By way of full disclosure, I'm primarily a reasonably advanced and focussed national banknote collector but with fewer buying opportunities during the last couple of years have been working to complete/upgrade my Dansco 7070 type set. The original set which had been started when I was in college and then neglected for several decades is now complete, altho there are a couple of upgrades I'd like to make. At some point I had bought a second album for my "left overs" and a few better/more interesting coins so it's also within a dozen or so coins for completion. While I really like the older Dansco product, I'm thinking about consolidating both books into an Intercept album which is more up to date with several coins not represented in Dansco. This would produce one nice - albeit mostly high grade circulated - set and a second one in lower grade either for swapping or starting a new collection (e.g. I'm partial to a couple of dates such as 1825, 1840 and 1876 and have coins which could be the basis for a "year set.") I'm not familiar with Intercept and would appreciate anyone's thoughts about them and any experience that you've had to date. I think I recall that one of the large cent holes is mis-sized and I'd appreciate verification and any thoughts on how you've dealt with that or any other "gotchas" in the album. Thanks for your thoughts and ideas!
I used a Dremel tool and put on an attachment that is a sanding drum. I gently moved the spinning sanding tool around and around the inside of the hole until it was large enough to accept the coin. I was careful not to let it linger in any one spot to make sure the hole stayed round, but bigger. The paper edge ended up a little ragged, but I keep thinking I could take an exacto knife and carefully trim that. It would likely be better if I just took a spoon and ran its bowl around the inside of top edge to smooth and fold down the rough bits. I guess if it bothered me I would have done something by now. The enlarged hole is at bottom right in this photo.
Very helpful, thanks. As a followup, did you work from the back or the front of the page. Also I assume you masked the page to keep the dust down. I thought painter's tape would be good for this but wondered if it removed/marred the finish on the page. Thanks again for following up!
I reamed it out while the page was empty, from the front. I have a puffer for my camera lens that does double duty for blowing dust off coins. After wiping the front and back of the page with a microfiber cloth to pick up dust, I also puffed around inside all the holes to make sure they were clean. Since the page is still empty you could also just hit it with a hair dryer to blow it off pretty thoroughly. I undid the binding screws and worked on the page in isolation to keep dust away from the rest of the album.
