 The A&A eLearning Academy is brought to you by CDN Graysheet, a trusted source of rare coin and currency valuations since 1963. So this presentation is meant to be a basic overview of coin collection documentation. We're going to spend some time talking about why we document collections and then turn to some options for how to document your collection. Finally, we'll look at some special considerations when it comes to documenting your collection. And once I've covered all the slides that I have planned, there should be some time remaining for questions and at least attempted answers. And I'm also hoping to do a real quick demonstration of something for you. So let's talk about why you want to document your collection. The key is organization. By their nature, collectors tend to strive to make order out of chaos. The collections of accumulators look a little something like this. A collector, on the other hand, will look at this and think, I want to pick up each and every piece of this. I want to study it, put it in its appropriate place. In other words, organize it and put it in some sort of order. If this wasn't a collector's instinct, then collecting by date and mint mark never would have become popular. The coin albums and folders naturally appeal to us. Things are displayed in a chronological order. You admire them from top to bottom and from left to right. So documenting your collection really takes your organizational instincts to the next level. I've listed a few other reasons here, which I'm going to go over next. But knowing what you have is important to you. And being able to quickly review what you have, review what you need in your financial positions are important to many collectors. Some methods of documenting lend themselves nicely to doing additional analysis. This could be something like reviewing your expenses. If you wanted to track the precious metal content of your collection, for example, you might even notice trends about your own preferences. If you're looking at your collection written down in a way such that you've categorized certain things, you might pick up on some trends that you didn't realize were important to you. And that'll help you refine your collecting interest. It's also good for just getting a sense of the general sense of the value of your collection. There's another good reason why you want your documentate while you're you want your collection documented. And that is protection in case of theft or loss. So sometimes bad things happen. And in the event that your collection is stolen or lost and by lost it could be lost in the mail, could be lost by fire or flood or some other natural disaster. Having a fully and well documented collection will streamline and simplify the process of recovery or a filing an insurance claim. And it will ensure that you have your fingertips, the information you need to minimize any financial loss. Another reason why documenting your collection is a good idea is when you're ready to dispose of your collection. There are a few reasons why you may need to part with your collection. And having a well documented collection will prove to be invaluable when that time comes. Most collectors have given some thought about how and when they'll dispose of their collection. Selling a collection is probably the most common avenue that collectors will take at some point in their lives. And whether that's to pay for a large expense to cash in on an investment or partially fund a retirement. Selling a collection is a common way to dispose of your collection. If your collection isn't organized and records haven't been kept, not only will selling it be more difficult, but you're also unlikely to get the best price. Other collectors are going to want to pass along their love of coins to a friend or a relative at some point during their lives. This may be a gift of a handful of items or an entire collection. And being able to pass along detailed records will not only help the recipient understand what they have, but it'll demonstrate how important the gift is, as it was obviously meaningful enough to you to keep meticulous records. And finally, as coin design enthusiast Benjamin Franklin once said, in this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. Many collectors do not wish to part with their collections during their lifetime and instead make arrangements in their wills for their collections to pass along to another individual or to an institution such as the ANA. Passing along as much documentation and information as you can will help the new owner or the custodians understand what it is that they have, and it'll help them make decisions that are right for them about what they want to do with the collection. And since I mentioned taxes, it's important to know that there are many locations and situations in which your sale or gift could be subject to taxes. Regardless of how you plan to dispose of your collection. It's important to have records of purchase amounts and either sale amounts or current values depending on the situation. There are many books out there on this topic, and I would refer you to them to learn more about disposing of a collection and the potential tax implications. So these past couple of slides have just gone over a few of the very many good reasons to keep documentation of your collection. So I want to talk a little bit about how you should go about doing this, you're going to see there are multiple options for starters. And of course, commission and artist to paint portraits of you holding each and every one of your coins. This is definitely the most awesome way to do it. It's probably ill advised. So this documentation alternative isn't ideal for probably many reasons, although again, it is the most awesome way to do it. One key reason is there are a lot of details that you want to be sure you're capturing for each item in your collection details that you're going to want to write down and store in some way. There are a lot of interesting aspects to coins, and each item in your collection will have its own data points that you'll want to be sure to write down or document. These