Numismatic Forums Offer Collectors Opportunities to Share Information and Opinions by Mike Sussman
Most
collectors have an opinion about some aspect of collecting
or decisions and actions that that affect them that they would
like to share with fellow collectors. There are a number of
online coin forums that enable the exchange of information
and opinions by collectors. Some of these are the Coin Community
Forum, the Coin Forum, Coin Talk, and Coin People.
The Coin Community Forum asks if the viewer
needs help, has a question, or inherited some coins. The forum
is completely free and one can get help in minutes. Areas
include modern U.S. coins, classic U.S. coins, U.S. commemoratives,
U.S. paper money and banknotes, coin roll hunting, supplies
and books, identification of coins medals and tokens, third
party grading, coin photography, coins of other countries,
search engines, helpful links, auctions, metal detecting,
want lists, and sales promotions.
The Coin Forum also lists several interest
areas. These include the 1969-S error, the 1999-D penny error,
a one million dollar bill, an approach to coin photography,
U.S. coins (colonials, half cents, cents, nickels/half dimes,
quarters, half dollars, dollars, gold, eagles/bullion, odd
denominations, silver commemoratives, modern commemoratives),
U.S. paper money, news, links and resources, exonumia/tokens,
coin grading forum, and contests.
Coin Talk enables a collector to ask a question
and receive answers from a number of experienced collectors.
For example one question was, “What is the best coin
album line to display circulation clad coins found in coin
rolls? Several answers included the following: “Dansco
is the most popular; I use the Whitman classics but that’s
just me; I think Dansco is the best for the coins you have…;
Ike dollar to Peach dollar…; I prefer Danscos whenever
possible; Dansco is the best when you consider price, quality
and variety. …I have Dansco and Intercept Shield, but
prefer the IS.”
Coin People is a forum for both U.S. coins
and general coin discussions. According to thei4r website,
there are 5,198 topics. Users are online constantly. Forums
include main numismatic forums: The Coin Forum (Virtual Coin
Museum, My New Purchases, Coins in the News) World Coin Forum;
Ancient Coin Forum (Ancient Coin Articles, Ancient Coin Museum,
Ancient Coin Links); Banknote Forum (Virtual Banknote Museum,
Banknote Links, Notes in the News); and Advertising Forums
(Want to Buy, Want to Sell, Want to Trade, Auction Forum,
etc.). Then there are specialized numismatic forums that include:
Russian Coin Forums, British Coin Forums, Numismatic Photography
Forum, Fake Coin Forums, Canadian Coin Forums, Exonumia Forums,
and Error and Variety Coin Forums.
Then there are numismatic resources listed
and interactive features. The Internet provides a vast number
of venues for information and discussion of various coin topic.
Those mentioned here are but a sample.