Soliciting advice on creating a spreadsheet for coin collection

DeutscherGeist · September 25, 2011 9:44AM

Hello Fellow coin crusaders,

I just wanted some feedback as to creating a comprehensive spreadsheet for my modest coin collection. I am using Excel and creating several categories. I am wondering if I am leaving any vital category out and if the order is also efficient.

YEAR MINT NUMISMATIC VALUE COUNTRY DESCRIPTION GRADE GOLD WEIGHT (oz) SILVER WEIGHT (oz)

RedTiger · September 25, 2011 10:50AM

Some of those fields that you listed I combine all into a single description field.

I use some additional fields:
* price paid
* date purchased (I keep my list in chronological order of purchase for easy data entry. The easier it is to update, the more likely it gets updated.)
* price when sold
* gift field for coins purchased intended as immediate gifts
* estimated wholesale value at time of purchase (I prefer to track this vs. catalog value)

/edit to add: I forgot some:
* where purchased, might be a dealer or an ebay seller or another source. This gets to be helpful in terms of good sources for coins and not so good.
* person sold to or gifted to

1960NYGiants · September 25, 2011 11:46AM

My spread sheet includes these fields:

Country (I prefer listing all in one tab instead of one tab for each country - I use the filters function in each column to see specific groups))
Decimal (I convert denominations to decimal to prevent Excel's penchant to sort 1, 10, 100, 2, 20, 3 etc.)
Denomination
Series
Subseries
Coin #
Description
Metal Content
ASW / AGW / APW (silver, gold, platinum)
Diameter (in MM)
Weight (in grams)
Date
Mint Mark
Grade
TPG
S/N
PCGS Coin #
Value
Photo (hot link to photo storage location)
Comment
$ Paid
Buy Date
Sold Date
$ Received

lordmarcovan · September 25, 2011 8:31PM

My spreadsheets were more like 1960NYG's, above. Not exactly- but similar. That's the nice thing about making an Excel spreadsheet- the infinite ways you can customize it to suit your own needs.

lordmarcovan · September 25, 2011 8:38PM

Oh, I should add that I had a problem with too many columns sometimes- they ran off beyond the printable area of the page! Yes, I could have switched to "landscape" orientation, and sometimes I did, for the more detailed ones, but those aren't as readable in a binder.

One spreadsheet I made had the pricing in the last columns on the right, so that the printable version showed all the basic information, but not the last few columns with the private information. The digital version (which only I would see) had the price I'd paid and so on. Had I wanted to export the spreadsheet or share it at all, I could have used the "public" version with fewer columns. That's something to think about if you're going to use the spreadsheet for a sale list or other public function later on. Ask yourself whether it's going to be all private, all public, or a mixture thereof. If you're using it for both private and public consumption, it'll perhaps be easier for you if you have all the private columns to the right and the public ones to the left, instead of scattered. Then you won't have as much editing to do to create different versions of it.

TheRaven · September 26, 2011 6:55AM

I have different tabs for silver bullion coins, gold coins, platinum coins, ancient coins and so forth.

Then I have a cover sheet stating which tab is what items.

The items for each coin has been pretty well stated.

Soliciting advice on creating a spreadsheet for coin collection

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