One from Every Country #1. Algeria

Everybody always says on the coin forums, to pick a subject and stick with it, ignoring everything else. I can't do that. I WON'T do that. They call it "focus", I call it monotony. I like having a wide variety of different things in my collection. As I've added more world coins to my collection, usually by the pound, I've added lots of different countries to my collection. I've found that to me the most exciting new additions are when I add a new country, so I decided, eventually, to work on a listing of One of Every Country, or OFEC, for short. I still mostly add by the pound, but on the rare instances where I don't, I tend to look for a country I don't already have before anything else.

Some countries I have lots of, some I have only one example. For this project, I pick one representative issue, and put the scans in a separate folder.

For countries, I define it as each different named issuing entity. I don't combine countries as they change names, for example, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic and Czech-Slovak Federal Republic all count as a separate country. Other people may do it differently, but it's my collection, and that is how I do it. It is also not limited to any specific time frame, either. As I progress through this project more than 2000 years will be covered.

I sort the scans for this project alphabetically, and first up is Algeria.

Algeria - 1964 - two centimes

This is an aluminum coin- my favorite coinage metal. I actually have a better example than the one shown, but I have not scanned it.

The One that started it all

Sort of, anyway. As I mentioned in the introduction, I had a brief dalliance with the hobby in 1995 and 1996, but then nothing until 1999, when I began collecting the State Quarters. But I wasn't a real numismatist yet then. I didn't even know that mint marks existed, or what they stood for, for example.

Then, in 2008, we found my late father's collection. He had stored it leaning against the back of our heating unit- not a safe place, and it may still have been hidden there if we hadn't had to replace the unit in 2008!

Among the small collection were a handful of assorted pieces he had pulled from circulation throughout the years, mostly wheat cents, but 4 of these....

WOW! I had never seen anything like this before. I had never seen a US dollar older than a Susan B. Anthony dollar, but these were amazing. I was hooked after spending the rest of the night looking at his small collection, and I've been a member of the hobby ever since, in some form or another.

Odd fact though....I've never added another Peace dollar to my collection since then. The original 4 remain the only ones I have. With how much of an impact it made on me, and the fact that I consider it the best looking US issue, it is kind of surprising. This one scanned the best of the 4, I don't actually remember which one I saw first- but they all were seconds apart. Both are 1922 and 1923s.

Thanks for reading!

Introduction

Welcome to Numismatic History! I have recently been blogging about my trading card collection, and have come to love the features that BlogSpot offers, and decided to create blogs for all my hobbies.

After a brief infatuation with the world of coin collecting in 1995-96, it went by the wayside for several years. In 1999 I began collecting the State Quarters and collected them through the end, but I didn't truly become a numismatist until 2008, when I discovered the greater world of coin collecting- and currency collecting. By then my life had changed significantly from earlier times, as it was in 2007 that I really became a huge history buff, especially ancient civilizations. Coinage and currency, to an extent, is a way I can connect to that history. My health (graded poor) does not allow me to travel and see historic places, and even if I had perfect health, I couldn't travel back in time. But I could add some coins to my collection from various places and times in history.

It's never been my #1 hobby, I must admit. And I do sometimes get discouraged and walk away for months at a time, but I always come back.

I am strictly a small fish in a big pond- I generally don't spend more than $20 on a single piece for my collection, and the most I've ever spent on one thing was $50. That is few and far between, I can count on one hand the times I've spent more than $20 on a single piece. That leads to the address of the blog- although I tagged it at $25 instead of 20, in case I ever decide to up my limit, I suppose, but mostly because Numismatic History by itself was already taken.

The vast majority of my collection, however, was either (For US coinage/currency) pulled from circulation, or for world issues, purchased by the pound. I LOVE to do that, and I usually get a pound each Christmas. I've built a very nice collection that way...at least I think it's nice. Most people probably don't, because it's mostly all circulated, common issues...but that's OK, because it's my collection, and it makes me happy, so that's really all that matters. I would rather have quantity than quality and buying by the pound certainly provides that. I won't run out of anything to post any time soon, not that I actually expect to have much in the way of readers anyway (hah).

Now, I am a decent photographer...I've actually had my photography published in a magazine with international circulation...but I can't photograph coins to save my life. Scans aren't ideal, but that's what I'll be posting on here. (Scans do work better for currency though!)

I am a member of the ANA, since 2008. I was a member of the SPMC for a while, but let my membership lapse. I may rejoin at some point but I'm more likely to join the world paper money collector's group I have read about...if I could remember the name/website.

I know I will never have the high end stuff, I'll never have any gold or anything really spectacular, but that's OK. The world of numismatics is large enough that not having those things does not stop me from building a collection that can bring hours of enjoyment.

Thanks for reading, and I'll be posting some images soon!