include things like the country of issue, the denomination, what year it was minted, where it was minted, the grade if you have it, acquisition date and how much you paid for it. What you sold it for, when? Some things that are nice to have include what is it made of? What's the metallic composition of this coin? If it was sent in for grading, which grading company was it sent to? If it was certified, what's the certification number? Does it belong to a specific type or a variety? What's the current value? The associated reference numbers that you would find in other sources or books, like a KAM number, for example. And sometimes you just want to make some general notes about the coin. Different things that strike you as interesting about it or identifying characteristics, for example. Actually, the options are endless about the types of information that you are going to document about your collection. And we're going to talk some about many methods that you can use. And you'll decide as you get into it what's most important to you and what you value. So I'm going to start with the most basic and simplest method of documenting your collection. Your collection or item is stored in an enclosure of some sort. And whether that's a folder or an album could be flips or capsules, two by twos or slabs. And it's going to be labeled in some way. These labels will correspond to paper records, which you would maintain separately. So whether you create a template for documenting that you can print and write onto, or you're just using a notebook with some hand-drawn columns. Each coin can be cross-referenced between the markings on the label and the corresponding line or location in your paper documentation. Think of some of the classical numismatists from a century or more ago, and that's basically what you're doing. You have the item in a container. The container is labeled, and it corresponds with the document that provides additional details. Although this is a pretty rudimentary way of documenting your collection, we can be glad that the earliest numismatists were disorganized and kept documents in this way. Because in many cases, this type of documentation has enhanced our ability to discover and track a coin's provenance. Now this method has some pros and cons, as you can see on the screen. Some of the pros are it's simple. It's a matter of having a pen and some basic supplies and making notes. It's cheap for all the reasons I just mentioned of why it's simple. And it is an effective way by being able to jot down on the container some identifying details and then cross-reference it to your paper documentation. You are meeting the basic requirements of documenting a collection. You're creating a record of what it is you have. There are some downsides to this method. So one is the potential loss of records. Items getting separated from their containers or loss of the actual notebook or document where you have this information written down. It is relatively labor intensive because you do need to use quite a few supplies. And everything is very manual as far as what you're writing on the containers, how you're cross-referencing it to the paper. And I think maybe the biggest drawback of this method is that you can't really manipulate any data. Once you've written it down, it's there. You can obviously cross things out. You can start over if you'd like, but it's a little more complicated to make changes part of the way down the road. You're going to find it's really hard to do an analysis when you're just working on something that's a paper list. So the next step up from this method, at least as far as sophistication level goes, is to take advantage of opportunities that are offered on coin-related websites. I would consider this somewhat of an intermediate step. Major third-party grading services offer free accounts where you can document your collection. These include PCGS and NGC. Both services provide this service free of charge, even if you aren't interested in submitting coins for certification or grading. Of course, you do have to register an account, but it doesn't cost any money. For PCGS, you're able to add your inventory to an electronic record, regardless of whether you wish to participate in the associated coin-set registry program or not. NGC offers a set registry program where coins certified and graded by either NGC or PCGS may be entered as part of a predefined set, or as a custom set. As far as I'm able to tell, NGC does not currently offer the ability to add non-graded or non-certified coins. The PCGS version, you can add raw coins by entering in the details yourself. They're not part of competitive sets, but if your intention is to document your collection and not necessarily participate in a set registry, then that shouldn't be much of an issue. There are other websites dedicated to coins that also offer this service at no charge. Some examples include Numista, Ucoin, and CoinWorld. If you're an ANA member, and I hope that you are, you have access to the My Collections section of the website where you can find, under My Account, a tab that says My Collections and begin entering in data about your collection there. You can enter in the collection and inventories of any items you want to be stored electronically through that portal. As with the labels and paper records method, and like we'll see with all of the options, there are definitely some pros and cons with choosing to document in this manner. So some of the pros. It is free. As far as I can tell, all of the sites that I mentioned require registration, creating a user ID and password, but do not charge for this service. It's easily accessible. This is something that you can access anywhere because it is web-based. So whether you were on your home computer, if you're at work on a computer, on your mobile phone, anywhere where you have access to the internet, you can easily access the information that you've entered in. Most of these also have built-in databases, which is a really convenient way for beginning to enter your data as you're documenting your collection. I'm going to show you some slides