To get rid or not to get rid of the "exotics"/world coins part of my collection?

Hello everyone! Been a while since I last posted.

I've been collecting for a decade now, my main interest being silver coins that have been in circulation (with accent on certain countries/areas). Aside from that I also dabble in older coppers or coins from other alloys (more restricted to specific countries where I want to pursue a "full" collection). Aside from those already relatively broad focuses, I've also been collecting world coins, trying to get as many countries and territories as possible, you get the gist. I started feeling that this third aspect of my collection is kind of holding me back a bit in the greater scheme of things, but still have mixed feelings about it.

I've also been buying/selling coins to some extent, at local antique markets and to already loyal customers, but nothing very serious (95% non silver coins, I've been catering more to the world coins/exotics collectors). I've already done a "purge" of my world coins side of my collection and tried to keep one coin per country/territory where I don't have a silver from, but for some places I ended up keeping a whole lot more due to me being an indecisive mess and failing to pick between multiple coins for the same country/territory/issuer. Every time I receive a lot of coins for reselling, when sorting through them I kind of struggle refraining from keeping some of them despite already having something from that country. Kind of a first world problem, but this gets me to the point where the question of whether I should abandon this whole part of my collection is in order. I feel like even though I downsized it, this part of collecting slightly downsizes the budget for other, more "important" focuses. I also think it would help me with selling, since if I completely abandon this segment I won't have the urge to keep coins that were meant to be sold, haha.

After the first "purge", what I kept are mostly better "world coins" (older, maybe a bit rarer, some interesting territories etc.). Selling them would absolutely not be an issue, since I know a bunch of people who'd definitely be interested in them and also pay the fair price for them. Some of them have a bit of value, they're not the 10 cents a piece kind of coins. Individually they may not be that valuable, but the amount of them would probably fetch me a decent sum were I to sell all/most of them.

I know this is technically my decision to make, but I'd appreciate insight from people who've maybe had such moments in their collecting "career". :) Maybe some of you can put things into perspective somehow and make me understand keeping that part of the collection is not the best idea (or maybe it is?). 

Anyway, too much rambling already. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

If you want to get rid of them, I recommend gifting them to me 😊 they sound interesting - send me pm I’ll send you my address and hey presto I have some more coins… 😉

Seriously though, it’s your decision - I have thousands and always try to specialise on one thing or another, silver, German states, pre WWII, non circulating, etc etc and can never stick to it - I always find interest in a type or country that I thought I had lost interest in long ago. And the one type I got rid of (rechnung pfennigs) I wish I hadn’t!

King

If you want to get rid of them, I recommend gifting them to me 😊 they sound interesting - send me pm I’ll send you my address and hey presto I have some more coins… 😉

 

Seriously though, it’s your decision - I have thousands and always try to specialise on one thing or another, silver, German states, pre WWII, non circulating, etc etc and can never stick to it - I always find interest in a type or country that I thought I had lost interest in long ago. And the one type I got rid of (rechnung pfennigs) I wish I hadn’t!

Haha, you wish! :D

As for the serious part, while on one hand I'm wondering whether I will “regret” this move on one hand, I'm also thinking that if I drop this side of collecting I could be progressing a bit quicker on other aspects of the collection that I feel like are more important to me. I don't really regret the first “purge” I did, come to think of it (especially that the money from those coins got me a few silvers that I wanted in a really long time).

I realize this sounds entirely stupid and maybe even childish, but the fact that the number of countries/issuers will drop is pretty much the only thing holding me back right now. I know it's just a random number but it's irritating that I somehow still care about it. :D

Well you could list the coins, copy the link from the Numista page, and I could tell you if I would get rid of them. Or if I want them 😉

King

Well you could list the coins, copy the link from the Numista page, and I could tell you if I would get rid of them. Or if I want them 😉

Unfortunately the vast majority of them are not listed in my Numista collection. I'm probably going to revamp my collection altogether since I did some in-person swaps, kept delaying updating the collection and now it's a mess and going coin by coin would probably take more time than deleting it and re-doing it from scratch, especially if I decide to sell them which will cut a lot of work if it happens.

