Questions about Coins
I am not a dealer, I am a collector. No, I do not have a price list. One of these days, I may post a list of what I have to trade, but I do not have anything to sell.
Cleaning Your Coins
Many novice coin collectors, and even a few somewhat experienced ones, often ask the question, “Can I clean up my coins to make them worth more?” The short answer to this question is that cleaning coins the wrong way will reduce their value significantly. In order to understand why cleaning a coin reduces its value, you must first understand some of the factors which effect a coin’s value.
Currency Storage
I store my paper money in inert mylar sleeves. These are readily available in two sizes, small US and large US currency.
Coins Storage
All of the coins in my circulated collections, US and Foreign, I keep in cardboard 2×2′s.
Foreign Coin and Currency
I have a fairly wide variety of foreign money. Most of what I have, I received from family and friends who have traveled abroad. Some have come from the “16-for-a-buck” bin at the coin shop. I organize my world coin and currency by continent. Within the section for each continent, I keep the countries alphabetized. [...]
Canadian Coin and Currency
I don’t lump Canadian money into my “foreign” collection for a couple of reasons. Canada and the U.S. share a common monetary system (though not an even trade), and Canadian coins are found so often here in the U.S., that the money hardly seems “foreign”.
Coin Collecting
Every coin collector strives for a complete collection. What makes the hobby so interesting is the fact that no two collectors have the same definition of the word “complete”. One person’s complete might be, “as many 1956-D Wheat Cents as I can get.” Someone else may want, “one of every coin produced by the Nagybanya mint in Hungary.” The fun is in finding your own complete.