Top ways to build a meaningful coin collection

You can build a meaningful collection of world coins in many ways. This article shares a few of the more popular methods of collecting them.

Collecting by country

There's a whole world out there! So where do you start? The world is full of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe and everything in between. The face of world coins changes constantly as old countries fade into obscurity or break up and new countries take their places.

Many collectors attempt to obtain one coin from as many different countries as possible, including coins from countries that no longer exist, countries that have just formed, others that have been around for a while but have undergone name changes, breakaway republics, and so on. Other collectors try to obtain as many different coins from the same country as possible, but this approach can be a challenge if they choose a country that has issued coins over several centuries.

Collecting by denomination

The United States uses cents and dollars, but as you travel around the world, you run into odd and interesting, traditional coins like groschens, lire, pounds, dreilings, centavos, dongs, ponds, marks, schillings, petermengers, qirsh, rupees, and so on, as well as new coins, like euros. The number of different denominations used around the world is large, and the resulting collection is a lot of fun to create and display.

Collecting crowns

In the context of coin collecting, crowns are not the golden hats worn by kings or the diamond tiaras worn by queens but the large, silver-dollar-sized coins that have been issued by countries around the world for centuries. Most European crowns are known as Thalers (pronounced tall-ers), which are the forerunners of U.S. dollars. (Notice how the two words sound almost the same?) Virtually all the crowns made prior to 1965 are silver. However, in recent years, most countries discontinued the use of silver and now use a silver-colored mix of copper and nickel. Many crowns were made to commemorate special events or people, so a collection of these large, impressive coins can be filled with interesting and unique designs.

Collecting by date

Pick a date and try to collect coins minted in that year from as many different countries as possible. You may choose the year of your birth or some other year with personal significance. You may find that the year you choose has special meaning in another country as well, but probably for a different reason.

You can also focus on a particular century and try to obtain as many different coins minted in that century from as many different countries as possible. Not surprisingly, collectors focus a lot of attention on modern coins and tend to overlook older ones, where lots of good values hide. You can find some really good values in coins from the 17th and 18th centuries. For example, you can buy old Thalers from the 1600s for under $300, while many of the lower-denomination coins from the same period can be had for $30 or less.

Collecting topically

Topical collecting means forming a collection of coins with similar themes or topics. Popular topics include animals, presidents, plants, trains, the Olympics, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, kings, queens, airplanes, bees, and many others. Topical collections are limited only by your imagination.