A US type set design album challenge

This maybe the first post I made in the US coin forum so please bear with me. I will put my hand up and say that I do not know much about US coinage. That said, I have been lurking around and do admire some of the early US coinage and looked at various type set albums in particular Dansco 7070.

As I have been designing coin albums for a while, I'm up for a challenge to redesign what is established in the market. Personally, I do not understand the logic of arranging coins by denomination and then arranged chronologically. My idea is that I would like to see it arranged by era and then denomination. This is a type set that I have done for Japan - http://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/japan_type_set_1870_current

For instance, would it not be nice to see an entire series of early 1800s US coinage shown in one section? Gold can be included as well. Beauty of this is that I can rearrange it anyway I want. That also means that I can include some of the newer coins that has been released.

As much as I would like to go ahead with the project, I do not own much US coins or even knowledge to start off with. I would like some assistance with this. To make this clear, this is not something that I plan to make a profit out of and I will give credits to the owners.

I suspect this will be a project that will take more than a few months to plan and execute. I believe what is important is to have permission of using photos to not get slapped with copyright infringement.

Ideas? Thoughts?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

My first concern would be overlapping dates. Most series had different start/stop dates, so decisions would need to be made about which coins were grouped together. SL, Barber, draped busts are all pretty easy, but what about capped bust? Would you have 3 cents with the capped bust coinage? Would the gold go with the SL or Barber coinage? What about flying eagle cents? It would be those kinds of decisions and eras that would lead to having to have say 3 one cent pieces along side the dime/quarter/half dollars. Not undoable, just decisions on what coins would go into what eras, and its highly likely many would disagree with your decision.

 

I think your album is awesome also might be a bit hard to complete unless your near a currency exchange.. But great great...

 

To me arranging coins by denomination then by date makes sense but I see what you're saying. If you don't have it I recommend "A Guidebook of United States Type Coins" by Q. David Bowers. Details on all the types, with enough to get started. I suppose if you already have a Red Book you could probably just skip it and define your own types.

 

Most dealers will let you images if you ask. None have ever turned me down. The best thing about virtual albums is you can group and ungroup pictures anyway you want. I use photoscape - and there are other tools to do same type thing.

PS - nice type set that you have.

 

Another yes vote. I keep my Mexico type set arranged in the way you suggest. Over 100 coins, and the overlapping dates create so many ambiguities that it's frankly impossible to find a completely logical place for everything. I can live with that because I like to see coins in groups that would have circulated together.

 

I think one of the big differences between US coinage many others is that there is never a correlation between a series of coins and a ruler. You might have to get creative when it comes to forming logical groupings to show together. Major design types groupings through Barber coinage might work well, but the 20th century will be a little less coherent. I suppose you could put all the "Renaissance" designs pre-gold confiscation together, then do the "Portrait Age" on another page showing presidential portraits (and Franklin). Split those up into silver and clad.

 

I have been wanting a complete 2 cent set!!!

 

It is a nice set and you should certainly build one. I think I have one or two not included in the collage. Now what I want to do is get another 1872 in MS condition. That will have to wait for a while.

 

Love your Japanese coin arrangement. Very cool.

I always think there's room for new ideas in any industry/market. In the case of U.S. coins, IMO, you'll need to study it and try to find logical groupings. If it's done well, I could see it becoming popular.

IMO, the 7070 is one of the most logical ways to group U.S. coins.

 

So: Why is the Dansco 7070 the most logical way to group US coins?

And where are the early dollars in that album? Like the flowing hair dollar? The earliest dollar included is the seated dollar. A virtual album could include a lot more.
Here's it's first two pages of the 7070:

 

Because it groups the coins by denomination. As far as what coins are included in the album, that certainly can be debated.

 

The 7070 has traditionally been very popular, so it is considered the "standard." There are plenty of other ways to arrange your set, its just that the 7070 is the most common.

The reason it is common is because it is an achievable goal for the majority of collectors. The earliest US coinage is beyond the means of many collectors, but every other series is commonly available as type. You can add challenge to the 7070 by defining your set parameters, but the basic set is relatively easy. Adding the Flowing Hair, early gold, and other types would put the set out of reach for many people.

 

I guess the whole idea is to redesign the album in a more aesthetic manner.

Personally I would like to see a few of the more common elements grouped together, i.e. draped bust, liberty head, liberty seated, presidents and so forth. I understand that the overlaps are something to look at. What I am looking at is to identify where the overlaps are. I'm sure there are reasons why it occurred, i.e. unpopular coinage.

As mentioned, as this is fully customizable, this can accommodate the basic types all the way to commemorative and gold. Yes, I may bother you a bit of your reading time but I believe it may spark some form of creativity interest.

 

Very nice.

But, if you're going to do a digital album, why limit yourself to a flat page? You could show each coin reverse and obverse together and then have links to other pages. You could link to the next coin of that denomination at 3 o'clock & the prior coin at 9 o'clock, you could link to the next year or the prior year at 12 and 6. Finally you can use the other positions to link to the same design (element), the next design (element) etcetera.

 

I've been doing a bit of study and found it interesting that there is a fair bit of overlap. Would there be any reasons why this occurred? For instance the seated liberty with arrows?

As of what I am planning to do now, I'll just design an album with pictures that I find off the internet to have a rough idea. This will allow me to complete a rough framework. When it is complete, I can get rid of the photos and request for volunteers.

 

Sure...

The Seated Liberty arrows come about at times (e.g. 1853) when the silver content of the coin was adjusted (up or down) to make it easy to identify. If this doesn't happen at the end of the coinage year, you get both types in the same year. Sometimes very rare because the change happened early or late in the year.

Plus remember that all dies were made in Philadelphia, so coinage there might start, but it could take months for the new dies to make it out west (train to St. Louis and then horse relays).

 

It has been a while! Hope everyone had a great start. I did not forget about this post - have a fair bit going on. First of all, it did take a while to map out how I want this to look like. To clearly identify the overlap and how I want to present it took the most time. Finding the images and aligning them took a fair bit of time as well.

My first four pages are designed as proposed. Please note that I do not own the copyright of all of the coins and therefore had to make the images small and greyscale. If this is a problem, I will delete this image immediately. (Or the moderators can just delete this link)



Please feel free to comment what you think. I acknowledge that this can be quite unrealistic as the early gold are worth a fortune. I guess what I wanted to see is how they would look like if they were all presented as such. It does look quite neat in my opinion...

 

Nice but highly unaffordable