How and where to start?

Soooo, hello everyone…

I'm new here (from Mozambique)

Recently I found some +800 coins from my wife's old collection.

It consists mainly in coins from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Denmark, UK, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Cuba, China, Russia, South Africa and Mozambique. There are others, probably - I haven't looked at all of them yet.

The dates range from the 1700s to current.

Since then, I found this NUMISTA website and I have been trying to see how it works. I've been trying to catalog everything, but I think I'm still at 5 to 10%.

I Would love to have some headers on how to do things around here! 

Thanks in advance!

ruidurao

Soooo, hello everyone…

I'm new here (from Mozambique)

Recently I found some +800 coins from my wife's old collection.

It consists mainly in coins from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Denmark, UK, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Cuba, China, Russia, South Africa and Mozambique. There are others, probably - I haven't looked at all of them yet.

The dates range from the 1700s to current.

 

Since then, I found this NUMISTA website and I have been trying to see how it works. I've been trying to catalog everything, but I think I'm still at 5 to 10%.

 

I Would love to have some headers on how to do things around here! 

 

Thanks in advance!

Hi there, and welcome to Numista.

It can be quite a tedious task adding hundreds of coins at once to the digital collection on here. Personally, I would start by categorising the coins by country, then further into their respective denominations. That way, you can add all of the pennies, euros, etc at once, which will be easier than jumping back and forth.
 

Good luck with cataloguing everything, and don’t be afraid to ask for further help - whether it be with identifying coins or anything else.

 For unknown coins go to the Coin page 

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/index.php?ct=coin 

and there is an ‘Image’ icon there. 

Most of us would proceed using @IM94's suggestion of categorizing by country denomination, series & date (newest to oldest).   My suggestion is more of the same- just get super organized & get some coin supplies (flips, binders, tubes, etc) if you haven't already sone so. Place each coin (by nation, denomination & by series/date) in a flip or tube before you start entering the data into Numista. If you have doubles, place the best example in the coin flip & your duplicates in a tube (or other container. The better your coin supplies, the better you preserve your collection (& the more appealing your collection becomes. It adds an incentive to keep going & value what you have (whereas those who store their collection in jars, tobacco cans tend to drift off sooner since they don't value it). 

Also start with the easiest nation(s) (Mozambique?), newest & work your way towards the oldest more complicated (more worn & difficult to read).  Try organizing  X number/night (a number that isn't overwhelming).  This way, you won't get frustrated & learn about what you have.  Good luck & enjoy!   

I recently joined here having inherited two collections I sat there overwhelmed. There were bags and boxes an tins of them.

A really helpful member on here (rsirian1) gave me some great advice… take your time don't get overwhelmed, its not a race.

I sorted first into countries. I had little plastic tubs with a country name on them and popped the coins into the relevant container.

Ok I was having a silly number of coins to sort at just over 6000.

I then took one tub each night and sorted them into the denominations and then into date order.

I then listed each batch on to here.

Then as I was finding doubles and trebles of each coin I sorted out the best looking ones or if there were more than one mint place I kept both or all of them.

I popped those I didn't want which were the multiples into a container to give away or sell.

Those I kept I have bought coin folders and popped them in keeping the same denominations together ie all uk 50p's together and popped them in to the folder in date order missing a space for each one I learned I didn't have making it easier to fill later.

I am still sorting into folders and getting rid of some but I am also adding to it and getting there :)

Also, if you find you are getting multiple coins of the same date and type, make sure you have the relevant page on Numista open.  You don't want to have to keep sorting them out each time when you find there's a variant against a specific date.  Some variants can be worth considerably more than the standard type, even from year to year, so it's really worth looking at the detail on each Numista page against each coin before cataloguing it.  Good luck !!