I'm new today, so hello to everyone! I apologise in advance if this is of no interest to anyone but I thought it might keep my sane throughout the process, and that I might pick up some tips or advice if I'm going about things the wrong way so please jump in if you so wish. I'm sorting a 'lunchbox' coin collection which I suspect could be 400+ coins. I am an absolute beginner with no experience and have just decided to crack the box open today and give it a go. It looks to me like a travel collection, I don't expect to find anything of value & they haven't been looked after, however I'm interested to look through & catalogue what there is or the box will sit there forever and I'll wonder whats in it! My approach so far... 1) Sort into colours: gold/brass, silver & bronze 2) Arrange into size then into duplicates/singles 3) Research coins using Numista & Coin Quest websites and do a good google for any that I get lost on 4) Ask on forum as a last resort - I don't want to bug everyone! 5) Catalogue everything on Excel by recording currency, denomination, quantity and any notes of interest Are you all very experienced or is anyone tackling a similar task? How did you approach it? Thanks for reading this far
Quick question. Is this your collection, and can you please post a pic (to keep us interested)? Thank you.
It seems like a reasonable approach! I've never done anything similar...except create an Excel file for my tokens...but they're first organized by U.S. state, alphabetically by military installation, then denomination. Outside the U.S. it's country, then alphabetically by base.
Nice to hear from you - i know it cant be the most interesting thread!! This is my husbands collection which was just sitting in the house - well more of a collection that was passed to him, and he's also added a couple travel coins/notes. I shall get a picture up asap Like I said, doubtful there will be any of value but i still think its quite interesting as they are from all over.
Sounds like you have a good plan of organization. Researching what you have should be fun. Keep us posted.
Hey sounds like a plan. And there are loads of folk from all over who may help with the identification of the difficult ones. Pictures are always good.
So here's some quick pictures of what I'm working through- hopefully this works? There's many very modern coins in there too but I'm quite enjoying cataloguing anyway. Hopefully I'll get some clearer pictures up soon. Seem to have a couple of Chinese coins which are unbelievably damaged one drilled to bits I'm told (my first thread/profile pic). I found another another which LOOKS a bit like 1 Cash 1796-1820, Jia Qing Tong Bao, it's round with edges damaged/cut it seems? Also aware there are many counterfeit ones so I'm sure I've got it wrong. I'm working through the silver coloured ones today.
@Lem23, Welcome to CT. Please do not attempt to clean these coins on your own. Cleaning will hurt the value. After you've sorted through them and gotten a rough idea of value, you may find none of them have much value, but to be on the safe side, I don't recommend cleaning them until you identify the coins.
