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Hi Y'all! I'm a new member here. Need some help with knowing what forum to post an Exonumia query in. While I am not an Exonumia collector, I have in my possession a medallion of sorts I want to find out about if possible. Any guidance for the newbie would be appreciated!

Require information about a coin or momento with a red indian face facing left (liberty head band) with United States of America 1898 on one side and engraved four symbols (well,flower,horsehoe,plier like object) on the other side, wt 250 gms approx. and made of bronze. Diameter 7.8 cm approx. ? I want to know what exactly it is and it's origin with its current value? I want to Know the exactly what type of this Lucky penny is and also its estimated value!

I only accidentally collect the odd Jetton and wondered where the demarcation line is between Jettons and Medals? I collect Hammered coins and have a couple of Jettons to place them in historical context but wonder if some should be classed as medals.

@Wabnoles: SQL is short for "Structured Query Language". It's the language that is used by most database systems to query information from a database. e.g., when I enter the following query: SELECT * FROM coins WHERE country = "United States of America" AND denomination = "1 cent" ORDER BY date it will give me all USA 1 cent coins in my database, ordered by date. And this query can easily be expanded to include more fields I want to select on. You probably use it too, not knowing it's called SQL. I totally agree with you that it's a lot of effort to get your coins entered, but that is't definitely not "lost time". Since I want to add quite some infomration to a coin, I need to do research on my coins and the high resolution pictures I take reveal things I never noticed before.It turns out I happen top have quite some coins with mint errors like die breaks or coins that had partially filled dies. Or I discover varieties I never knew of.

I recently purchased the following aluminum medal on Ebay for .99 plus postqage. The medal is a little over two inches in diameter and has a green acrylic coating (applied as part of the production of the medal). The legend refers to Leningrad and ??? Can someone help me out with the translation? I assume it refers to the ship or to some sort of heros (the medals below the inscription. The medal is signed on the reverse to the lower right of the Lenin statue. I am assuming it is a mint issue based on no good reasoning except that I saw another such medal refered to as mint issue. Can anyone help me out with more information?

I was thinking about a '67 quarter my previous roommate picked up for his Washington collection. It had been liberated from a SMS, and as Adam Smith is my witness, it had faint frost on it--I'd never seen the like on any SMS coin before. Was I hallucinating, or was there really some frost on some of the SMS coins? Regretfully, no picture. The coin moved with him to Texas. But I'll swear to it on a stack of Danscos. Which leads to a second question... seems like all proof coins are frosted anymore. What changed in the process?

I have no experience with Access at all, never used it. The program I'm developing uses SQL underneath, so I can query whatever I like. There's no universal query field yet, where I can neter a query and execute it, but that's on my to do list. Also not present yet, is a way to export things, except to a printer. Exporting is also on my to do list.

