Coin Inventory Software

What is the best software you use for keeping track of your collectionsand how much do they cost??

ljkvette

 

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I use MS Excel, that way I can have all the inputs I want without any extras I don't. Plus, it requires no extra investment for most computer owners.

 

Beware of Cognitive Dissonance

There is no way to answer that. I have reviewed the available packages several times for Coins magazine and for Numismatist and for The Celator. For one thing, new ones are always coming on the market.

More to the point, what you will be served best by depends on (1) what you collect (2) how you collect it and (3) who you are.

There are about a dozen programs out there. Perhaps three are easily considered "world class" for winning awards, being in business for ten years, and generally being successful at doing the right thing the right way at the right price. That said, some people are happy to use Excel or Access and in one review, I said that I could do most of what I need done in Word.

Some packages are "marketed" for U.S. or whatever, but are so configurable that I set up databases for my ancients as a test.

And configurability is an issue. If you do what "most" people seem to do, then the "average" package will be fine. The more different you are, the more you need to define your own field labels and attributes.

Some packages come with automatic updates of prices for U.S. Coins.

Some let you append one, three, or six or more images of your coins. Some just give you a generic picture of "A Lincoln Cent." Some have contact managers built in so that you can keep track of buyers and sellers. Some let you keep track of the buys and sells and spreads and bids and asks. One is designed to let a dealer contruct an auction catalog from inventory. You might not think you need that -- but your attorney or accountant might appreciate that format more than a spreadsheet of cryptographic mumbo AU 58 PCGS 1958/7-S/S jumbo.

I will dig out and upload one of those summary reviews. Be aware that it is already two years old.

Last warning: When someone says "I bought X and it works for me" run for the hills. That is cognitive dissonance. Unless they evaluated several packages against objective measures, what they are doing is justifying a choice they cannot easily change.

Last last warning: You might need more than one package. We all collect different things and paper money is not ancients is not tokens is not Deep Cameo Kennedy Half Dollars.

 

whats the best?

Who knows what the best one is, I did a little research when I bought, based on ease of use, capacity, and other features. The one I use is Coin Elite, I have about 4500 coins in various catagories. Its easy to add to and to print sheets from, and it has the coin grader feature which I use to compare items on Ebay grade wise. I like it, if I did'nt I would say so. I dont recall the price but probably 75-80 bucks. I think they also have cheaper models.

 

I have purchased two:
CoinManage 2005
I like this, it is simple to use, lays out the data nicely, has good descriptions and simple reports. Not bad, and costs about $20. Downside is that reports are simple, and valuations are outdated, and difficult to update. For pure tracking, however, about the best on the market.

Coin Collectors Assistant Plus by Carlilse development
Cost a lot more, and offers less. Hard to use, and pops up in a very small screen that you can't adjust! Limited info on the screen at one time is frustrating. Don't recommend.

However, Carlilse offers the Grading Assistant, which is a stand alone grading program with thousands of photos and descriptions. Allows you to put a coin on the screen showing the obverse or reverse in up to 3 conditions along with descriptions. Scalable on screen too! Really nice tool for tough to grade coins. Downside is that MS photo's are not by grade, so only descriptions to differentiate that MS63 from a 65. Nice software though!

In the end, I moved it all to Excel!
I control the fields, I can do rapid updates without going out to a database for each coin (slow), and I can do awesome pivot tables breaking out my collection by any field, including nice graphs!
Use Excel, its just simpler and better. Then get current pricing from the Red Book, Blue Book, or wherever.

 

Try before you buy

This is the current list of the supposedly "leading" products. When I wrote my reviews, contacted all the companies. I got the demos. I got the real versions. I emailed my questions back forth. When the reviews appeared, I got some complaints, of course, from people who felt that my tests were not fair to them. If you read the trade periodicals, you will see advertisements from some of these and in those ads, they mention the awards they have won. (Comments follow.)

Coin Elite, from Trove Software,
P.O. Box 218, Olathe, KS 66051,
(913) 642-9400 or (800) 548-8901
http://www.trovesoftware.com

Coin Keeper from Hobby Soft by Compu-Quote,
6914 Berquist Avenue,
West Hills, California 91307
http://www.compu-quote.net/

Coin Manange, Liberty Street Software,
3126 Lednier Terrace,
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L4Y 4A1,
Fax: (905) 566-5314 at
http://www.libertystreet.com

Coins Plus CoinsPlus! Platinum from DataSouth,
3045 Hacienda Ct,
Marietta, GA 30066
http://www.dsns.com/

Collector's Assistant from Carlisle Development Corporation,
P.O. Box 291,
Carlisle, MA 01741
http://www.carlisledevelopment.com

MONETA from Numus,
8530 Clough Pike, Cincinnati, Ohio 45244
www.numus.com which is for ROMAN coins only. A program for
Romaion ("Byzantine") called Noumisma is in the works.