coming up a little bit of what I mean when I talk about that. Some of the drawbacks or cons of using this type of service is that it's not fully customizable. You're basically filling out a web form for each item in your collection, and you're limited to the fields that are displayed for you to enter. There aren't many where you can have user customized fields, so it's not fully customizable in that sense. As with anything that's online, there are some potential privacy concerns. Obviously, a lot of the security of that is going to come back to you, your own ability to keep your login credentials protected and safe. But as with any online system, there's always a risk of a breach, and maybe you don't want strangers knowing exactly what is in your collection or what it's worth. So consider some potential privacy concerns. But by and large, these are going to be hosted on secure websites where if you're comfortable doing online banking, it's the same level of risk. The very thing that makes it easily accessible can also be a drawback in this case in that it does require an internet access or internet connection to access the collection and the details that you've entered in. So if for whatever reason you are somewhere where you do not have internet access, you won't be able to access the information that you've entered. One thing to note is that in addition to the internet browser version of these sites, some of the websites also offer related standalone apps where you can manage your collections inventory. And this really does make it convenient for on the go review, and in many cases on the go editing. So on the next few slides, I'm going to show you some screenshots of what some of these look like, so that you can familiarize yourself with what's available. Now this might be difficult to see depending on the size of the screen that you are watching this on. But this is an example of how you would add an item on the PCGS set registry. And again, you don't have to be a registry participant to keep track of your inventory. This is the PCGS website. You'll see along the top there are three tabs, three different ways of adding in items into the inventory. The first tab is add PCGS items. So this is where you would type in the certification number of your certified coin, and it would populate as many of the details as it has about that coin. So it's going to automatically have a PCGS number in a variety. It's going to include the date. It's going to include the country of origin, the mint mark, all of that stuff. You will not have to enter separately because it's already associated with that certification number. This is different remember from the NGC version where you can enter both PCGS and NGC items into the collection through this method. The example that I've pulled up here is from the second tab which is adding a non PCGS item. And here's where you can enter in information that you have. So if there is a corresponding PCGS number and chances are there are, you can search for the country of origin, the denomination, the year, the mint mark, and it will fill in as much as it can for you. So with that information you are able to fill in yourself, such as the date that you purchased it, how much it cost you, what is its current value in your estimate, the where did you get it from which is in many cases a really important thing to capture when you're documenting your collection. If you've sold it who was the buyer and when did you sell it to them and for how much, as well as some additional comments. So with that information in you just press add non PCGS item and it will add it into your inventory. And a third way of adding information in through this method is to import the items from a CSV. And a CSV is a very simple spreadsheet. And we're going to talk some more about spreadsheets a little bit later on. One of the great things about having the CSV is that it goes both ways, you can import your collection into a website like this by uploading a CSV. And if you've already gone in and updated all of your information in a website's inventory such as this one, you're often able to export that CSV, which is a great starting point if you want to create your own spreadsheet and customize it to meet your needs. So we'll talk about that a little bit more coming up. This is a example of how you would add in elements of your collection into the new mista website. So basically it's popping up it looks a little bit like a search engine. And you're going to start typing in some information some of the key information about your coin. So as you can see on the right, I had already typed in some information I believe I put in 1999 quarter proof and then it pulled up some options for me. Once it's identified which is the coin that I'm looking to add, you just press that button with the arrow going into the tray. To add it to your collection and it's as simple as that new mista also offers the ability to indicate whether it's something that you want to add to your wish list because you don't already have it or not. So you can indicate that right at the manage my collection section of the website. Once you've selected from what's available to you from using the built in database, you're going to customize it to your coin. So you're going to indicate, maybe it wasn't a proof maybe it was an uncirculated and the mint mark is going to be, you know, from Philadelphia or from Denver instead. What grade is it. How many of them do you have. And whether you're be interested in swapping it was or exchanging it with other members of new mista. You're going to be able, you have the option to add a picture if you would like, and then you're going to save or save and add again. One of the things that I really like about new mista is once you've entered in some coins. It will populate with some really cool charts graphs and statistics. It will look a little bit like this. So for example I just added in a little over 300 coins. And it's going to show you a map of the world, it'll identify where is it these coins that you've entered where are they coming from. It'll give you a breakdown of how