How Best to Arrange a Collection

Excellent question. I do not have an excellent answer. My collection is Roman Republic (by Crawford #), Italian cast bronze (by Vecchi, ICC #) and Roman weights (by Bendall).
I keep one XL spreadsheet for coins and cast bronze. I enter data by purchase date and then have a second page sorted by estimated mint date. I use Crawford for mint date, even when more recent studies tweak mint dates. Cast bronze pieces do not fit this model well due to wide ranges for mint date. I am considering a separate page for cast bronze.
I store the coins in trays that fit in my lock box, and that has led to random ordering of most of my collection.

 

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My medieval British coins are arranged by number in the Spink catalog

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/index.php?cat=38961

My collection is much more haphazardly stored. Like coins are placed with like in bags or AirTite tubes in the safe deposit box. As my collection is a mix of coins that are small, large, and in slabs, and because I keep my coins in a SDB, I have not come across any one storage solution that fits my needs. Most of my coins are in Air Tite holders. For display and transport I will put them in a binder or in Abafil trays. Coin tags are stored separately

 

I generally sort by:

1. Chronology
2. Then catalogue number
3. Then weight/diameter
4. Date of acqusition

 

The problem with anchoring your numbering scheme to a catalog is that if/when it's updated all your work goes out the window. I realize that for many a collector that would be a welcome job since it ends up re-engaging you with your collection but in many cases I think it's like needlessly baking in an expiration date.

When the OCRE database was launched I tried to reason with its lead developer why it was such a boneheaded idea to marry itself to RIC but it didn't register. Now they painted themselves into a corner since new variants must be either awkwardly interspersed or tacked on as a supplement (which is even more awkward). And if RIC gets a reprint then that part of the database has to be redone and creates all sorts of problems for the userbase.

Basically, in designing a cataloguing system you should try avoiding inefficient schemes that could cripple you later on. Or at least think of a system to work around them as they come up. Again, in the case of the average collection the number of items is small enough that this is never really a major issue.

Rasiel