what do i need?!

[ant]

i have thousands of foriegn coins and notes but have done nothing with them due to not knowing the value of the items. what books do i need or web sites do i go to to find values and such on foriegn coinage?

 

thanks!

anthony-

[MunkyMan95]

Krause World coin guide is a MUST for world coins. It's broken down into time periods, countries, denominations, etc. The local library usually carries a copy or two, but I wouldn't buy one unless you REALLY want it. They're as thick as a phonebook and rather expensive.

[physics-fan3.14]

As the monkey said, get Krause. A couple of those are all you need to get started, and anything else would just be too specific unless you decided you wanted to start a collection. I don't know what dates you have, but Krause is split up by century. If you get an older Krause, they are usually a lot cheaper. Get one of the 33rd edition, 20th century catalogs. It is from 2006, but it was before they split off the 21st century into a new book. You should be able to find it for under $20. That should cover almost everything you have, unless it skews older.

[satootoko]

Besides either the 5-volume (1600-2008 by centuries) Standard Catalog of World Coins (aka "Krause"), or its new on-line edition at Numismaster.com, you need to read the second "sticky" thread in this forum, which lists many of the specialized books covering different numismatic areas.

 

Welcome to the world's greatest hobby!

[Keleum]

Thousands of coins...COOL!!

 

I found the hardest thing about using the Krause books is knowing what country the coin is from. So feel free to post the ones you just can't find in Krause here, and someone may tell you where to look. That worked for me, but I didn't have thousands to search through.

[satootoko]

I just re-read the original post and noticed that it also refers to notes. Krause also publishes a Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, which I do not believe is covered by the Numismaster site.

[World Colonial]

The Krause manual I believe is a good reference guide for general attribution purposes but in my experience is not reflective of current prices. Many low grade and common coins are worth less and many higher end coins are worth more, sometimes a lot more.

 

If you want to really know what a particular series is worth, you should track prices in public auctions and eBay for the more valuable items and on eBay for common material. Finding price guides for an individual country is difficult and I do not believe they exist in most cases.

 

In the US, I find that unless a dealer specializes in a series, they tend to price coins near the Krause price. Or at least that is the case for one of the series that I collect. You can use that to your benefit if there is a discrepancy between real market prices and Krause. If you do collect any foreign coins and the series is undervalued in Krause, you should consider buying as many of them as possible before it is updated to reflect current market trends.