Yep ... if you go the "Me" page, that web site is prominently advertised. It's him/them, alright. ========================= "WHOIS" lookup for "imperialrussia.com": ========================= Whois Server Version 2.0 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Domain Name: IMPERIALRUSSIA.COM Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC. Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com Name Server: NS23.WORLDNIC.COM Name Server: NS24.WORLDNIC.COM Status: clientTransferProhibited Updated Date: 08-may-2007 Creation Date: 25-jun-2006 Expiration Date: 25-jun-2009 >>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:00:28 UTC <<< NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is currently set to expire. 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Hi As I have explained in my introductory post, I am fairly new to coin collecting. I have been accumulating coins mainly euro coins for quite some time, and I am now planning to start storing them in plastic pockets. My query in this regard is there any difference as to the quality of the plastic pockets used? I am mainly a stamp collector and when it comes to storage you read a lot about good quality acid free pages. Is there any similar issues with storage accessories for coins? Actually I found some plastic pockets on ebay which are relatively cheap 5 pages (holding 42 coins each) for a little less than $4. Is this price normal for such pockets or shall I look at something of a better quality ? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Steve, rnumis is a well designed site, and with your permission I'd like to use the Russian images for the literature database. Some observations on your comments 1. While you indicate there is a SQL relational database behind the curtains, that's not what the user sees. I can't query your site to sort high to low on price, display only English titles, show titles in datasheet format with fields of data for lots, russian lots, currency, xchange rates etc, display only leather books, inventory my collection, and a hundred other things. That's because the data about the book isn't formatted into fields. There's just a text description. You may have bigger plans, but what I see is a web site selling books with images and one text field (but without the sort box ) 2. While it's true as you say "there's nothing to download, nothing to install, nothing to fight, it just works", it's also true it doesn't do anything. It works the way all web sites work. There's nothing there I as a collector can use. Information on a book, links to articles written about it, what copies have sold for at auctions, pdf's of the contents, etc. No sorting, no filtering, no extracting, no line item datasheet display, no reports. 3. You list 33 books which you are selling versus a universe of 35,000 or more reference works and auction catalogs on Imperial Russian numismatics. Are you planning on listing and picturing those, even though you don't sell them? 4. What do you plan for the 7700 Brekke/Sevein coins and 1500 Russian medals? 5. While you may plan on rnumis evolving into some kind of Wiki volunteer cloud SQL relational database project, we're not going to see it in our lifetime. And even if you start designing it as such, you're going to need table layouts, query formats, display formats, report forms, and a hundred user functions. Where are you going to get them and how do you know those are what collectors want? Only one collector has stated those functions precisely, and they're reflected in the test database I feel the test SQL relational databases, even though desktop, do everything I as a collector want. It's my feeling other collectors can use the same function but don't know it, but since nobody except you has tested it, there's no way to know. To net it out, there's an existing final design collector desktop SQL relational database. It's up and running and incorporates all the known coins, and a good deal of the literature and medals. It provides all the essential information and sorting, filtering, display, reporting, inventorying, a mechanism for linking to pdfs and web sites, and other functions collectors should want. This versus a web site selling books with images and a text description and no prospect of evolving into anything more in our lifetime. To offer up some distant future vision as a viable alternative to testing something currently up and running continues to puzzle me. Something about a bird in hand comes to mind Ron

There's nothing that clearly identifies the edition; the only thing that is specific is: Moscow 1998 on the cover. Inside on the second page is: УДК 737.1 (47+57), ББК 63.2 (2), Ф32. Perhaps that further identifies the edition. I will take your advice and query Fedorin through M&M. Thanks.

I guess you can call me a Luddite but I am not sure what SQL is... I have been using Access now for several years with my jobs and so building dbs with that program comes naturally to me. I have a simple db that is purely data only but it is in three different formats (form, table, and queries) and can not only be exported into Excel or pdf but also into Word. Queries can be set up for multiple fields and date ranges... so say I want to know exactly what Indian Head pennies I have in my collection so as to avoid getting duplicates I can run a query for "United States" "Cent" and "1860-1909" and it will give me a quick printout of everything I have with notes included. Art it might take forever to go thru everything but I think you would quickly find that as you go thru the coins one by one it would be worth your while. I know I have found a rare issues West German coin (believe it was a 2 or 5 Mark) that had a rare mint mark "G" that was actually illegally made by a mint worker and had a really good value to it... that coin would be sitting in a drawer somewhere or given away had I not taken the time and trouble of going thru everything. In my opinion coming from an archival/museum background one of the key components to keeping physical control of a collection is maintaining an accurate and precise inventory of your holdings. In worst case scenarios where theft is involved, you need to be armed with information to provide the police. I also make sure my family/next-of-kin is aware of what I'm doing so if I were to drop dead tomorrow they would know exactly what I have, where to locate it, and some basic idea of what to expect for it. Most of us who have been into coin collecting can spot good coins, have an idea of their value, rarity, etc. but most of us myself included have next-of-kin family members with zero idea about values or what to expect.

