My Personal Favorite - Dansco Canadian Coin Albums

My collecting style has changed slightly over the years but I am still drawn to local live auction lots featuring a variety of world coins. This tendency has grown my collection with a number of different coins from all over the world (and from right here in the US) that keep me engaged and allow me to keep reading and researching the origin and the art from many countries. About 3 years ago now, I decided that I needed to find a way to make better use of my disorganized box of coins which led me to search for the tool that best fit my interests. Everyone has a favorite in their collection and after looking for years, mine has to be my Dansco Canadian Coin Albums - particularly the type set.

Picking Through Miscellaneous Coins

Two piles of world coins

I fondly remembered many interactions and deals with sellers and at auctions as I started working through the bags, tins and cigar boxes holding the different purchases. A big part of the hobby for me is to remember the people and the discussions that I have had and have slowly brought me into the coin community. I first organized my collection by country and then by denomination. The English-speaking countries were the easiest to trace and didn't require much time to identify. Then, I started working through other languages that used the same alphabet (like France and Spain) - then through the alphabets that used similar characters (Greece for example) - and finally worked through the coins that used completely different characters (think Japan and Thailand). Each of these jumps became progressively more difficult but luckily, I had some experience searching the web and some great coin information books.

World Type Sets

As I wrapped up the sorting, I realized that I spent far more time looking at each type of coin than looking through the dates or even trying to find errors or varieties. I recognized that trend and started to put my best example for each type into the 2 by 2 that fit it best and stored them in a 3-ring binder to make them easy to rearrange. I really enjoyed building a sheet for every country (20 coins per page) starting with the countries with the largest quantity. This resulted in quickly filling up 2 pages for Canada, 2 for Great Britain, 2 for Australia and 1 each for France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, South Africa, Japan, Thailand (formerly Siam), Mexico, Brazil, and several others. As a collector, organizing like this gives you the ability to see how denominations change over time within a country and to see the graphics that uniquely represent those countries.

Finding My Favorites

This stage is where a collector really gets to focus their attention on what is truly the most captivating for them. In my case, I spent a ton of time looking at the Canadian coins that came out of the collection. They came from my closest foreign border, there is a familiarity from regularly finding them in my change as I grew up, and they share very similar obverses to the coins from other locations in the British empire but are unique in their denominations - mirroring those right here in the USA. All of these factors really drew me in and I found myself spending most of my time at the dealers with Canadian coins at the local coin shows, searching eBay for hard to find pieces, and I always ended up saying "What do you have from Canada" whenever someone asked what I was interested in looking at that day.

Presentation is Everything!

Getting up to this point sounds like it was quite a linear track, but remember this was over the course of probably 5 years of looking, buying, sorting, researching, and thinking (or obsessing if you ask my wife). So I really wanted to make sure that my collecting was accessible and enjoyable with that much time invested. As is my usual style, I started looking for the right way to keep these type coins.I finally decided on an archival coin album after looking online, at coin shops and shows. My favorite was the Canadian coin album made by Dansco but the problem I found was they are virtually unavailable. It took me about 8 months to finally locate one an 1858 - 1952 type set and I was ecstatic. The find was even better after looking so long for it. This was exactly what I wanted and thought I was done there. A couple months later, I was walking through a coin show and happened to notice another one sitting on the table for a few bucks - I jumped on that immediately and brought it home to realize that this was a different style that had 2 additional pages for the Queen Elizabeth type coins which let me again continue to expand the collection. It may not seem like an important detail, but I was once again very pleased to find that Dansco albums fit perfectly in 10" wide safety deposit boxes which makes it easy to keep your more sentimental or valuable collection elements safe!

Pulling The Set Together

Assembling the album

After all my research and lot searching, I was finally able to pull together a decent (but still partial) Canadian type set. My favorite part of the Dansco type albums is first the feel and, as a close second, the clean arrangement that shows both the obverse (front) and reverse (back) together as a set. When the set started to come together, I was able to better appreciate the similarities for each monarch (king or queen) and the difference between successive monarchs on Canadian designs. I was then better able to make a searcher's list to now focus my searching efforts and fill in some more gaps. After adding to the sets in the months since starting it has come together much quicker and I have loved watching it fill in. My recommendation for anyone with a favorite country's numismatic design is to look further into better ways to display and make use of their coins. For me it was a Dansco type folder, but there are many other makers, styles and presentations that can be used. Make your collection personal so you enjoy it more and are able to reflect on it regularly.