you indicated what the grade is a breakdown of the composition of the coins, as well as the coin types whether it was standard circles, circulation circulating commemorative non circulating. It'll even give you some really cool stats like what's the total weight of your collection. What is the value based on what you've entered, and then an estimate of the value as well. And then it's got some interesting stuff about some of the statistics about your coins so which one was the smallest and which one was the lightest or oldest or largest. And it'll give you this nice chart down at the bottom showing what are the years of the coins that you've entered into your collection. This is an example of what it would look like on the you coin website. So again you just log in you create an account and log in you select my collection and add new coin. And just like with the new mista website, it's going to give you a couple of dropdowns that you can start by searching the database. And you're going to search the database based on the country and then the year and then the denomination, and it's going to pull up some options for you. And once you click on one, you'll have the ability to add it into your records, as well as give some specifics about your particular coin that you have in hand. CoinWorld which publishes magazine and podcast also offers you the ability to store information about your coins and what they call the portfolio. And in this case you would just log into the website create a username and password and click add coin to portfolio. Similar to what you've seen in some of these other services you selected denomination, a series, a type, a year, mint mark, grade, grading company, variety. And it gives you the opportunity to enter in how much you paid for it when you bought it, how many you have and any additional notes you may wish to enter, and then you click add coin. The result of that is it's going to create a nice list for you. This is where it will show the picture on the left, followed by the information you've entered. It shows you your purchase date and price, next to the value. And then it also shows you the change so this is going to show your profit or loss based on the difference between the current value and your purchase price. Information that is populated into the value when you're using CoinWorld's version is coming from CoinWorld's list of prices that comes out in their magazine and their periodical. So that is automatically updated. So that's one nice thing compared to keeping paper records is you're going to have that opportunity to have values automatically updated and you don't have to do that manual work. As I mentioned the ANA, if you're a member also has the ability to add in information about your collection, and you just go to the website, log in, click my account, and then you're going to have the ability to click my collections and add a collection. It's a couple steps. If you're starting from scratch, you're going to just give a title of your overall collection as well as the description of that collection, and then add in a photo that you want associated with that. And then step two and three are the steps that you're going to do for each coin. Again, you're going to select from a list of dropdowns. You can add an image of your own coin. And then it gives you the opportunity to also add tags to the coin. This gives you also some flexibility about how you want it to be viewed on the website. Do you want it only to be viewable by you as the person who's entered it or do you want it to be viewable by others as well for other people to be able to see what's in your collection. And then you can save it either as a draft or as a published document and click save. So that's a quick review of some of the websites that are available. Another intermediate step is going to be the use of software and apps. So if you're interested in documenting your collection in a database that is simple to use and query, you may consider finding software that'll meet your needs and work with your operating system. Personally, I use a software that's available for Mac called us coin. Other popular options include the windows only easy coin. Exact change which works on both Macs and PCs. Coin manage an open new numismat. There are others that are worth exploring as well. A quick Google search for coin software will pull out many of these for you. As with the website based documentation option. Some of these have associated apps that will provide you access to managing or reviewing your collection on multiple devices. For example, on your laptop as well as your phone or tablet. Us coins companion app for iPhone or iPad is called us coin plus. It works pretty seamlessly. And with the information being backed up into the cloud, it's able to keep both up to date so that you don't have to. It's not like having two separate programs where you have to add in each coin twice it will refer to itself no matter which device you're looking at. Some also standalone apps that you'll find in either the Android or Apple app store. But many of these do focus on specialties or series, and they often have some limitations on the type of information you can document for each client. And many of them actually serve merely as a checklist of sorts. So as with the website documentation option, these products often calibrate with current precious metal prices, recent auction results, etc. For helping you with your valuations and you don't have to do that as a manual process. Let's talk about the pros and cons of taking the software approach. Some pros are that they are frequently simple and intuitive to use. Once you've entered in a few coins, you'll find that it's quite simple to keep up with. I particularly think that the aesthetics of using a software program is nice. It's nice to be able to see the photos available. And it just sort of looks polished and sophisticated. You also have an ability to run reports directly out of the software. Some examples of standard reports from the program I use are a profit and loss statement, insurance details report. You can create a buy