The most important thing about collecting coins is protecting them. Unless you are only going to collect slabbed coins (encapsulated by a grading service) or just keep them housed in the original US mint holders, you are going to have to protect your coins yourself.
There are different ways to preserve your coins including individual or page holders, folders and albums. I will be speaking about these from time to time, especially ones that I have used in the past and currently. Here are some to start:
Coin Holders
Coin holders come in all shapes and sizes. The most common to protect your coins are the cardboard holders like the one pictured above. There are also plastic and airtight encapsulated holders.
In terms of which coin holders to use, stay away from ones with PVC (Polyvinylchloride). PVC is on old plastic holders back in the 1970’s to make them more flexible, but in later years the PVC can damage coins and reduce their value. More recently, plastic holders have been free of PVC, but if your coin starts showing a green film or becomes corrosive, take it out immediately.
Coin Pages To Protect Your Coins
You may have a bunch of coins in holders and want to put them together. Coin pages help you do that. You can put together a whole collection with a few coin pages. Once again, watch out for PVC plastic. Most likely, the ones you find nowadays won’t have it.
They have also created coin pages for slabbed coins. I put together a slab set of Silver Jefferson Nickels with two slab coin pages.
Coin Folders
If you decide to do a whole collection of one coin, move on to folders.
I start collecting coins in the blue Whitman folders. These are great for circulated coins. I started with four folders, the first two Lincoln Cent folders (1909 – 1974), the first Jefferson Nickel folder (1938 – 1961) and the first Roosevelt Dime folder (1946 – 1964). As time goes on I add additional folders to my collection: Washington Quarters, Kennedy Half Dollars and Eisenhower Dollars.
These folders are only for circulated coins, no proof coins or mint set only coins. If you want to collect uncirculated or proof coins, move on to albums.
Coin Albums To Protect Your Coins
Coin Albums provide a way to preserve your coins especially ones of higher grade or value. Be careful, some of the older albums back in the 1970’s and 1980’s because the plastic sliders had PVC. I had an old Whitman Album and after a year, I noticed some of the coins turning green. I also have some Harco albums from the 1990s. They claim that the pages have some soft PVC. I’m not sure about that, but I haven’t seen many issues so far. Just to be safe, I transformed my Peace Dollars into a Dansco album. Modern albums should be safe.
How Are You Protecting Your Coins
If you have a favorite way of protect your coins, let me know.
You can get Coin Supplies on Ebay.