Steve, I too feel like I'm wasting my time, so don't feel alone. 1. I'd hardly call Access with 3 million installations, many on local area networks in the world's biggest corporations, an archaic technology. Millions of man years have been spent thinking through data fields, display formats, etc which I know as an IBM systems engineer is no easy task. 2. A number of these 3 million have the data tables on remote servers, with the queries, forms, and reports as a front end on the desktop. Hardly an archaic technology, since it closes in on a pure cloud solution and capitalizes on all the man years of work corporations have put into desktop or LAN code 3. But in any event, we've always talked about porting the entire thing to the cloud and there's a volunteer task for that so I don't know why you keep bringing desktop up. But if you plan on a cloud solution for Rnumis down the road as a marketing vehicle for literature, coins, and jrns/auction pdfs, which would explain your hostility, you need some things you don't have: a. An indication of what functions collectors want b. An indication that if they had it, they would volunteer filling it up with missing data eg images, pdf/other links, values etc c. The exact specifications of data fields, query relationships, display formats and report formats. You can't start to write code without it. The test database was meant to provide the answer to those 3, each of which is a showstopper to your cloud solution. It works for me as an advanced collector. It has exactly the function I want, I've already volunteered adding data such as links, pdfs, images, forgeries etc. And it obviously has the exact specifications, or otherwise I couldn't have coded it and it wouldn't run. Your view is if you can't have a finished design running on the cloud, you don't want anything, I must admit I never envisioned not a single volunteer would want to try it out, or volunteer even the jrns pdf task which doesn't involve installing anything. And I had spent several hundred dollars mailing out the project to the RNS membership list around the world, so it's not only coinpeople.com. I would have thought a computerized Brekke/Severin/Harris would have elicited some interest. Your experience with Wikidot and Corpus translation appears to confirm lack of volunteer interest. Let Wiki be the guiding light Ron

Thank you for raising this query. I’ve been racking my brains on it. And the closest answer I could gather on this is; Type A has 28 stripes at the edge and Type B has 29.

A number of discussion points came up in the Siberian forgery thread about the database which are perhaps more appropriate here. I will try to address a number of those points. 1. It's important to recognize that the Russian Forgery forums, Steve's wikidot and rnumis, and numerous others sources mentioned in various threads as being all that users need are NOT relational databases, but ad hoc web sites with images, text, links, and perhaps a search box scattered across the internet. You can't filter, sort, compare, extract, manipulate and display the myriad kinds of information shown in many of the screen shots I posted. 2. As far as mobile, a 7" phone or 10" tablet screen is completely inadequate for database work. Even laptop is too small. It's fine for email, news and games, or selling something, but not for relational databases 3. As far as porting to the cloud solution Steve favors, not only would you have a huge time, money, and labor problem doing that (which by the way nobody has done), but more importantly, before you can begin to do that, you have to have detailed data table specifications, codes, query relationships, display formats, report formats etc, in short detailed USER REQUIREMENTS. The desktop relationsal database is a stake in the ground for specifying those, but since nobody has tried it, how can it be determined what users want as function? My 30 years IBM experience showed me that users most often don't know what they until they see it. Did we know we needed Google Earth, iphones, Mapquest, Windows etc until it was presented to us? My question to the sales clerk when I take my wife shopping to Bloomingdales is "Please sir, can you help out my wife? She doesn't know what she wants" 4. But by far, the biggest problem in porting to an SQL server even with the tables, queries, dispay formats al laid out as they are in the test database, is that after spending 5 or 10 man years doing it, you might find that the 500 people who try it don't like it and wouldn't use it. Wouldn't it be better to find that out ahead of time? 5. As far as being too technical, how different is it from downloading and installing any software package to try out. We do it all the time. I've downloaded many trial programs, tried out the function, and didn't like it. But some I liked and kept. But it was no big deal to try it out. It's true I had to spend 3 hours figuring out Snagit, Quicken willmaker, Canon scanner software, Offline Commander etc, but we've all been doing that for the past 30 years with software. 6. As far as collectors doing their own homework, and having all they need on the internet, this is simply not true. It takes a lot of time, you have to search many sites, don't know about most of them, the sites you find won't link you to other sites to supplement what you're after, you still won't have the advantages of a relational database in terms of sorting, filtering, manipulating and presenting all the data, and you will more often then not, wind up with mediocre results. A site won't let you inventory your collection or show you all historical and contemporary occurances of the Constantine ruble. And 500 collectors say for the 1771 Siberian or Mikhailovich Corpus will do the same thing over and over wasting all that time and coming up with mediocre results when a few experts could put the results of all their work into the database for thousands who would then have their expertise. 7. To use an analogy, myself and 500 others interested in the Canary Island 747 crash could independently search out the internet and after a couple of hours get some kind of knowledge of the cause and results. But Wikepedia already has 4 pages of information already compiled and honed over time by a few people, with 20-30 links if you want more information. It's not a database true, but it is an example of what volunteer efforts can achieve in helping others. This is what Wiki is all about Ron