list, metals, so it's listing the weights and totals of the precious metal content in your collection, or just a detailed listing of the entire thing. As I mentioned on the previous one, you can export a CSV of your collection, which will help you if you decide to go the website route to upload and get a good start on tracking your collection in another platform. These often have built in analysis as well, where it's going to give you details similar to what I showed you on the new MISTA website. I will show you the precious metals content and the current value of that based on either the spot or melt price of the precious metal. Those are just a couple of examples. Some of the cons associated with using a software is they are typically not free. So there is an associated expense. Sometimes, well, like with a lot of things in life, you do get what you pay for in many cases. So if it's something that you are interested in using, I would consider starting with a free trial and then purchasing it once you decide it's something that you're willing to use and keep up with, and that it's going to meet your needs. Software is always going to rely on its developers for updates. So some of the programs that I mentioned are frequently updated and kept up with, but you want to be careful and make sure that you're using a software that does receive updates from developers. Another potential drawback, depending on your collecting specialty, is that some of them are designed for coinage from specific countries. So US coin, for example, as you can imagine, focuses on United States coinage, as the name implies. Easy coin focuses on US and Canadian coinage. Coin manage is limited to the US, Canada, and the UK. Of the products I mentioned, Exact Change and Open Numismat both have world coin databases built in, so that's a good option if you're collecting interest to expand outside of the United States. And the other great thing is Open Numismat is actually a free software to download. So that would be a good one to start with if that's what you're interested in, or if you're interested in trying out using a software for documenting your collection. So like I did with the website, the next couple of slides are going to show you some examples of these programs I've mentioned. So this is a screenshot of what it's like to add a coin in a program I use, which is the US coin. This is after I've clicked to add a coin, I'm able to select the country and the type, the issue. The reference number refers back to the PCGS reference number. There are some optional fields, such as an import number and a mintage if you want to enter that. And then you've got three tabs where you can enter information about your purchase of it, when you bought it, how much you paid, where you got it from. On the grade tab, you can enter in if it's been graded, as well as the serial number. And there's also a notes tab where you can add some additional information, such as the location of where you're storing that particular coin. This is then what it looks like when you have added multiple coins. It will show you the information in the list form just as with the website. And you see the, you've got these columns where you can actually sort and filter by these columns as well. There are multiple icons up at the top to restore and backup options. That's how you're saving backups of this file in the cloud. I think it's linked to a Dropbox account where it will restore and backup copies of what you've entered. The analysis button will pull up some of the various reports that you can run. And then the Excel button will help you to export it into a database or spreadsheet type format. This is an example of what it looks like on the Easycoin software. Again, this is all going to start to look very familiar. It's a lot of the same options. This one has some more icons along the top that may not be super intuitive. So you're going to want to hover over those to get a sense of what it is each does. But you just enter in the various details that you are trying to document for your coin. You can upload photos if you have those, and that is it for Easycoin. Exact change, similar. This is going to be using a built-in database to select the coins that you're wishing to enter and to consider and enter additional details about. And then coin manage works very similar. You can see a lot of these software programs sort of look and act alike. I think exploring with some of the free trials are going to be a good way for you to decide which one is right for you. I happen to be a Mac user and a US coin collector. And so US coin is the best bet for me, but it may not be the case for you. So I encourage you to get some free trials and try different programs before you go all in on one and then decide that you prefer a different one. And here is a screen grab from Open Numis Mat. It works very similar to the others. Again, the biggest upside to this particular program is that it is free. So just to show you that. This one I'm going to call advanced. This is the next method, but you can do it. It is simple. And time permitting and it looks like we will have some time. I'm going to do a little demonstration of a couple of things for you in Excel. So this is how I started documenting my collection in a very unsophisticated Excel spreadsheet with just a handful of columns of things that were important to me about the coins. So Excel is a powerful tool that is simple to use once you familiarize yourself with some of the common functions and features. There are tutorials readily available online. And additionally, there are pre-built spreadsheets also readily available to collectors and free to download, including on the ANAs website. When you go to the website, you select resources and then tools, and then you scroll down, you'll see there's an option that says collection slash inventory spreadsheet. And that will download a fairly simple spreadsheet as a good starting point for you to use in documenting your collection. Any of the pre-made templates that you find would be good starting points for collectors who are less familiar with setting up a