As for selling, I'd probably sell them in person to people I already know would be interested in them, so I don't think I'd sell them internationally since I'd overcomplicate the process. Besides, some of the coins are from issuers that are more rare on our market so they fetch a little more locally than in a country where exotic coins are more common.

As you say, only you can make the ultimate decision on what to keep & what to ditch.

But to give you my perspective, after I got through a good chunk of my original core collection (Circulating post-decimal coins of the UK; had about 60% of all coins at the time), I tried branching out into global coins. For the most part, just ones gifted to me by people who had bags of old change from holidays but bought bulk from shops as well. My goal was to try and get one from every nation that ever existed. And then reality punched me…, and I dropped to every existant nation. But the coins just didn't have the same impact to me.

When I collect the coins, I love to understand why we bothered putting them on a coin in the first place. And it's a window into my own national history when I see UK coins.

But foreign coins just don't capture that same magic. That person depicted may be jolly important to Honduras (total random example country), but they're only a mere curio to me. I don't mean that dismissively, but I hope you can see my point. I wouldn't expect a Honduran collector to care deeply about UK coins (and history) inversely. There's too much to ever possibly research & understand.

Fortunately, mine are virtually all bulk worthless & I just store them pretty much unloved in a large tin. And I know if 99% of them disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

I do have a very small handful of more valuable coins (by fluke) or coins with designs I truly love, but we're talking like 10-20 at most.

A good way I found to decide whether I cared about coins was “Would I put this on display?” in my room/home. (Mentally ignoring any risk of theft or damage)

Naturally, your core collection is an instant yes. It's the pride of what you do.

But would you display the secondary “exotic” coins in the same way? Would you rotate between your core & exotic coins on display periodically if space was an issue?

I realised I wouldn't. And to me, that said everything.

Then I thought if someone asked me about my core display, I could easily go “Oh yes, that one represents -x-", and then follow up on why that was important and probably talk at length until they told me to shut up.

But my foreign coins would be “oh, that's Argentina…” and that'd be it. Again, another strike against them.

So I stopped collecting foreign coins, and refocused on the UK and started with UK banknotes instead as well as seeking improvements to my core coins because ones from my own history held a much greater interest than simply filling in a digital map.

If I believed selling my foreign collection would improve my core collection, or if they were too space occupying, I'd sell them in a heartbeat.

But that's me. I saw two “end” possibilities:

1. A high quality complete core collection with little-to-nothing else
2. A mid quality, reasonably complete core collection with a sizeable secondary collection

I chose 1. Not for everyone of course, but it was the right choice for me.

Anyway, guess I'm rambling now. 😛 Tired brain, but hope that gives you an insight. 😴

Thanks a lot for the insight, while I may not find myself entirely into what you wrote, a lot of it makes sense.

I've ended up deciding to cut this “third focus” from the collection. I don't want to overly shrink my collection focus, but the 2 main ones are too important to me to direct resources elsewhere. I've gone through my collection a few times the past few days and realized that progress on what I really care about could be a little faster without the exotics. After all, chasing too many rabbits will make you catch none of them in the end.

Pleased it made some sense! 😛

Obviously, everyone's situation & resources are completely unique so not everything would apply. But I think any collector of anything can recognise the situation of “Am I flying too far off course?” or “Am I collecting too many spin-offs?”.

It's easy done, and one we're all guilty of. Especially as your core collection becomes increasingly complete, the “collector bug” sends you down the rabbit holes whilst you try to find the final gaps.

Given what you've said, I do think you've made the right choice (for you) to double-down on the core stuff. You can put your time & resources into something which evidently means more. 🙂

Hope you'll catch the “rabbits” you want. 😛

(P.s. I love that analogy, not one I've come across but I understand it straight away)