As longer term members know PCI4's groups were sorted by alloy. PCI5 changed this and went with a chronological breakdown.


From posts on this forum i've read it seems that the newer method is preferred? Perhaps it's a novelty value thing, who knows? From several posts it seems as if PCI5 has put the PCI competition ever closer towards 'perfection' (if there is such a thing), meaning that the coins are more evenly matched than ever and the voting tends to be tighter and less of a series of landslide victories. I guess the PCI motto of "it ain't over, till it's over" rings even more true of late.

However, the 'nekkid' post thread where someone stated we should have a section for naked ladies on coins, got me thinking. (In more ways than one... ) [ha bunny ears how appropriate].

Anyhow i digress, looking towards PCI6, what kind of categorisation would people like to see? A continuation of the chronology, or maybe design based categories?

Of the latter, i mean say the following;

Animal themed coins
Heraldic themed coins
'Liberty' themed coins
Abstract design coins
Quasi-sculpture coins
City view coins
Primitive styled...

The list is probably endless, but you get the picture.

Such a breakdown might lead to more than one aspect to vote upon. Generally in the past setup we have all voted for the coin we like the look of best and/or which one we'd want to own the most. However, a themed breakdown might also add another shade of opinion to the voting spectrum. For example which of the coins is perhaps not only the nicest, but which one is closer to the epitome of the design style group it is in. Heck it might not even be your favourite!


Thoughts?

After seeing some of the results in this competition, I think the US coins may now need the 'protection' world coins needed early in the PCI's development. I do kind of like the time frame categories but it does tend to make some of the categories of very little interest to me while others are of high interest to me. Trade off, I guess.

Not sure if I will be doing PCI6 or not as people may want it before I am in the mind frame to go through it again! I think I probably am up for running one a year. I haven't talked to Anton about it yet, though as I am still busy with this one.

One a year sounds wise to me, otherwise we're in danger of trivialising and potentially overkill.

I would be willing to run PCI6 Stu. Although i wouldn't be able to do such a nifty progress chart as yours.

I think PCI6 should be done this year as it's 2006. Then perhaps hold the competition annually thereafter, PCI7 being in 07, 8 being in 08... etc.

That is something you would have to work out with Anton but, if it comes down to waiting for me, it will probably be started late in the year like last year

US coins need protection, because for the most part, with few exceptions, they are just not that attractive Sad how the allegedly most powerful nation on earth cranks out such despicable coinage. Too bad we cannot resurrect Teddy Roosevelt and have a coin collector giving us attractive designs once more.

I prefer the time frame categories, but one issue seems to be that some time categories, such as ancients are rather skint on entries, and their finalists do not come up again until much later in the competition because of that fact. I have two or three new entries for the Ancients categories, but kind of would like to see them progress with other entries throughout the competition and not just at the end in the finalists position. It presents an issue whence you have a category with few entrants.

I ponder that perhaps that category should be lumped with say Pre-1500 AD coins so that you have a bit more consistency?

Yes indeed.

Ideally, each category would have 32 entries but I knew that wasn't going to happen with Ancients and the rest of the BC to 1699 stuff in PCI5. It was a scrape getting what we got.

Anton did state a few months back that he'd be happy to let me move back in on my old PCI haunts to help you out.

It's just juggling it to fit time at my end i worry about, PCI has got so big these days that it's becoming a mammoth task, one day in the future it'll be too big for one person to handle! Success can be a dangerous thing.

I was just kidding about that really as no one country is going to do well against the entire rest of the world's coinage! I only put that in there, tongue in cheek, because the US stuff is where my interest lies and I want my coins to go further!

I will vote for a type 1 Saint though. I love them.

I don't think on a time line split that that is ever going to realistically happen. As much as i'd like it to. Alot of people say "oh yes i'll enter a coin in that category"... at entry time they don't. Many people asked for an ancient coin sections, duly provided of which only four of us entered. I figure alot of people see the first few entries in each area and think "heck mine's never going to out do those" and thus they don't enter them. Which is a pity. As some of you have noticed i'll stick anything in there! Generally to help Stu fill in the gaps, but i'll stick really battered, worn coins in there, and you know sometimes they even get through to Round 2.

The current system by date though has proved itself better than the original system, but i'd still like to see the categories even out a bit more. One way would be to refuse to accept coins prior to 1700, however, as i think pretty much everyone will agree that whilst this solves the distribution problems it'd really remove alot of the flavour. But maybe i'm biased.

If the problem lies with the distribution of the number of coins which is currently in PCI5, I fear nothing much could be done with it.

Suppose if we tried to divide a line somewhere between those periods, it most certainly wouldn't work! I mean, look at the global world mintage compared from the past to present. We come up with so much new commemorative coins minted after 1950s that this could probably be at least 200 years of work prior to 1800s! (or much likely a lot more). Forget that, quite a fair bit of the world could not, or did not even mint commemorative coins.

Themes might be very interesting - I guess we will have to experiment with that one day. What I had in mind was like how Anton arranged his omnicoin catagories under continents. I personally have not seen the earlier PCI and hence no idea if this was done before.

Hmm Continents!

Ah now there's an idea... i like it.

The older PCI's like PCI4 worked based on alloy (although not exclusively), the categories were generally;

US Coins; Gold group, Silver group, Copper group, Commem Group, etc.

World Coins; Gold, Silver, Copper, Commem, Euro, Bimet, Ancient/Hammered, Tokens/Exonumia*, etc.


*Note; I got it right for once!



The logic behind those groupings were that gold would always thrash silver and silver would thrash copper (i dunno who came up with that idea, for once it wasn't me, but regardless it was wrong). Silver always won out.

Euros, medieval and tokens generally got thrashed pretty quickly. It was also practice to separate US from World as there was much concern that members (or at least the US members) would always vote for home rather than foreign... yet again this was another theory that got well and truly disproven.


Chronology has so far proved itself a monumental success, i'm quite happy to play around with other approaches over the coming seasons to see how it changes things, say themes and continent divisions are tried in two successive PCIs but fair worse than chronology then PCI would return to chronology. If continents went down a storm then i'd stick with that...

With this thing i find the best thing to do is let it evolve... PCI seems to have a mind of it's own.

If the chronology system is to be continued (I think it has proven to be the most equitable system yet), I would suggest subdividing the commems of the 20th century. Thus having 4 categories: 1900-1950, 1951-present, 1900-1950 Commem, 1951-present Commem. This would assure that circulating issues are facing each other.

Yes that's a good idea indeed. I haven't be following any of the 19th/20th century ones so i'm glad you brought that to my attention.