spreadsheet. It'll help you document some of the critical bits of information that you want to document about your collection. You may find that once you've started, you begin customizing the spreadsheet in a way that better meets your needs and satisfies whatever your prerogatives are for documentation. One tip that I can offer related to using and or creating a spreadsheet to document your collection is to make liberal use of dropdown lists for any details that you want to be able to search for, filter, or sort by later. This will prevent you from making a typo as you enter, and it'll ensure that all of the coins meeting the criteria you select will display any results. It's also a time saver once you've set it up. Creating a dropdown list in Excel is simple. And again, there are tutorials available online. But in general, I'll walk you through it and then I should have some time to show you in just a bit. In general, you're going to add a tab or worksheet where you store just the data that you want to capture and list form. You select the items on that list and give it a name. And then on your primary worksheet where you're entering the data, you'll use the group name in the data validations option. Some of the pros and cons of creating a spreadsheet for use. The pro, like I mentioned, there are free templates that are readily available. Spreadsheets are fully customizable. And then I started with a really rudimentary version. It probably had six different bits of data about each coin. And then as I built my collection and became more interested. There were other elements of the coins that were interesting to me and that I wanted to have a record of, and I would add new columns and new dropdown lists to choose from. It's really, they're going to be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. If you're new to Excel, you'll find it's pretty straightforward. And you can keep it as simple as you would like. If you are a whiz at Excel and I am not. But you can do a lot of really interesting stuff with the program. And the software that you're probably already familiar with to some extent. And like I mentioned, talking about the CSVs. It is really easy to import it into a software if you decide to go that route, or to import it into one of the website options for documenting the collection. One of the drawbacks of creating a spreadsheet is it's going to take some time to set it up. And you're going to have to redo some things because I guarantee you that when you start, you're going to have a sense of what it is you want to capture. You're going to enter in 100 or more coins, and then you're going to decide there's one more bit that would be good to have documented. And then you're going to have to look back at the first 100 coins. So one recommendation I would have for you is to look at some of the websites and the fields that they are asking about. Download some of the templates is a starting point. You can if there's a something that you don't care about you can delete a column. But get a sense of what other people tend to document and then make decisions about what's important to you. If you're new to Excel, less is probably more. Start with just a few details about each coin. If you're advanced at Excel or very good with Excel, probably more is better as a starting point because you can always get rid of information, especially if you're having to look at each coin individually when you're entering in information. You don't want to have to keep going back to the same one over and over again. Your drawback is unlike the websites and the software, they're going to pull up nice reports and charts for you. You will need to design your own graphs and charts. And then finally, if keeping track of a value, either of a resale price or precious metal content, if that's important to you to keep up with those values. Just know that these are going to be manually updated at whatever sort of cadence or frequency you want to update it. Those other programs that we talked about are going to do this automatically for you. So you're going to weigh your options about whether this is right for you or not. I did start with this and I eventually moved into a coin software. I do have one spreadsheet that I keep up with regularly and which I'm going to show you in a little bit. So this is an example of the spreadsheet that is downloadable and available from the ANA. It's got some basic columns for you, date and mint mark, mintage, series, country, grade, you can read going across. Like I said, this is a great starting point. Once you've decided what other details are important to you, it's easy enough to add in a column. This is an example of what I built when I was using the Excel spreadsheet. There are additional columns to the right that aren't readily visible. And the column that you can see says composition and or design and the columns further to the right of that are sub design variety, grade, graded by most recent value, location, and then sort of a catchall field that says identifying characteristics, characteristics, errors, and comments. You'll notice the sheet at the bottom right says that says data. That's where I store the data for my dropdowns. For example, the general issue column utilizes a dropdown that matches the chapters of the red book from colonial issues through small sense, all the way to pattern pieces and Philippine issues. I added an international and ancient as additional options for me to have in that dropdown. Another good column to take advantage of dropdowns are mint marks and the graded by columns. We'll also see that the tab just to the left of data is labeled quick look up on that tab I added a simple pivot table that lets me easily find coins that meet the identified criteria, whether it's the country year specific issue pivot table will also let you take full advantage of the most recent value column, because Excel is at its core calculator. So I could, for example, pull up just my silver coins in the pivot table and easily see the total value. I could I suppose get fancy and have a resale value column and a melt value column. And with a