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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 1471593, member: 112&quot;]You&#039;ve kind of gotten your answers. Coin cabinets were used for centuries. And for centuries the only people who even collected coins were the Nobility and Royalty, which is where the hobby got its name. Though many are not aware of it, coin collecting was well established long before America was ever even discovered. A book on coin collecting was one of the earliest books ever printed on the printing press invented by Gutenberg. Prior to that they were all written out by hand of course. But the point is, that books on coin collecting even existed that long ago. And that they were important enough to be written at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, coin cabinets were about all there was until sometime in the 1800&#039;s, other than the odd containers have been mentioned. But it was in the 1800&#039;s that paper envelopes were invented and eventually somebody got around to making them small enough to be used to store individual coins. Paper coin rolls came around in the late 1800&#039;s or early 1900&#039;s - the exact time is debatable. In the late 1930&#039;s the first coin folders were invented. They were largely responsible for the explosion of coin collectors in the US. That is when the hobby really took off. </p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, there were times when there were increases in the number of coin collectors prior to that, notably around 1858 when Proof coins began to be made and issued on a regular basis and made available to the public. And if I recall correctly there was another increase of popularity in the 1880&#039;s and another around 1910 or so. But it was in the late &#039;30s when the popularity exploded. And at that time paper envelopes and coin folders were about all there were for coin storage.</p><p><br /></p><p>I cannot give you an exact date range, but I believe it was in the late &#039;50s that coin flips were invented, might have been the early &#039;60s though. Probably around the same time 2x2s came along. I can tell you that well into the &#039;70s coin folders/albums and paper envelopes were far and away the most popular storage methods. And as time and technology went on plastic, and its benefits began to make its inroads. The US Mint issued its first hard plastic coin holders in 1968. And that was really the beginning of modern coin holders.</p><p><br /></p><p>But even today, we still do not have a coin holder of any kind that is airtight and that by itself can prevent a coin from toning. But what we have today if a far, far, cry better that what was available when I first started collecting coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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