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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3124315, member: 19463&quot;]Of the things I have done in the way of cataloging over the years, the one that has proven best for me was the decision to number my coins in a way that will allow any simple alphabetical sort to place then in proper order as I define it.&nbsp; First you have to decide what that order is.&nbsp; That is the hard part.&nbsp; My code starts with a. R for Roman, a P for Provincial and a G for Greek.&nbsp; Other coins are O.&nbsp; That sorts Greek first, followed by others, followed by Provincials, followed by Roman.&nbsp; Next I have divided each group into 10 sections 0-9 except for Roman which got 36 (0-9 for Republican and A through Z for Imperial and Byzantine).&nbsp; Because of my special interest in Septimius Severus, he got several letters allowing separation by mints while lesser interests got lumped together.&nbsp; The idea is to make the system fit me rather than to force my collection into a canned package. Spaces can be left for expansion at a later date.</p><p>I currently have:</p><p>RA Imperatorial</p><p>RB&nbsp; 11 Caesars (Julius is in RA)</p><p>RC&nbsp; Nerva through Commodus</p><p>RD Pertinax - Albinus</p><p>RE through RM divisions of Septimius through Geta - you won&#039;t have all these but will want more somewhere else</p><p>RN Macrinus through Maximus</p><p>RO Gordian through Aemelian</p><p>and so on until RZ is Byzantine.</p><p>Specialists in Byzantine might want to have a group of sections there where one serves me fine.&nbsp; I do suggest watching your letter choices so the sort order is what you want.&nbsp; BY might sound good for Byzantine but would sort these late coins at the top while something like V0 through V9 wuld allow ten sections of numbers that would sort after Roman and still allow some letters in case you wanted to collect modern coins.&nbsp; Yes, as a matter of fact, I did laminate the master list of my two letter codes and used it frequently until I had memorized it.&nbsp; That only took a couple years. </p><p><br /></p><p>Following that prefix, I assign a four digit number that forces the order as I want it.&nbsp; One way of doing this is to key on a page number or catalog number for a book that fits that section.&nbsp; Crawford numbers could be used minus punctuation.&nbsp; Millennium Sear volumes and pages work as long as you realize you will be assigning places the coin would be if it had been there.</p><p><br /></p><p>Following that I insert a meaningless string that will allow me to separate what follows.&nbsp; I&#039;m currently using a code for which camera took the photo of the coin.&nbsp; That is followed by the four digit sequential number assigned as I get coins.&nbsp; If I buy my 10,000 coin, I am in trouble but I will be too old to care or count by then.&nbsp; Therefore:</p><p>rf&nbsp; 0270&nbsp; bb&nbsp; 0622</p><p>is a Roman coin from section f (Septimius Severus Alexandria) assigned 0270 because I wanted it to sort between 0260 and 0280 photographed with a camera I no longer use and was the 622nd coin in my collection. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]795758[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The point here is a little planning now might make your numbering system work better for you in decades to come.&nbsp; Re-cataloging thousands of coins is harder than thinking when you have dozens.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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