Please explain Krause numbering

JD

The Krause books are great. But, I don't understand the numbering. Sometimes they use "KM" sometimes "Y" for the numbering scheme. What's the difference? This is probably more of a dark side question.

bohica268

KM# are the numbers assigned to a country's coins as a way of identification in the Standard Catalogs.
R.S. Yeoman (Y#) did much the same in his Modern World Coins and Current Coins OF The World.
In addition there are:
William S. Craig (C#) numbers for many world coins from 1750 to 1850.
Major Fred Pridmore (P#) for British colonial coinage
Robert Friedberg (FR#) Gold Coins Of The World and Coins Of The British World
W.H. Valentine (V#) Modern Copper Of The Muhammadan States
E. Kann (K#) Illustrated Catalog Of Chinese Coins
T.K. Hsu (Su) Illustrated Catalog Of Chinese Coins

Some of these numbering systems are incomplete and have been replaced by the KM system. Others, like the Y#, are recognized as established systems and are used in the Standard Catalogs.

Even U.S. coins are being assigned KM#'s. LucyBop's Franklins are U.S.A. KM# 199.

Conder101

The Yeoman books were the most widely used reference books for over a decade before the Krause Standard catalog came out in 1972. When the SCWC came out it used the catalog numbering systems that the previous books used. Over time Krause would revise and renumber several countries each year. Some countries have been renumbered sevewral times. I remember that at one point Columbia had three different sets of numbers in three years. When they renumber a country for the first year they have both sets of numbers in the book. The old numbers are in (). Even after 30 years some countries still have not been renumbered such as China which still uses Y numbers.