RIPI Coin Inventory Software
Jan Schwenk Resource
International Publishing, Inc. (RIPI)
P.O. Box 2061, Frisco, TX 75034-2061
www.ripi.com

SmartTracker Coins
Oakley Data Services,
Lion Bldg., Uttoexeter,
Staffs ST14 8HZ, United Kingdom.
http://www.smartcode.com and from
Insight Software Solutions (ISS)
P. O. Box 106, Kaysville, Utah 84037-0106
www.wintools.com

VILLAGE COIN from Data Village
#234, 5149 Country Hills Boulevard, NW Suite 103
Calgary Alberta Canada T3A 5K8
www.datavillage.com

 

Organize! Compare!

What do you do NOW? Do you have ANY organization?? File cards? Notebooks? Anything?? If you do not organize your collection now, you may find yourself making one or more false starts before you find the system that works best for you.

Start with an Excel spreadsheet. You will probably construct a few of them before you get it the way you like it. I used Word.

I recommend getting all the demos (often free, otherwise cheap) and USING them until you know how you want to do things.

I also recommend against downloads. Downloading demos for the articles I wrote, one of them had a virus that infected our network server.

In this day and age, there is no package that should do that. Something was not set right on your computer, in the operating system, or whatever. I did not have that problem. However, I did have similar problems with other packages depending on which version of Windows I was using. I tested all of them on Windows 95 and Windows 2000 -- to check for downward compatibility -- and also on either Windows NT Server or Windows XP.

"Hard to use" is the one that gets everyone. Interface design depends on many factors. Basically, "someone" decides what will work "best" for "most" people -- in other words what works best for himself. There is some effort toward "software anthropology" but the one of the basic reasons to try before you buy is that these issues are very subjective.

 

Coin Organizer Deluxe by Primasoft...free trial too

 

Thanks very much fo all of the info!. I will try a couple of demos to see what I'm comfortable with. Right now I have a very basic Excel Sreadsheet.

ljkvette

 

I have Fey and Oxman`s Top 100 Morgan Dollar Varieties by Carlisle. It is supposed to work with Carlisle`s Collectors Assitant which I don`t have. The Top 100 seems dated and is awkward to use. If The Collectors Assistant is simular, I would have to pass on Carlisle.

 

Coin Manage is the one

Over the years I've tried about a dozen different inventory programs.

The best one I found so far is Coin Manage from Liberty Street Software.

It is an open ended program that let's you add new varieties, values and years to your collection. There is no need to upgrade from a version unless you want bells and whistles.

It is available in a "World" (all countries), "US", or "Canadian" specific versions.

All versions can be expanded to include other countries but with the World version, the information and varieties (including pictures) are already there.

www.libertystreet.com

 

I like my own personal excel spreadsheet with columns that list the: date and mint mark, denomination, mintage numbers, date purchased, amount of purchase, grade, certification (if any), reference number from grading service, and Red Values for the given coin in EF40, AU50, MS60 and MS63 grades (just to give me an idea of ballpark values).

Now, I also like using Heritage Auctions on-line software under "My Collection". It is FREE and the best part, you are provided with current whole sale and retail values of your coin so that you can get a market snapshot of your collection. Heritage also lists the number of other members that have expressed interest in your coin so you can see if there is any market demand or not.

Last, but not least, I have photographed all of my coins (many with both obverse and reverse macro shots), cropped so just the coin or the coin in slab can be viewed. This way, I can show my collection on my notebook if I run into a fellow numismatic.

Whatever you use, make copies and backups so that family members know exactly what you have so that when we all leave this Earth, the next in line will have a good idea of what we have. I even have a note stating, "So...you found my coin collection. This is what I would do if I were in your shoes."

After all, we are just temporary custonians of our coins. Remember, our coins will definitely outlive us so make sure they have a nice home...or are put to good use!

 

I made a mistake in my post above. It is Pro-Coin 2005 that is the software that has a 'non sizable' window that is set for 480x640 resolution. It drives me nuts... overal usability is terrible, IMO. Funny, the software window is sizable, but the active part of the window stays the same size... simply filling in the extra space with gray!

 

Thankx

Just glad you did not list "My collection explorer I found it to be a waste of money for foreign coins
Excel still works best.

 

Do you update those every time a new edition of the Red Book comes out?

 

I do!

Call it yearly "house cleaning". I print up the collection just before I update it to the new year. I know that Red Book values are not current, but they do serve as a yearly gauge how coins are doing in the marketplace.

I monitor about 450 coins in my database. I look at it as more fun (hence the hobby) than work. If I want a better current representation of retail/wholesale values, I use Heritage's "My Collection".

The thrill I get is looking at the price I paid for a given coin and the Red Book values. Sure I love the history and artwork of my collection, but it feels good to know that you own something that is worth more than the day you acquired it (even adjusted for inflation).

 

Anyone have any further updates to this thread?

 

Does Red Book have there own program? if not they should. It could be updated yearly

 

MS Excel

 

Excel can be neat but without pictures, it's starting to get difficult to visualize what I had.

I decided to wham everything I had into plain html and table - simple and good except a bit time consuming. Examples:

http://www.gxseries.com/numis/austype/aus_decimal.htm

http://www.gxseries.com/numis/koreatype/koreatype_modern.htm

Like a digital dansco or whatever holders. Now the holes are bugging me!