It would take me too long to count all the Lincoln cents in boxes, jars, bottles, etc. in my "collection." I had them all on one side of a mid-size moving van and the truck listed. One day, I'm going to search them all. So I'm 1000+
Really curious now. What do you use them to reference? Grade? Are they US, foreign, tokens? Anyway, please tell me what you use the reference collection for? Please...
I wrote the book of slabs, all the companies and all the holder varieties. The book had images of over 500 different varieties. Something like 98% of the images were of pieces from my collection and I use that collection (to which I am still adding) for comparison to other potential varieties. If someone turns up something that may be new I refer to the reference collection to see if it is already known. Most of the are US companies but I also have British, Hong Kong, Australian, Canadian, and Polish services represented.
For the same reason that I don't have a focused collection, I can honestly say I have no idea. No lists, not even grouped together. Not even sure how I'd classify or count all my 90%.
THANKS. I read that the person who wrote that book (Kiefer?) died. Did you take over or were you a coauthor or is yours another book. There is a web site showing different sample slabs. I emailed them about a sample slab not shown but got no response.
Cameron Kiefer catalogued sample slabs. He committed suicide, but his work has been carried on by a couple of folks (some of whom frequent here). Condor studies production slabs. His book is unrelated to the sample slab book (which, I think, was based on Kiefer's work, but published after he died). Condor published his book several years ago. Many of us are hoping for an updated second edition - he is the foremost authority on production slabs (outside of the TPGs themselves, of course).
431 and counting. Mostly in the form of a US type set, world silver and British Empire collections. I don't pursue date series, so that keeps the collection on the small-ish side.
Cameron grew up on the coin forums and built the Sampleslabs web site. Conder101 helped Cam with some of the information. Cam was a member here and went on to become a coin grader for one of the services. When he died, some cool folks stepped in to keep the site running. I think Conder101 was one of them. Conders book is a great tool. I bought the CD version. It's been many years ago. I hope I have the story correct.
Out of 7103 1750 are US, 624 are Canada, 481 are Britain, 368 are France, 325 are Sweden, 293 are Australis, 286 are Norway, 282 are Japan, 242 are Mexico, and 186 are Iceland. That's my top 10. The rest are about 90 foreign countries ranging from one coin to 162. A lot of my foreign coins I picked out of boxes at coin shows.
Now that many of us described our collections, how about you? I/we want to know how big your collection is and what you like to collect.