I find this site to have a wealth of information as well as great tutorials, and it's very easy to navigate: http://www.w3schools.com/ You'll need to use some kind of server-side scripting language such as PHP or ASP -- there are probably other languages, but these are usually already installed in most hosting environments (ASP on Windows servers, and usually the database there is SQL Server and not necessarily MySQL, although PHP and MySQL also both run on Windows). If you have a Unix/Linux based host, MySQL and PHP are usually the way to go. Basically, it works like this: the client's browser requests a web page which typically has an ending of .php, although not necessarily so. The server interprets the PHP code, connects to the database, runs the queries, and fetches the data which is returned to the client as HTML text. Many times you will use (X)HTML forms to gather user input which can be used to query or update the data. There are lots of tutorials out there. If you keep it simple, it can be very easy. For implementing the GUI design, you'll most likely use CSS ("cascading style sheets") and probably some JavaScript. You can get away without these for a basic "plain vanilla" design, but most users expect to see things styled with CSS these days. But if your website will be available to the public, be extremely careful about taking steps to prevent hacking, especially guarding against what is called "SQL injection". It might be easier to create a site with some of the many open source website-building frameworks out there (Joomla, Wordpress, Wix, etc.) unless you are doing something special and need to build everything from scratch. Good luck!

Ex, I agree with you 100% but your post only goes to make my case. I offer the following 1. As an expert in Siberian coins, were you to enter your knowledge of the 228 Siberian Brekke coins into the database, your expertise would become the expertise of the 200,000+ Russian collectors. Your knowledge of which of those 228 have been reported forged, your images of the original and forgery, your text description/analysis, and your rating of DOD (degree of danger/difficulty in identifying eg 8.5) would be of immense help to other collectors. Put something like this into the database for your Siberian coins 1796cipher4k A DOD of 5.0 would be pretty easily detected while a 9.5 would be virtually undetectable. I issue you a challenge. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to pick out your favorite Brekke Siberian forgery, preferably with multiple forgeries, and send me your best images of original and forgery obv/rev/edge. Write up your text assessment, include any important links you have on the coin, and give your DOD rating 1-10. I'll enter your input into the database, and post screen shots of what the database puts out for your coin 2. An expert in the 1912 Napoleon ruble forgery could do the the same and you would then have their expertise. This is what Wiki volunteer is all about. Volunteer expertise input for the benefit of all 3. I doubt that all 7469 Brekke/Severin coins have been forged. Too many are too common to be worth the effort. JRNS in a recent issue said they had cumulative reported 232. The forgery universe might be 400 or 800 of the 7469, but certainly a manageable task if divided up among several dozen collector volunteers. The point is nobody knows, yet the data is out there to know, but it has to be assembled into a SQL relational database before we can know 4. As far as sigi's comment about having to have the coin in hand, this may be true for some but not all past/present forgeries. There's a lot of older or mediocre forgeries floating around. Plus if you're buying by mail, you can't have the coin in hand. You have to make do with what you have. If we can catch 90% of them from pictures or if it has a DOD rating of 9.5 saying stay away from the coin, it's better than buying a coin with no info at all 5. As far as Russian forgery forums, Ebay Watch, sites, etc, I don't want to have to search 50 million places to find what I want and assemble the info. Why have 500 collectors all doing the same work? I want the work of one to go into the database to give me and others most of the information we need and point us via links of where to go for more. 6. It's important to recognize what a database is. The data comprising a coin has to be mostly codes of the thing. Codes for metal, czar, denomination, mint, original/novodel etc. Not copper or Peter I but the code for those. It also has to use Structured Query Language SQL to filter, sort, and extract the data to display. If it's not that, it's not a relational database but rather an ad hoc collection of text files, images, excel spreadsheets, html pages, web sites, etc with limited filtering, sorting and analytical capability 7. Forgeries are only one byproduct of the database. Apart from forgeries, there's a lot of additional benefit of being able to filter, sort, read links of articles on a particular coin, read JRNS or auction pdfs, analyze auction prices, know current valuations, inventory collections etc all out of one place. The relational database is where all our collective expertise can be assembled. It's puzzling to me why no one has tried it out and reported on their experience Ron

