How to Organize a Coin Collection

Wooden cigar box full of various coins and medals — Loose coins in wooden box

Embarking in coin collecting certainly came in stages for me. After a while, I had a small drawer with a bunch of sandwich bags in it to separate the different types of coins and then the cigar box of coins that my grandfather gave me in the back. I was really enjoying having the coins, but I didn't know how to organize a coin collection.It was more important to me to buy/trade for new coins when I had a few dollars to spend than it was to put effort into organizing and preserving them. Something needed to happen when I started to see corrosion from the bags reacting with the coins and turning them green.Luckily there are a ton of different ways to organize your collection from the very cheap to the very expensive. It all depends on budget and preference. We'll explore a variety of different methods today.

What Does an Organized Collection Look Like?

There is no single way to keep your collection yet any organized coin collection is one that has coins stored in a way that they can be found. Here's an example: one of my favorite early coin purchases was an 1860 silver 3 cent piece in decent shape. The coin is scarce and used up all of my coin collecting money for that month. If you haven't seen one of these before - they are tiny at about half an inch across and as thick as a fingernail. I put that coin into my collection in 2009 and I haven't seen it since! I'm sure it's in with some foreign coins somewhere but I have been frustrated by that mistake for the past 12 years! Don't let that happen to you!From the generic "stored so you can find the coins", let's focus in on ways to organized based on how you collect.

New collector trying to find out where you want to go: 2 x 2 coin holders are great for individual coins with rolls or tubes for bulk coins
Memento collector (special coins from times in your life): 2 x 2 coin holders allow you to write a reminder of why the coin is special to you and organize it with others in binders on coin pages
Checklist or series collector (all the dates within a type): Coin folders with higher quality albums for your favorites
Type collector (one of each type): coin albums specially made for type sets
Stackers (collecting all the coins you can of a given type - usually large amounts of silver and gold): rolls and tubes are the best - there are even square tubes that fit nicely into a safe deposit box or safe.

Assortment of coin folders, albums, single roll, 2 by 2 box and 2 x 2 album sheet — Coin rolls, albums, folders, and 2x2s

There are many other types of collections that can be sorted in similar ways to those noted above.

Why Not Keep the Collection in a Drawer?

We've already covered two reasons you might want to organize your collection - protect the coins from environmental or chemical (plastic bags) damage as well as not losing the coins that you have. Organizing the coins also lets you see at a glance how safe you need to keep your collection.It wasn't until I put together a partial type set that I noticed I wasn't protecting the value that was just lying around my house. I quickly decided that I wanted to move my valuable coins out of my house and into a safe deposit box at the bank. The investment in a large safe was less appealing to me for my collection than the much smaller bill of keeping them in a bank where they have alarms and other safe guards. I'll note that keeping collections in safety deposit boxes is hotly debated among collectors - what's right for me may not be right for you.Now, back to where we were, organizing your collection helps you make decisions on how to protect it as well as showing you where the gaps or duplicates are in your collection while guiding you to make better purchases and trades in the future.

Two by Two's in Binders with Coin Pages

Plastic 3-ring album page built to hold 20-2 x 2 coin holders — 2x2 Sheet with foreign coins

Two by two's with coin pages are probably the most versatile organizational tool. Once you encase the coin in the holder, you can slip it into a coin page in a binder and move it whenever you add to your collection. There are other sizes for smaller and larger coins but standard 2 x 2 sheets can hold most coins and spaces them out quite well. A sheet of 20 dimes would have some wasted space and a sheet of 20 dollars would be a bit tight but this technique is very flexible. For smaller coins, there are 1.5 x 1.5 holders that use coin pages with 30 slots. For larger coins, there are 2.5 x 2.5 holders that use coin pages with 12 slots.I started with this method because it made it easier for me to buy the coins that I got the best value for and add to my collection over time. I would have a coin page by country for foreign coins and a coin page by denomination for US coins. Each time I added a coin, I would rearrange the page that it fit on and I was able to avoid buying duplicates and enjoy the coins that I had even easier.

Coin Folders

As my coin collection grew, I had enough coins to start sorting by date. I started with the lowest cost option for the checklist approach I was taking at the time. Each of the folders cost a few dollars brand new and I was able to figure out what I needed for wheat pennies, buffalo nickels and so on. That worked for most of the collection - all except my favorites. I really wanted to be able to see both sides of each coin and have an easily enjoyed method to see one of each type. It was at this stage when I decided it was time to spend some more money and invest in something that was higher quality.

My Favorite Technique: Coin Albums

Brown Dansco Japan type album open to page 2 — Japan coin album open

When I started, I never expected to spend more on a coin supply than I spent on that 1860 3 cent piece but that's exactly what happened to store its friends (the 3 cent pieces that I didn't lose) in. I decided that I wanted an archival quality album for my odd type coins (2 cent pieces / 3 cent pieces / 20 cent piece) since those held a lot of my collection value. Some brands such as Dansco (example here is the Eisenhower Dollar album) are very limited in production and tend to cost more. Other brands such as Whitman (example in the next paragraph) are much easier to come by.I also moved out of the checklist or series collecting and into type set collecting by finding archival quality United States, Canada, and Japan albums - and I'm still looking for more. The picture below of my Japan type album is by Dansco. The albums by Whitman (US Type set here for example) are high quality and are missing just a few of the coins held in the other brand. These protect the coins from damage, make them easy to view and enjoy, and compact for easy storage - plus they fit nicely into my safe deposit box for safe keeping.

Make It Your Own

With all of that being said, your collection is yours and you should feel free to organize it however you see fit. I'm sure that one day, I'll find my lost coin and thankfully none of the coins that turned green in the sandwich bag had much monetary or sentimental value - not everyone's that lucky so give it some thought and try to figure out what's right for you. You may have something else in mind, for example I have recently been getting into woodworking and decided to build a frame to go around my dime type set in a hard plastic holder. It was a fun weekend project and displays the coins very nicely. You should be creative and I hope this helped you understand how to organize your coin collection and maybe give you a path to a more accessible and enjoyable collection.