Modern Coins

The arena of Modern Coins is vast, so collectors better have some kind of focus. After all, collecting all the coin types struck in Poland alone from 1970 to the present, could keep you busy for years! Then again, some people aren’t terribly hung up on “theme” or “focus.” They’re just happy to have a collection of as many different kinds of coins as they can gather together. If you’re one of those people, your life will be that much easier.

Other collectors simply can’t be that happy-go-lucky (and I’ll remind you, there’s no right or wrong way to collect). They simply must have some kind of focus to their collection. And when it comes to collecting modern coins (and you could collect very OLD coins the same way), you could develop your collection along the following themes:

Coins By Continent
This mode of collecting is pretty straight-forward. Your collection of modern world coins will focus on the Americas, or Asia, or Europe, or Africa. You get the picture. But be forewarned: you’re not going to be able to collect EVERY coin type struck in, say, Europe. There are simply too many countries and too many coin types struck in the modern era—remember what I said about the coins of Poland alone? You may want to settle for one coin struck in England, one coin struck in France, and so on. But WHICH coin do you select for your representative type? Ah, that is the KEY question. Which is why many collectors of world coins collect by the next category.

Coins by Denomination
There are a dizzying array of different coin denominations that vary from country to country. For instance, how do you collect “dimes” of the world if there is no equivalent, except in Canada? However, just about every country has their “crown” coin. The “crown” is the British version of the U.S. silver dollar. The “crown” is the big flagship coin (oftentimes silver, but not so much now days) of a country. True, only the United Kingdom strikes a “crown,” but other countries have their own version of the “crown.” The United States, of course, has the dollar coin; Mexico has the peso, France has the 5 Francs, Japan has the 1000 Yen, and so on.

Coins by Country
Ah, now we’re REALLY getting down to focus. It’s very manageable to collect all the modern coin types and denominations of one country. I didn’t say it was necessarily cheap—especially if you venture into the realm of silver and gold commemoratives—but it is manageable.

Coins by Theme Design
As modern world coin designs incorporate just about any theme you can think of, this is another popular way to collect. Some modern world collectors collect coins with animal designs, as many different as they can amass. Others collect ship designs—there are many MANY modern world coins with ship designs! Other theme designs might include buildings, natural landmarks, famous persons, famous world events. The list goes on.

Coins by countries that no longer exist
Yes, countries vanish even in the modern era. That’s why coins of the U.S.S.R and Yugoslavia, among others, have their fan base.

Commemorative Coins
Some collectors aren’t so interested in the day-to-day coins of any given country. Rather, they are drawn to the much more eye-engaging and exotic commemorative coins, now issued by almost every country on earth. But here too, you should have a focus. The modern commemorative coins of Canada and Israel alone offer the collector a mind-boggling variety of types to collect. And those really run into money when you get into the gold commemoratives!

Euros
This is a new way to collect, starting in 1999. Now, instead of European coin denominations that vary from country to country, a standard ‘Euro’coin can circulate in England, in Italy, France, Finland, etc. The design would be unique to the issuing country, but the Euro coin denomination would be consistent across all countries that utilize the Euro coin. When the Vatican released THEIR limited edition Euro coin, the line of collectors waiting to obtain them stretched for the proverbial mile!

So what constitutes a “modern” world coin? Well, that almost depends on who you ask. Elderly collectors might consider any coin struck in the 1900’s up through today to be modern. Middle-aged folks might consider the 1950’s or 1960’s to be the start of the modern era of world coins. Younger people might consider the 1970’s, or even the 1980’s to be the start of the modern period. You will probably have to decide for yourself just how old or young you want your modern world coins to be. Personally, I believe the modern-era begins in the 1960’s for one particularly strong reason: that’s the decade where you saw the disappearance of silver coins struck for circulation, and replaced with base-metal coinage. This happened not only in the United States, but pretty much everywhere in the world, mostly around the mid-1960’s.

The military has begat many a collector of world coins in the United States. Countless U.S. military personnel have traveled or served overseas, and from their travels, have brought back mini-collections of modern (and sometimes much older) world coins. As a result, many of our service men and women develop an interest in world money, and oftentimes become life-long collectors. But it doesn’t end there. How many military kids have begun THEIR coin collections from going through their mother or father’s stash of world coins, brought home from travels to or duty stations in such places as Hong Kong, the Phillipines, Japan, Germany, France?

People in this country, who are exposed to world coins for the first time, often get the world-coin-collecting bug. Now, instead of viewing the same old cents, nickels, dimes and quarters featuring portraits of long-dead U.S. Presidents, they see coins with exotic designs such as elephant heads, bobcats, flowers, Japanese temples, erupting volcanoes, kings and queens. They see legends in Hebrew, Chinese characters, Latin, Spanish. And they see such oddities as lightweight aluminum coins, dual-metal coins, coins with round holes in the center (on purpose), not to mention coins that are diamond or square-shaped! Yes, the world of modern world coins is an intriguing frontier indeed.