I have been happily collecting modern (1900-present) coins from my travels and friends generous gifts, and have filled three binders with my collection. In the process, I have also stashed many duplicates, triplicates,etc. What effective systems have others used to organize, store and retrieve duplicates for trading or donating? Mine are in several baskets all in a jumble. Thanks.
I was engaged in a thread a few years back where a number of coin enthusiasts debated "what is a collection" and "what are collectors". Essentially, the discussion was about coin collecting vs. coin hoarding and the murky line between. Everyone is going to have to make that determination for themselves, but this was my journey: As a youth, I was a collector and a hoarder. I built albums/folders and stuck coins in flips but I also had containers of this-and-that with all of the extras. Anything old in my mind was 'collectable'. I took a significant break from serious collecting for years (school, work, family...the usual suspects I suppose) but I continued to hoard anything old and toss all loose change into a large container (water jugs) to review at another time. Eventually I got back into collecting and was glad I did both (I picked up variety hunting). I've picked through the hoard and loose change and decided to release what was left. Rolled up everything and went to the bank. Shortly after, I learned about this-and-that variety, but my stash was gone. So I picked up CRH and went back at it. The trouble though was that my jugs of loose change had several high grade coins that were in suspended state since they entered the jugs at yearly intervals. I am sure I returned some high grade varieties; but you can't keep everything. That said, I decided to build roll sets by year/mm for Lincoln and Jefferson. I keep the very best and toss the rest into buckets (nickels anyway). When I come across youngsters who are interested in collecting, I will give them a bucket to search through...find their very best specimens by year/date. This gets them going. These are circulated specimens so the hope is that they will take it from there, upgrade and improve their collection. By whatever means. So, there is a benefit to hoarding if you plan to revisit it to find collectable items. Otherwise, if you don't have youngsters in mind, the rest should go back into circulation. I keep my roll set for trading with other collectors, so I try to keep VF coins or better in those rolls...but there are lesser grades especially for the semikey/key date coins. Otherwise, the collection will be thousands of dollars face value if you intend to keep everything. On a similar thought, some folks are hoarding 'copper' cents. I don't see an advantage in that as precious metals increase value more rapidly. A $100 in gold or silver is a better bet than hoping $100 in copper will ever match the return. But to each their own. I like to think that I'm a collector with soft side for hoarding some coinage temporarily to engage a new collectors into the hobby. My wife may have a different opinion on that though. Good luck!!
I had the same problem with holding coins for over 70 years. Since I was an active collector since 1948 I had many duplicates of very nice coins and some semi keys. I have attached a posting of mine demonstrating how I am handling it. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/sorting-my-70-year-accumulation.330231/ I will attach another part of my process in the next post.
The next thing I did was https://www.cointalk.com/threads/what-to-do-with-my-accumulation.341614/ Making type sets for my great grandchildren. At the time I had 19. I now have great grandchild number 20 due in June. Plus, I have many nieces and nephews to get started.
