wabnoles

Ah then in that case I am very familiar with SQL and in fact build the queries on that. You are brave to do the additional research and scan everything... like I said before my primary objective is to keep inventory to avoid duplicates where possible.

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.

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.

ps I don't sell coins for profit but rather to reinvest into the collection... I wanted to get my nephews some silver dollars and was able to sell off some of the stuff from the St. Augustine grab bags (as well as this from this hoard) to get together enough to buy two silver dollars.

Well they were all in good condition... I managed to sell them on ebay for about $35 plus kept another $5-6 worth of Canadian money that was in this bag lol. There was also a full set of 75% silver 1944 Phillippines coins (two 10 centavos, one 20, and one 50) that came in a $3 bag. I managed to secure four bags for $10 and all four had silver in them. There was British, Dutch, Dutch East Indies, Swedish, and Australian silver. All in all it was close to 2 oz of silver plus the intrinsic value of the rest of the coins. All in all a very good day coin shopping (but it wasn't at the place in St. Augustine I was mentioning). The funny thing was as I walked in and saw the silver quarters from a mile away the lady (who was supposedly a "coin expert") was telling me "Oh yeah there's coins but they're just foreign coins" lol. There was a 1933 Russian 3 Kopek in pristine almost uncirculated condition plus a number of British, French, and Australian coppers. Basically got paid $20 to walk away with some really good coins.

Am I the only one who uses Access for keeping track of the coins? I understand the functionality of keeping all those data fields, including the photos, but I do not really have the time and energy to scan every single coin but rather prioritize. The only fields I keep in the Access db is year, country, region, denomination, metal content, total gold or silver weight and purity of coin, rough estimated value according to the NGC coin db, and US currency value (i.e. an old dime would be $.10). The catalog value is not exact and fluctuates (and is really a shot in the dark) so I do not pay as much attention to it as I do to the absolute values, years, metal content, etc. I shy away from giving grades but do leave a notes field if something is holed, in poor condition, etc. I am thinking of adding a KM field in the future to help in ID'ing coins. What I like best about Access is I can run different queries that are updated constantly, including the sums of the numerical fields (gold and silver weight, rough estmiated collection value, and US currency value). I can also do queries on all silver coins, all gold coins, bronze coins, US coins, coins prior to 1900, and coins from particular areas such as Europe, North America, etc. And I can export all fields into Excel and reuse the database in any computer that also uses Access, which is most Windows comps.

That being said, one thing I have not been able to do is create a db for my small exonumia collection, primarily because I am not quite sure of a way to accurately break them down. Does anyone have a db for exonumia? Does anyone else use Access?

How long did it take you to accumulate this? Was this all in the same mailing? I'm not much of a collector of the recent stuff but you do have to admire the beuty of those coins.

I actually got one of those William farthings in a grab bag lol... from what I understand, these coins are not uncommon but there are no known examples that would rate EF+ and they are all undated so this is literally about as good as these coins are going to get barring the discovery of some hoard in an old English basement.

It just occurred to me I might not want to give up my favorite spot lol. But I can send you a message if you're interested

Hey everyone

Just thought I'd start a new topic... I have always been a big fan of the $5-10 (or less) grab bags. Anyone have any luck with these? My best ever grab bag find was finding 6 Canadian silver quarters and three Canadian silver dimes in a $2 grab bag. I also know of a place down in St. Augustine that has $5 grab bags that I have found walking liberty half dollars, a bundle of Indian heads, an 1870s British silver sixpence, etc. I also love those 5 for a dollar or 10 for a dollar bin or bowl of coins and have found great coins there.

Looks like a William and Mary commemorative token of some sort

The oldest US coin I have found is a 1929 penny while oldest Canadian is 1939 penny. I have had family members with incredible luck... my mother actually got back a 1912 Barber dime as change in a cafeteria a couple years ago. I had an aunt who while making a wtihdrawal from the bank was told by the teller that someone deposited $10 in the bank... oh yeah the $10 was in Morgan silver dollars lol. Lets just say it was the world's fastest $10 withdrawal lol. Never had a chance to see what she had since she passed away and it got swept up with her stuff somewhere.

