I've mentioned before that I am organizing my world coins and currency into books. I have a front page with a map of the country and a brief history of the nation, then pages of the coins and currency. But I find myself at a loss at how to handle coins from countries that don't exist any more. Some could be from several different nations now. What country would Montenegro be now? Or Sarawak? I have coins from Palistine, I wonder if they could peacefully coexist along side the Israeli ones? Would this lead to War between the Pages? Are the Coins from the Nederlandsch Indies from the same country as the Dansk Vestindien? Is French Polynesie the same as French Oceania? Would the coins of French Indochina be placed with Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos? And Good grief at all those British Colonys. Does anyone have suggestions, perhaps knowledge from organizing you own collections? I've been enjoying the many posts and the wide range of interests among members here, and the willingness to share their knowledge. I'm glad to be here. JonySky
It's a good question, and one I'm confronting (to a lesser degree--I mostly just have my coins alphabetized in a binder by country). I started typing rambling suggestions, but I deleted them. I just think that country names and cultures and history are very porous and mutable in relation to geography, so perhaps your coin collection should be, too. You may have to do a lot of cross-referencing and looser groupings than what you have now--i.e., instead of "Montenegro" or "Yugoslavia", you could have "Coins of the Balkans." Beyond that, I think you have to live with the frustrating ambiguity...
Montenegro became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes in 1918 (after WWI ended the Ottoman rule of the southern region, and Hapsburg reign in the north), which later changed it's name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (southern Slavs). Through all the civil wars and seccessions, Montenegro has remained tied (although much more loosely, now) to Serbia, now taking the name of Serbia & Montenegro. I predict that within the next 5-10 years, Montenegro will finally sever ties with Serbia, and once again become an independent nation, but in the mean time, I would consider them as Yugoslavia, as that is the only coinage used there in the last 80+ years. Sarawak united with several other British protectorates to form a string of commonwealths, now known as Malaysia. Since Malaysian coins are the current coinage in Sarawak, I think that is where they belong. If only the people could behave as well as the coins. No. Nederlandsch Indies (Dutch East Indies) became Indonesia, Dansk Vestindien (Danish West Indies) were sold to the United States to become the US Virgin Islands, half-way around the world from Indonesia. One in the same. The name was changed in 1957. Chances are you don't have a whole lot of any of the above, since they all have issued few coins, so why not keep them all in one album, with maps and information to follow the division of Fr. Indochina into separate nations. My suggestion is to do what works for you. For me, one of my areas of interest is the USSR and the new independent republics that was the Soviet Union. As many of these are new to issuing coins, instead of separate albums for each, I have broken it down into regions: central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan); Trans-Caucasia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia); etc. I imagine that eventually, I will have to begin to divide these out individually, to keep them more manageable, but for the time being, this is what works for me.
Not that I consider the Krause editors to be the world's greatest geniuses , but I have found that by following their lead I can group current countries and their predecessors in a rational manner , which others can understand . I use 20-pocket plastic pages in 1/2" binders, and mostly organize them by current country, either with former components/names in the same album. When that doesn't work, as in the case of some of the Baltic States and components of the former Soviet Union, I just make up some kind of organizational plan. Luckily, last time I checked, there were still no laws mandating what people should collect, how they should organize their collections, or what grades are "collectible."
