How do you display your ancients

I was never quite happy with storing my large and heavy new styles directly into felt lined trays. Some needed a bit of persuasion too. After a time the trays became bent and damaged with approx 300 g of unruly silvers per tray.

So I embarked on finding a solution and the 2 x 2 inch Quadrum capsule system seemed to be perfect. Sadly no.

This lovely looking solution is only meant for modern rather thin regular coins not unruly thick ancients. I did ask the manufacturers if they aren't missing a market but deigned to ignore my enquiries.

The storage carrying cases for the Quadrum capsules though are nice.

Then I won a coin from Roma Numismatics and my coin arrived in stylish 3 D style display capsule.

I looked on the bay for the Roma solution which was externally the same size as the Quadrum capsules but can take the thickness of the ancients. I couldn't find any!

Roma kindly supplied me with their specially made 3 D coin holders and this is the solution and it looks great. Some of my large flan New Styles only just fit in but just is good enough.

The Quadrum carry case can normally take 90 2X2's but due to the extra thickness of the 3 D displays I am restricted to 4 trays- 60 coins-just enough with another 4 poked down the sides-enough for my New style collection and my few others.

I am rather pleased with it and can't wait to get the rest of my collection from safe storage to fill the case, but these 3 examples will show how good they look.

I am well pleased.

Regards

John

 

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These are waiting to go into my storage solution

 

Your screen name is certainly apt!

Welcome to CoinTalk

 

Displaying and storing are two different things. The storage has to be physical but you can display virtually. I look at the photos of my coins much more frequently than I do my actual coins. Having it all organized in "the cloud" makes it all that much more convenient and accessible.

I've thought about, as a mental exercise, what the ideal storage setup would be where you could put a coin collection safely for a year or ten thousand. I picture an archival vault with custom racks made of acrylic and lined with teflon on the contact points of the coins. The whole vault would be flooded with argon gas and built below ground surface. Being inert, argon gas would prevent the deterioration of the coins indefinitely and since argon is heavier than air even imperfect sealing would keep most of the gas trapped there.

Ok, enough silly talk.... time for me to hit the sack :-D

Rasiel

 

All in showing the top shelf

 

All coins in display

 

A few more soon.

 

Do not show any coins nor advertisements that you have or have had an interest. Also just give urls of coins in such ads, as the forum frowns on advertising outside of the classified forums as per rules there.We try to be primarily an educational site, but do allow some ads if they are in the correct forum and follow the rules.

Thanks.

Jim

 

Sorry Jim. I was responding to an enquiry. I am not a dealer just a collector.

 

I am in 100% agreement with Ras here. Before I bought my first digital camera in 2000 (a Nikon 990) I took photos of all my coins and made tiny, life size prints which I pasted onto file cards or, later, printouts of my database. I have hundreds of prints of my coins not stacked in boxes that I never look at anymore. Every day, I look at some of my coins digitally on a laptop, desktop, tablet or even projected to a larger TV on occasion. I make a point of seeing each of my coins at least once a year mostly to check for bronze disease or other surprises. It would not seem right to sell off all the coins and just keep the photos but the main reason I can't is I would no longer have coins to reshoot and try to get a better photo.

 

I'm the opposite....I dont collect photos I collect coins and the history attached to each...The photo of a coin is pretty irrelevant to me although I do like using them to overlay scripts and to highlight areas of detail I'm particularly interested in etc..
I store my coins in trays so I can easily pick them up and so keep my collection at around 180 to 200 coins upgrading or even changing themes as and when...

 

I have mine in Lighthouse black velvet lined trays with 2X2 squares. I too like to be able pick them up and admire their artwork.
There is also a draw back on this as I found out only a few hours ago. I went to get a coin out and hit the tray to where almost all of my coins fell out on the table and the 2X2 pieces of paper were all mixed up. Took me a little time to sort them all out again.

 

a pretty elegant bamboo tray homemade by a famous french coin collector



I'm also an Abafil trays fan.

 

@bcuda ...Nice!....I use trays that almost fit the coin with no information ...Each tray is numbered and so is each coin hole...I then have folders with each coins particular id, payment receipt, Old tags and any photos of overlays I've done...All this is also scanned and stored on my pc ...Each coin has its own folder and as new information arises I just add it to the folder, its usually historical events which just gives the coin a bit more depth ...Works for me...
@Kavax ...Love the bamboo trays!

EDIT....@bcuda....Wooh some nice Iberian coins there.

 

Eventually the day will come when I display my ancient coin collection in trays. I plan to put a magnifying glass on top of each tray opening. The optics that I selected are about 2.5 inches diameter and 1.5 inches thick. The inexpensive optics are supplied including a brass-colored holder which keeps the glass from touching the coin. It works great but I have not yet built the optics into a tray.

 

This large diameter optic gathers much light & gives a very nice view of the coin from every angle.


Pretty cool ‘eh?

 

Tend to use the Aluminium cases with different sized trays like this...

 

I miss my younger days when I used cases/trays like these but when the number of coins grew to require more trays/cases than would fit in the bank box or that I could carry at once even in a box, I had to change to paper envelopes in boxes. There is most certainly an advantage to limiting the number of coins in the collection. I suffer from too many 'children'. I can't see myself cutting back to 20, 200 or even 2000 coins which would be so much easier to house. For a while I tried keeping one ten tray case with my favorite coins but lacked a system that would make it easy to remember whether any particular coin was in the case or in a box. I may return to that system when I find that answer. I still believe trays are the best way.

 

I’m in he process of creating labels for 2x2 inch white acid free (archival) paper envelopes. I’m wrestling with the idea of freeing my slabbed coins and transferring them to a mere paper confinement. I’ll display my coins electronically and in printed poster form. My entire collection will fit in a single 2x2x9 inch storage box. The envelope labels will feature minimal information. The country, denomination, and ruler (s) of the region when the coin was in circulation. The Hendin number will be featured and if I need more information about the coin, I’ll go to Hendin’s Guide to Biblical Coins.



Thanks to @bcuda for this excellent thread and thanks to all of the Ancients Forum members who posted images of their innovative ways for displaying coins! I'm thoroughly inspired! Thanks also to anyone I may have missed.

@Limes , @Nvb , @Clavdivs , @Bing , @Victor_Clark , @Ken Dorney , @Alegandron , @ominus1 , @Ed Snible , @NewStyleKing , @bcuda , @Kavax , @Collect89 , @Spaniard , @dougsmit

This was my display method until my slabbing couldn't keep up with my acquiring.



Here’s another method that I experimented with.