I normally go by coin weights instead of surface size but the half dimes they weighed 1.24 grams while the 1/4 reals weighed in at .77 grams. This is very similar in weight to the silver 3 cent pieces but I believe in terms of surface size (owning a half dime and 1/4 real) the 1/4 reals are roughly half the size of a half dime.

Following up the Guatemalan reference (although there's some debate as to whether Central America would be considered part of North America) there are tiny 1/4 silver reals that you can actually get for relatively cheap that are tiny tiny (smaller than a half dime). They're rather impressive too in the detail of the volcanos with the clouds and sun crammed into a coin barely over a half a gram in size.

The photos are a little blurry

Although they do not contain $20 or $100 worth of silver, you have to like the fact that you are buying what amounts to face value legal tender and the Canadian dollar is roughly 1:1 with the American dollar

This falls under the general realm of exonumia... I could be mistaken, but I believe tokens are often defined as coins used for the payment of services that are not actually currency (i.e. transportation tokens, gaming tokens, etc.)

I could imagine it was a cheaper alternative for newly created countries to simply counterstamp currency already in circulation in their population. One set of coins that come to mind are the counterstamped Portuguese reis coins repurposed into Brazilian currency.

I need to check in on this forum more often... these types of British Commonwealth coins are right up my alley. Great pics! I am still relatively new to the hobby (been doing this less than a year) but I did manage to acquire an 1894 Straits Settlements 10 cent piece that is one of the prizes of my still nascent collection. My immediate goal is to get at least one example of a coin from each British Commonwealth country then move into filling them out as time allows. I often wondered what it must feel like for monarchs to spend money with their own face on it. Talk about narcissism lol.

I concur... I guess from what I'm gathering this manipulation is occurring in paper and electronic silver holdings and that the way to go is to just "keep on truckin" and get ahold of physical silver.

Well the massive buy up of silver by Russia and the relative scarcity of small silver should point to higher prices, not lower. That's why everything just seems so weird to me.

Well I think that explains part of the price drop, that a stronger dollar is holding a higher relative value to silver, but it still leaves you sratching your head because silver (as well as gold) as far as I know is flying off the shelves. I think there is market manipulation going on its just a question as to whether the price fixing is the drop in price or the steady rise in price since the late 1990s.

I am sure this might have been covered at some point in the previous posts but I am curious about this. Two things have struck me odd about the price of silver and the price of silver coins. For one thing, the price took a sharp dip earlier this week and I read something about Goldman Sachs being behind this. I know it dropped below $23/ounce and is now up to around $23.90. Does anyone have an idea what was driving this?

Also, when I first started buying coins (I usually invest a small amount of around $10/mo. in junk silver) I knew the price of the coins strongly correlated to the melt value of such coins. The dealer would look at the price per ounce of silver closing the previous day and price the coins accordingly. However I noticed that while the price of coins went up with the price, they never dropped and now with the price of silver down over $10/ounce, you'd still be hard pressed to find an American dime for under $2.50 or $3 USD even in wrecked condition and silver dollars still hover over $30 despite having almost ten grams less than a full ounce of silver, which sells for a little under $24/ounce. Also, dealers now seem to be looking at printouts that tell them what to price their coins when you almost never saw that a year or two ago. I know its all about supply and demdn but it just seems to me that there's some serious price fixing going on. Anyone know what these dealers are looking at when they print out these silver coin price sheets?

It depends on how they are stored and what the environmental conditions are in which you are storing them. Is the room humid or prone to temp. fluctuations? How are they being stored?

lol @Art bidding 15 cents on 26 cents face value worth of coins... I will up the bid to 30 cents

Have you been able to confirm if this is indeed gold? Is it magnetic? There are gold testing kits you can acquire or you can take them to any cash for gold place and they could measure the karat of the gold.