000,000% markup. It is even worth several times more than a proof in the same grade. This is because of something called grade rarity. Certain coins at the time may have been extremely common. Therefore hardly anyone saved them. The rest were all circulated; it wasn't until many years later where people picked up on it's rarity. This is especially true for the 1914-d cent. There were more 1914-d minted than 1909-SVDB, but it wasn't considered to be rare until later when collectors were tring to find them. This is why the 1914-d is actually worth more than a 1909-SVDB in higher grades because there are actually much less high grade 1914-d cents than there are high grade 1909-SVDB because the SVDB was hoarded and saved when they came out. The 1909 Wheat cent was hoarded as well as the 1909 Indian which is why they are worth less than most other dates in the teens. So many were saved as a matter of fact, that you are about 10x more likely to find a 1909 in circulation than you are to find a 1910-1915. I have actually pulled a 1909 plain VG-F out of circulation within the last month. If you have some coins which are in perfect condition now, but really aren't worth anything, it may be worth your time and money to store them away and keep them in perfect condition. Coins make a nice family heirloom, besides they will never be worth less than face value, even if they are obsoleted by some other kind of money.
Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I guess my challenge is that I'm collecting Canadian coins, and so the custom albums don't fit very well (if at all). I'll look into the specific products you recommend, and thanks very, very, very much for all the insight. I've printed this out and stuck it to my wall
I've been very happy putting medium quality coins into 2x2s into the Harris 60 space coin wallets. They are more compact than binders and display the coins well for the price. They are also cheap enough to get a few to sort the coins by type, etc.
most of my collection is circulated coins..but I have a couple of those littleton crap things with the plastic thingy between them..they aint worth squat..they wont hold the coin