few quick formulas update the current melt value in one cell and have it recalculate the melt value of all coins in a particular metal composition. But again, it's going to depend on your interests and your comfort level with Excel. I mentioned that I've switched to a software but I do keep up with one spreadsheet. And this is the spreadsheet that I do keep up with my, I'm particularly interested in commemorative coins. I consider them to be the foundation of my collection. And so they have their own spreadsheet. I do have all of them certified and I track the value over time. Of course, color coding anything makes it look a little fancier and it helps me to visually track the rise and fall of prices over time. In this version of the spreadsheet, I made the real use of creating dropdown fields so that I could sort and filter by type your denomination, the finish, whether it's proof or uncirculated grade, where I have it stored, etc. Finally, just a few other considerations you want to make regardless of how you decide to document your collection. In particular, including high quality photos of your coins and your documentation is important because it serves multiple purposes. First of all, it appeals to my desire to look at my coins without having to get up and get them. That may just be my own issue, but high quality digital versions of the real thing are wonderful to have. Several months ago, I took an A&A e-learning Academy course on coin photography and photo editing, and that really helped me get started on documenting my collection in that way. I even contemplated using a photo book printing service just to have a coffee table book of the photos I took of my own commemorative coins. There's obviously an element of the vanity project and that but among my many loves coin books are up there and I thought that would be a cool thing to do that would be unique to me. Another reason to photograph your coins is to have them ready in the event of some sort of catastrophe. Stolen coins that have been photographed may be more recoverable than those that aren't, and if you do experience loss through a fire or flood, having photographs helps to demonstrate the accuracy of your documentation and can serve as a form of proof of ownership. Second is a critical issue of having backups. All of the methods we discussed require backups of one form or another. If you're old school and you have your documentation in a notebook, make copies frequently and store those copies somewhere else, somewhere away from where you store the actual notebook. For using a website, periodically download that CSV of your collection from the site. All the sites that are reviewed with you have this capability. For software applications and Excel sheets, be sure to link them to a cloud service where backups can be safely stored. Another alternative would be to store copies on an external hard drive, which again, keep somewhere away from where your primary documentation is stored. And just like anything else that gets neglected. Housework, for example, at some point it will become a burden and you might dread making it right. So regular maintenance of your documentation is key. I strongly recommend that you develop a habit or routine whenever you acquire new coins that will ensure that documentation of your acquisition is part of the process. Set rules for yourself if you have to, you know, every Thursday from 8 to 830 I'm going to document any new additions to my collection, or I'm not going to acquire any new items until my existing items are fully entered into my documentation. Collecting interests may wax and wane, so will your motivation to document. So keep it interesting. Take the time to improve your pictures that you'll want to update your documentation with. Add a column to your spreadsheet or try making a new pivot table. The key is to stay engaged with it. For me I find the color coding and valuation over time to be motivating, even when the value goes down. So every other month PCGS sends me the coins market report, and I use that as my cue to update the values in my commemorative spreadsheet. External reminders like that can help, especially if you experience a lull in acquiring new coins. And finally make sure that you find the documentation method that meets your needs that works best for you, and that you'll find intrinsically motivating. Sampled a few different ways to document many of the methods I discussed are free, and even the ones that aren't often come with free trials. So just as a final slide I wanted to put up some specific sites for the things I mentioned, give you an opportunity to take a screenshot or otherwise jot down anything you might be interested in. I want to thank you for your time and attention. I hope you found this to be helpful, or even the slightest bit motivating. Be happy to take questions. This time allows. I did mention doing a demonstration I'm happy to do that. But I think first we'll turn to questions instead. Right. All right so we do have a few questions for you Tim. My question would be, which websites have built in databases for recording currency. So all of the websites that you see on the screen here do have built in databases. The differences are going to be in what those databases. What their reference source is. So some of them are only going to have United States coins, or, you know, United States in Canada for example. It's a little bit easier to use the databases on websites, because it's simpler for developers who are putting the sites together to link it to other databases without having to update an entire software. So you do have some more flexibility when it comes to the websites. Okay. Next question would be our metals and paper money and world coins also included in these or is it mainly us. Again it's going to depend on the software the website you're using several of them do have sort of sub specialties for countries so the United States and Canada only. As far as paper money. That is, I'm not as familiar with software websites specifically for tracking your paper money. I'm sure that the third party grading services have that