Hello, As I look at everyone’s treasure, I would like to see some ideas on storage and protective gear for your coins... Rich
I keep my coins in mylars or in coin albums. I also have a small coin cabinet for world coins and keep my higher value coins in airtites if not slabs.
For me, if the coin is not in a slab I place it in a mylar flip and store it in a Dansco "coins" album. If the coin is in one of my sets, it goes into the corresponding Dansco album (US Type Set, US Large Cents, etc.). If Dansco doesn't have an album for a set (like my British Victorian Type Set) it goes into whatever album is available for that set.
Rich, welcome to CT and I hope your time here proves as rewarding to you as it has been to me. I am assuming your question is asking for assistance for your own situation rather than strictly academic so, let me help you by asking you to help us answer your question. There are a gazillion threads on CT that deal with every possible aspect of this topic, and I only exaggerate slightly. To a very real extent, it depends almost entirely upon what you are trying to store and why. For example, the advice for storing modern US circulated coinage would be significantly less involved than that for 18th century full-red US large cents. Also, what do you mean by "protective gear"? From fire? Theft? Flooding? Corrosion? Physical impact damage? The answers are manifold and highly dependent upon what you are trying to protect against and what you are willing to spend to achieve it. But that said, in brief, decide what your protective goals and needs are and how you would prioritize them because your ultimate solution will be a series of compromises. Then do a search of prior threads here to see if it has already been covered - it almost certainly has. Then, if you still have questions, focus them on specifics so we don't have to write 30 pages in the hope that we've addressed your question. So, here's a list of primary hazards and issues to coins and your own wealth and personal safety that you should consider when you are trying to design a group of storage methods. Pretty much all other issues are a sub-topic of one of these. 1) Value of your collection, now and in future, and your budget to protect them. 2) Environmentally-caused problems such as corrosion, toning, verdigris: These require environmental control which incudes humidity, temperature, light. 3) Packaging-caused problems such as corrosion, toning, verdigris: These require selection of individual coin packaging that will eliminate or minimize packaging-induced changes in the coins. 4) Physical Damage: Hard vs. soft coin packaging. 5) Physical Security: Theft, Fire, etc. Home vs SDB. Home safe vs. no safe. Alarm system vs. dog. Issues such as untrustworthy visitors to your home. Do you have family members who would be prone to talk to outsiders about your holdings. For example; a friend of mine (nice, upper middle-class family living in a quite nice neighborhood) who had a nice collection of hunting rifles and shotguns in a home gun safe, had a teenage daughter who talked about them to her boyfriend who mentioned it to some of his friends. Next thing, they were home-invaded, pistol-whipped and forced to open the safe. The perps turned out to be three-times removed from his daughter, a classic "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" scenario. 6) Insurance.
Thanks so much. I was asking about protection from natural elements, corrosion etc. I opened one of my containers and noticed a film around the area where the coin was. The film was on the transparent material that covers the coin when you close it. I think it is nothing but not sure. Rich
I use cardboard and mylar 2x2s and storage boxes for most things, albums for others, shoe boxes for some jars for others. most of it is either in albums or the 2x2s though the boxes stack nicely, just time consuming to get it together 2 decades later from the crown royal bags I used to pile up my circulation finds in. the real key is to not store things away for years and years without checking up on them, if something is going wrong, you won't know until the damage is done. With the flips if the plastic goes milky, or the card gets stained or the staples rust I change it, heck, just the staples rusting is a sign of humidity or moisture being a problem. I think everyone should review their collection at least once a year to make sure everything is as it was left the last time you saw it so mice or termites or a roof leak hasn't gotten to it.
I bought a bunch of used blue PCGS boxes for my slabs ($4 each on eBay) and a 4 drawer fireproof filing cabinet (on craigslist) to put my comics and coins in. Raw coins go in coin flips courtesy of Amazon. I bought the fire safe filing cabinet for $100 (they're really expensive new - this one was like $1000 retail new, no lock so I installed a locking rail and padlock system) and the guys I bought it from helped me and my son put it in my SUV, but when I got home, we couldn't move the dang thing out of the truck and I had to hire a couple of movers to help me get it in the house which cost me $150 - which was $50 more than the cabinet cost!
I take these capsules, leave the coin in them and then place that in these small ziploc. You can write info on the ziploc. I then have larger ziploc to place multiple of the same in one to keep together. Then box and safe.
Store you coins away from extreme humidity and make sure that the temperatures are within a very narrow range. Having the temperature constantly going up and down promotes condensation, especially in plastic holders. Moisture promotes spots and toning, almost never the good kind of toning. Places to avoid are attics, garages and even closets backed by outside walls in cold climates. I’ve seen collections that have been stored in attics were the coins got baked in the Florida heat and in safes in garages that were in the Massachusetts cold. The results were not pretty. It’s even possible to “cook” a gold coin in the Florida heat if it is stored in packaging materials that wilted or melted. A multi-piece U.S. commemorative set with gold immediately comes to mind.
Put your coin in an airtite, then into the tube, then into a hermetically sealed glass jar with silicon packets. Then into a tupperware container. Live in a low humidity arid environment like southern Arizona and have central AC. And then you can slow down the process of corrosion.
