What is a best cheap coin holder?

I mostly use Whitman plastic 2x2's especially for quarters, half dollars and large dollars. A box of 25 runs about $.80 each delivered.

 

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Quantity determines acceptable costs. If your collection is 200 coins of moderate value then you could put each in the most expensive holder available. If your collection is 50,000 pieces and your duplicates and traders number in the hundreds of thousands you want the cheapest possible holder for your duplicates and you will gladly reuse anything used that you have laying around. In both cases your best pieces deserve your best holders. Other than heritage or famous collection pieces few collectors will keep coins in the holder they bought them in so it is senseless to send a coin out in an expensive holder. The sole exception being when you want to highlight the rarity of a piece that you are selling at a show or through a major auction. Even then the auction houses will usually remove the coin from the holder for the photograph and place in their favored form of protection.

 

My Lincoln cent coins are in 1 1/2 X 1 1/2 Staple type holders. That allows me to put 30 coins per page, that is 10 P's, 10 D's, and 10 S'. That was a request from my Father, well I did find a scrap piece of paper in his stuff that said to collect 10 of each. He used them and all of his coins have survived longer than him and more years than I am old. Have fun collecting.

 

This is the problem with the cardboard holders. I purchased two coins from a dealer, and when they arrived, the bubble envelope, the receipt wrapping the coins and the holder had been damaged in transit. Beyond cardboard dust and risk of staple damage, the holders just offer no real protection.

 

Well, this should make everyone cringe....
I take a small tinker's hammer and....whack, whack, whack, whack....
Flat staples.
I do put my finger over the coin so as to make sure it's really painful if I make a mistake...which I haven't so far. Well, except for the finger tip a couple of times.
And bear in mind, I've only put low value US coins in the 2x2's.
On the other hand...my newly acquired ancient coins are highly cared for.

 

Been using the cardboard 2X2 flips for years they work good.

 

Does anybody remember when they quit making the cardboard flips that had the square window and were also were available in different colors.

 

Airtites are a real cheap investment for any of your top coins.

 

I occasionally get in coins with square holed cardboard flips or colored. I used to see them available years ago in department and hobby stores. I haven't been to a mall or department store in decades and nearly ten years since I've been in hobby lobby. You may be able to find colored flips by an amazon search. Someone somewhere has millions of them laying around I'd guess.

 

If you can not buy them they could easily be made by using white cardboard flips and using pastel high lighters in many colors.

 

Not to mention the volatiles in highlighter ink used in that volume ought to be good for a sizable buzz while you're coloring.

 

That would be if you colored the entire 2x2. I've also seen a high light along the top edge only or the corners. Someone may know enough to tell us that the volatiles in the ink would damage coins. I wouldn't know myself. In my time in Germany we put black magic marker on dug Nazi zinc coins to bring out and contrast the details. You could still smell the magic marker weeks later so no one was fooling anyone.

 

If you are disabled well give us a ding! if only mildly disabled give a rousing 2 rings. well there you have it , lets go with the pastel's I agree with pink, maybe salmon?

 

What about uniformity in presentation within at least a coin series? Example,
I have recently begun dabbling in Registry Sets, specifically NGC War Nickels, and have completed a couple. Never a big fan of slabbed coins for a number of reasons, It is a nice presentation and a great safe way to view, discuss and just play around with a collection without fear of damaging the coins.

However, here's my lowball Silver War Nickel Set:


Kinda ugly, eh? Yet, it's also got character...

Buy the coin, not the holder they say, yet, NGC no longer allows PCGS coins to be registered in a competitive set, and PCGS never has. So, I have specifically ignored some nice PCGS coins simply because they stick out like a sore thumb when you look at the whole set, AND, they're not allowed in my competitive set, which is now ranked #94. I know it's fairly meaningless, but it's kinda fun.

Now, compare the hodge podge mixed bag melting pot look of the above to:



Big difference.

Yet, I have a lot of issues with slabbed coins and TPG in general, ie:

1) It's expensive to have a low ticket coin graded and slabbed and it inflates the price ridiculously.

2) It casts a Star Bellied Sneetch discriminatory shadow on RAW coins, even such in USMINT original packaging and clearly MS+ specimens in 2 x 2's and generic capsules and flips.



3) It fuels our mass paranoia yet genuine fear of becoming victims of counterfeiters, a problem which is getting worse every day.

4) You can't touch your coins. I know you shouldn't anyway, but there was always something fun and special about "now hold it like this, by the edges only..." from the "GOOD OLD DAYS..." I remember my father telling me stories of getting a silver dollar every year for his birthday and part of his growing up was going outside and playing with them in the dirt...

5) We can too easily get caught up in the grade and the slab and forget the unique attraction of each and every coin, whether MS70 or one with slight character dings, bag marks or even severe circulation wear, a little piece of history in each one.

So? I buy slabbed when I have to, I also love to stack, and I keep loose oddballs and unsearched in jars or boxes, and try to keep my eye on the coin and not what it's in.

 

And TONING to die for.

 

For the cheapest option, I really like the soft, thick, malleable PVC-free vinyl flips. One coin supplies store in Henderson, NV had it and they were custom made, but I can't find it anymore.