UPDATE 4/09/2013 Note: It is not necessary to have Access 2007 or later installed to install and run the test database. The only requirement is Windows XP, Vista, 7, or 8. Lacking volunteers for the Forgery Task of going through the 52 jrns forgery articles, I began the task by entering 11 forgeries from jrns85-40 into the coins.accdr database with the following observations: 1. None of the forgeries had edge/weight/analysis text/manufacturing method eg casting, engraving, etc. Just pictures & name of the coin 2. I was able to identify all 11 to a Brekke/Severin variety 3. Images of the original coin were obtained from 1. internet search 2. Brekke/Severin/Uzdenikov scans 3. Corpus. In that priority. A $10 DVD of the Corpus was found on Ebay 4. Images of the forgery pages were scanned from jrns85-40. 5. Microsoft Paint was used to rotate the page, select the coin, crop it, and save it as file name Accessid#.jpg to C: RNS\rnspictures where all images reside 6. The importance of edges became apparent in identifying forgeries, so the original/forgery comparison form was redesigned to show edge as well as obv, rv, and text for the original & up to 3 forgeries 7. While the forgeries are an integral part of the coins database and meant to be used as such, the following screen shots are made available to show the results without having to download & install the database. Note 1912 ruble has much text for original & forgery which can be zoomed to full page in the database. DOD in the 1796cipher4k example equals degree of danger/difficulty in identifying as a forgery eg 5.5. 9.5 would be almost undetectable. 1704 1k 1720poltina 1723ruble 1726plate5k 1748ruble 1764Siberiapoluska 1787Taurida5k 1795MM5k 1796cipher4k 1912napoleonruble Datasheet31forgeries Form1912ruble DatabaseControlPanel Note: The current test coin.accdr database does not have these included. It's work to package up a new run time version and 3 or more volunteers continue to be needed to download, test and comment on the results and take on the 12 tasks listed on the Database Forum at the rnsdb home page It's important to recognize what a database approach is. The data comprising a coin has to be mostly codes. Codes for metal, czar, denomination, mint, original/novodel etc and has to use Structured Query Language SQL to filter, sort, and extract the data to display. If it's not that, it's not a database but rather an ad hoc collection of text files, images, excel spreadsheets, html pages, web sites, etc with limited usefullness

Every time I click on a category like "coins" or "banknotes" I get an error page that says the following: IPB WARNING [2] mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Unable to save result set (Line: 457 of /ips_kernel/class_db_mysql.php) There appears to be an error with the database. You can try to refresh the page by clicking here. Error Returned then a dialog box that says: mySQL query error: SELECT s.member_id, s.member_name, s.member_group, s.id, s.login_type, s.location, s.running_time, t.forum_id FROM ibf_sessions s LEFT JOIN ibf_topics t ON ( t.tid=s.location_1_id) WHERE s.location_2_type='forum' AND (s.location_2_id=4 OR t.forum_id=4) AND s.running_time > 1178912469 AND s.in_error=0 SQL error: Got error 127 from storage engine SQL error code: Date: Friday 11th of May 2007 02:56:09 PM What the heck am I doing wrong here???

The coin I posted in the Omnicoin gallery is worn enough on obverse to explain 0,07 g deviation from the book weight. Please have a look at another NFLD 1904H 20 Cents coin certified by ICCS, and in particular at the orientation of this coin in relation to the seal of the plastic pocket. http://www.bay.ru/ebay/item/130617294260?&category_id=149938&category_name=twenty-cents&page=1&query=&results_view=list#link It looks like this coin is much closer to medal than coin alignment. It is somehow difficult for me to accept that a renown Canadian third-party grading service would grade a Canadian coin that "does not exist". Maybe the Charlton catalogue missed the medal alignment of NFLD 1904H 20 Cents?

