I have been hiding away in a corner as life has been quite busy for me. Thankfully I recently have a bit more time to dig out what I have stashed away. A good past time while I don't feel too well... I have been finding some interesting coins in the hoard. Will leave that to another discussion. My digital camera that I have taken more than 20k+ photos (mostly coins) and the faithful SD card that came with it finally decided to come to an end - sadly with quite a fair bit of photos that I failed to backup... That is a bit of a side track. I'm still struggling to come up with better ideas of how to display coin photos as well as cataloging what I have. I'll be honest - my script writing skill is absolutely hopeless despite how I pride myself on working on digital coin albums. I think the biggest problem that I have is that because it's too diversified, I cannot quite see a straight forward way of cataloging them and presenting them in a more aesthetically pleasant way online. Photoshopping is an option but it does add a lot more time. For instance if you collect both cents and nickels, it might be easy to put them in a Dansco album. One hundred coins may be doable but when it comes to more than a couple of hundred or more - this can be a genuine challenge. I had a look at what I uploaded at omnicoin and was taken back that I managed to take more than 5000+ over the years. Yet I reckon I got a fair a bit more that I have not got around to... Looking for some inspirations here - how would you catalog your coins and display them online? Blog? My style of putting coin photos in rows and columns / tables just look too outdated in today's design by at least two decades...
This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but haven't found any easy way to get it done. Losing track of what you have is just a consequence of being passionate about the hobby while also attending to life's responsibilities. Your Omnicoin page is excellent though and I've used it for reference many times. I would say just keep expanding that.
Sometimes when I'm doing obscure research - it makes me wonder some of the early numismatics pioneers managed it. It could not have been easy back in those days. This is going way back before the days of computers, much less google translate especially with some of the fields I collect. Sometimes I find auction sales quite useful. Even so, information can be very scarce.
I agree that your current listings are a good way to review and enjoy your coins. As always, it comes down to doing whatever you enjoy. Regarding your search for other ideas, I would make two suggestions. 1) One of the things I enjoy most about collecting and studying coins is the historical context from which they came. If you enjoy this or another aspect of collecting, consider incorporating non-coin images and narrative of the history of the country/people who used the coins, for which you then provide a few photos, can make a wonderful presentation that you may also enjoy putting together. 2) I humbly suggest focusing on a smaller goal to begin. Rather than cataloging every coin you have, consider selecting coins of a specific era or historical event. This will allow you to focus on how best to present just those few coins rather than thousands. If you find a method you really like then you can slowly expand or create separate sites/links using a similar theme or method. Always enjoy your posts gxseries. Hope you feel better soon.
You mentioned you want to display them online. I created a few pages through Wordpress. It's pretty easy to use and you don't need to know how to code. Just understand a few of the very basics. It's free for just the webpages and 3 GB of hosting. If your photos were hosted elsewhere you could probably get around that. You could make a home page with subpages and then subpages off those subpages to break them down more finely. Here's a link to one page that I made.
Yeah, take care of yourself, man. You can't drop out on us: Who else are we going to turn to when we need to authenticate a scarce piece from a Chinese Soviet-controlled province, or early struck Japanese, Korean, or Russian coins? And that's just scratching the surface of the stuff you collect and about which you can converse! I have no problem with old databases or sites. Go figure, huh? (Just look at mine!) Your current one works, and I have no problem with it. The only "new" thing I can think of is to create a blog where you upload a group of photos of some (many? few?) coins on any given day, add whatever particular data or narrative you like. Then add tags to each post that somehow(?) automatically catalogues the post according to origin and/or type of coins, which is searchable. That way, you can work on cataloguing your big pile at your own pace. Probably a lame idea, but that's all I can come up with. I'm also thinking of doing something like this, too, but in narrative/database format with the new stuff that I find in research or coins that I collect. Get well, gx. Cheers.
Use Airtable! Here are my foreign certified coins listed online https://airtable.com/shrLmI0rVuKJGG4DL
Well, thanks @Jon Lacy...I just spent about an hour and a half scrolling through the Airtable site . Seriously, that site is feeds a few thoughts I've been having for things from travel planning, organizing my books, and about a dozen other things (oh, and don't forget the tangents--the David Bowie sample ooohhh....). And, of course, coins. Looks like a decent coin database would be fairly easy (well except for the data input) but how nice to have when at a show or something. @gxseries I love your website. Sure, the design is a bit dated looking--sort of like a forum format before an update. HOWEVER, the organization and 'meat' of the site is extremely suited to the coins. A page, relevant information, and the grid photos suit this in a most excellent fashion. Like you say, it's both a display and a catalog for your personal collection. But I would also argue that it's also an information site far beyond those functions, hence the need for more than just a database. Plus, I like the visual/grid appearance quite a bit. There are webuilding sites (weebly, wix, wordpress---why do so many start with 'w'???), where you might find a template that suits. So many of those are geared towards marketing/small businesses, but something might click--information pages that allow for database integration I suppose. I suspect something like Wordpress would work best for flexibility but I didn't take the time to learn it well. I have almost zero actual experience in all this but I did use a 'website for dummies' (weebly) type thing to set up a site. My site is NOT conducive to managing a collection, but does have more than a few photos and one page that does a grid view of my Albanian coins. It was a drag and drop build so easy to set up. But, honestly, all this is window dressing. Your site is pretty awesome and the set up/organization really lends itself to the subject.
Thanks everyone for your kind words and advice. mlov43 - I honestly thought you must have a magic ball somewhere in your room as I found a couple of somewhat scarce Chinese-Soviet coins in my stash and have yet to document them. Or more accurately, forgot about them completely... It looks like this is next on my project. Stork and PatAR hit the nail which I didn't realize. It's certainly too bulky at the same time, trying to balance information. Difficult compromise. Most certainly wouldn't hurt to try something different. It's like trying to 'eat a horse' (apologies to horse lovers, vegetarians). Maybe a type r version - type Reduced Jon Lacy and Hiddendragon - thanks for your links! It definitely made me aware of different ways of displaying.
I too have been wrestling with that problem. My quick solution is start by photoing and entering in a spread sheet with the next coin, or most recent coin you have acquired. This will force you to come up with a process. We certainly have been guilty of procrastination, but am making some progress.