option. If you want to try those as far as documenting that, but that might want to be something where you explore creating your own spreadsheet. Next question. And you may have touched on this a little bit. Does PCGS NGC you coin numisma or coin world allow for you to export a database or spreadsheet. As far as I can tell, and I tried looking again last night, all of them have the the option to export. When I was creating my commemorative spreadsheet, I actually had entered my information into the coin world portfolio and exported a CSV from there, and used that as my starting point for creating my own spreadsheet. And then, is there any good way to attach images to a spreadsheet you design yourself. You can add images into an Excel spreadsheet. It's just a matter of having a folder on your computer where you've got the images stored and correctly labeled, so that when you go into the cell where you want to add in the image. You're able to quickly find that and enter it in. It's going to not be as elegant as far as the size maybe not being consistent. You may have to do some resizing, but it is an option to do that. Thank you. The next question is, do any of the software programs feed from multiple sources for current value, such as gray sheet wholesale and CPG retail or eBay. So I can speak specifically to the software that I use, which is the US coin software. And that does pull information from PCGS it pulls information from heritage, as well as eBay completed item sales. I know that the free version of the software open numus mat that also pulls information, it can pull the information directly from completed sales from eBay as well. And then, how do you update the current prices on the US coin software for a Mac. So the US coin software for Mac. It's a matter of enter opening up the. Okay, so there's two elements to this. The first one is it will automatically update the price information as far as a melt value. So if that's something that you're interested in, if the primary value of your coins is derived from the precious metal content, it will automatically update that value. If you're wanting to update sort of a resale value what you expect the coin to sell for that's a little bit more of a manual process, but it does have those databases built in. So if you're looking at the top right part of the screen you could click on heritage or eBay, and it would pull up examples of sold items that you could use as a deciding which one is probably the best match for your coin. And then I have a couple more for you. In regards to Carlisle coin collector assistant. Is that more of her experts or dealers. I'm not familiar with that one so I can't speak to it. Excuse me. So, um, what do you think of I collect money. That's another one that I have not looked into perfect and then does PCGS allow for non us coins I think you already answered that one. They do and when you're when you go into enter in a coin so if you're entering in the certification number it's going to pull up your exact coin. If you are entering in something that's just a raw coin for example, when you go to type into the search field, some details to help pull up a menu of what the coin possibly could be. There's a box to check on the right that says to include world coins in the results. Thank you. Do any of these help you grade a coin. I would say if you're using PCGS or NGC websites as your inventory management system. You're going to have access to the other resources they have available. As far as grading by looking at photos where you can compare. But by and large grading is should be probably learned separately. And if it isn't graded by third party. It's a great idea to get a sense of how to grade a particular type of coin. Thank you and I just have a couple more for you. Is it easy to take the AA freeze spreadsheet and then eventually upload it to the CSV, or as a CSV to PCGS. Yeah, that's a great question. So each website is going to have its own list of sort of what it's looking for you to upload. So by starting with the spreadsheet, for example, for the one from a and a, you've got that information. The PCGS or any of the other sites, they're going to also show you a template of what they're looking for for an upload. And what you can do is, if there are columns that match up, you just copy the data from one spreadsheet and paste it into the other. A lot of times you don't need to fill in every cell when you're uploading it for it to populate your list. It'll just have blanks where you leave blanks. So it's it is a really good starting point. Thank you. And then what is the typical cost for some of the paid software. What options do you recommend. So the paid software can can vary. The US coin software that I use. I think it was around $60. And that is for the license one drawback of that particular one I will mention. It is my favorite but one drawback is, if you download the companion app, which as I said will sort of talk to the other app as well on your computer. It's a separate cost for downloading that companion app. I want to say it's $7 or so. So, I'm pretty sure all of the software programs that I listed are less than $100. Just be sure that when you are making a purchase decision that you're reading the details of does this include future upgrades to the software, or would that be an extra expense so just keep that in mind when you're making your decision. And then the last question is, will you do this seminar again and when that is a good question it is a little too soon to tell it's been recorded. And honestly, yesterday I was trying to think of how I could fake my death to get out of doing this. But it's done, and I hope that you enjoyed it and it sounds like you did so I'm glad about that. But I would check out the recorded version of this at some point whenever that gets posted. Right. Thank you. Thank you so much to our presenter Tim Ferrara for such a educational presentation. I really learned a lot. I hope you all enjoyed it. Again, I'd like to say great sheets for their partnership with the A&E Learning Academy and hope you enjoy us for future webinars. Have a great day.