Newbie

[whiskybran]

I recently acquired a collection of Canadian and foreign coins and paper. I'm a little overwhelmed as I know nothing about it. I'd like some direction on where to start, I need a dummies tutorial! Fortunately or unfortunately he collected a little bit of everything, it would be much easier if he had specialized in one area. I have the Charlton books and a few other random books but are there any really good resources for beginners?

 

I was thinkin about focusing on one denomination at a time in order to learn and organize what I have. I also need to somehow create an inventory.

 

Any help appreciated

[De Orc]

Hi welcome to the forum, one of the things that you could do is post pictures of any that you are uncertain of, that way members would be able to offer you advise on the coin.

[sturzny]

For the Canadian coins Charlton is an excellent resource. Eventually you will want to understand something about grading the state of preservation of your coins, and Charlton explains the Canadian grading system in some detail. For foreign coins in general, I would start with a book like Yeoman's Catalog of World Coins. That should help you at least sort out the coins by country. It's not as comprehensive as the huge Krause-Mishler catalogs but for someone just getting started it's fine, and it's certainly a lot cheaper - you can find it easily on Amazon.

 

For an inventory, you can buy special software specifically for collectors, but I would just start with a simple spreadsheet if you have Excel or something similar. Make a column for country, denomination, date, mintmarks (if any), grade (leave it blank until you understand more about grading), and catalog ID (like a KM or Yeoman number). If you are really ambitious, you can add more details like weight, composition, number minted, etc.

 

Good luck!