I guess I need to be more specific with my query. My apology for assuming too much in my brief query. I know the token relates to the Spanish-American war. The term -- Yanko-Spanko -- was coined by the British press as I understand it, but I don't know any more about it than that. I know that William Randolph Hearst is credited with a statement to one of his reporters to the effect that the reporter shouldn't worry about the lack of a war, he would deliver the war (through his press). I know of at least one pinback refering to the Yanko-Spanko war showing a Spaniard (with a bandana, not what appears to be a sombrero) over Uncle Sam's knee being paddled with a board with a nail in it. The Spaniard is labelled "S-PAIN." The button appears as if it might be a patriotic piece, but it could be satirical as well. I also know the country was divided over the imperialism versus anti-imperialism represented by the war. I am assuming the statement on the reverse, Dewey, Remember the Maine He Did, is a statire on the numerous patriotic Dewey buttons and tokens imploring the country to Remember the Maine. I'm wondering if this piece is linked to any specific movement such as the Anti-Imperialist League or other political group. I may be misinterpreting the "sombrero" and exhibiting a total ignorance of Spanish hat styles of the period (to which I will confess now). The manufacturing company that signed the piece made aluminum bodies for stringed instruments up to 1898. It apparently switched gears or already had an expanded product line (more likely). That suggests to me a political group in the northeast, but even that may be out of line. (I can draw some weak, but interesting links, such as the fact that C.L. Hutchinson was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League and chaiman of the Fine Arts Committee of the World's Columbian Exposition, certainly no stranger to the production of aluminum tokens given their prevelant use in the exposition.) Anyway, just sharing some thoughts about where my research is leading me (perhaps to a dead end beyond what I can discern from the piece itself). Thanks for looking. Bill

The late Robert Matthews told me of an Early American Copper exhibit that displayed Large Cents and Half Cents that had been put to other uses, among them, machine gears. On the frontier in the 1820 and 1840s, hard metal was rare. You should query Early American Coppers, explaining your needs. http://www.eacs.org/ They are very supportive of the hobby. You can drop Bob Matthews' name and mine to get their attention. http://www.eacs.org/

Ahhhh come on. You really take that hard a line on this, even though the surcharge split is openly disclosed in the text of the auction and includes the cost of the surcharge. So even though the buyer is fully aware of cost and the source of the cost you'd still disallow it? I think your selling the savy of the ebaying public a bit short,,, I think they can do the math,,, I think it's not a matter of a seller taking advantage,,, and I think that it's fair to both parties so long as they mutually agree to known terms in advance of a purchase. I have more important things to do than point/click and navigate through the entire volume of ebay's policies and practicies,,, Generally use the law of common sense and try my best to be up front and honest when selling,, and ALWAYS intentionally undergrade any coin I sell,, which I think has made a few folks pretty happy..... and demonstrates that I could give a crud about making a dime on any coin I've ever purchased,,, although giving them away at a significantly lower cost than I purchased them for bugs me,,,, which is why I try to split the pain of the: ebay listing fee ebay final sale fee paypal .30 fee paypal 2.9% sale fee stamp envelope gas.... and my time (of which I've none if spent reading ebay policy). I think the differentiation between "extra" and "split" is a real one...... and apparently most ebayer can do the math and don't mind a bit,,,, as most of my recent auction winners have paid via paypal with no complaints, and have split the surcharge with me. It's convenient for both parties to use, and if mutually agreed the cost of the convenience and security should be allowed to be split,,, IMO. Good stuff.,,,, I'll let ya know what ebay says when they reply to my query. I was, by the way, not at all argumentive in my query to them. Simply asked the question regarding an agreed split of charges and fully intent to follow thier guidance. Cheers,

http://worldcoingallery.com/countries/coine.php?image=img5/130-200&desc=Netherlands%20km200%201%20Gulden%20(1980)%20Investure%20of%20New%20Queen&query=Netherlands%20km%20200 Can't see that it's silvery like me in the middle.. but idk. http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=6&threadid=767756 I read on this topic now that that Z should be added by the Mint Mark on the obverse.. I'll check my coin out and come back.

Most of us here in the USA rely on the same books: The Standard Catalog of World Coins by Mishler and Bruce, published by Krause. We call it the Krause SCWC or just the SCWC. Technically, it comes out new every year, but most of us make do for many years with some recent edition. The books are expensive. Krause has published a CD also, about at about half the price. Online, many of us here at CoinPeople rely on the Omnicoin website, http://www.omnicoin.com where you can search by year, country, etc. Often, if a coin has special value, that fact might be given along with the image. Omnicoin is a collectors website, we post images of our coins there for our own reference and for others to appreciate. The information you seek about rarity is known, but information has market value. Someone has to query all of the world mints, assemble the information, and publish it. That value is protected against copying, both legally protected and technically protected. Anyone who pays for the books or disks will help another collector with a specific question, but no one is going to give away a ton of free information. As a collective effort, Omnicoin is as close as it comes. Good luck, Mike M.