Numistify guide
What to Record When You Buy a Coin: A Checklist
Everything worth knowing about a coin is in front of you at the moment you buy it. Some of it cannot be reconstructed afterwards.
The short answer
Record the country, year, denomination, mint mark and variety; the total you paid including buyer’s premium and shipping; the date and where you bought it; the grade and cert number if it is certified; and photographs of both sides. Record the total, not the hammer price: a coin knocked down at 200 with a 20 percent premium and 15 shipping cost 255.
The five minutes that matter
Everything worth recording about a coin is known to you at one moment: when you buy it. You have the coin, the receipt, the seller and the context all in front of you. Five minutes then saves an afternoon of guesswork later, and some of it cannot be reconstructed at all.
What follows is field by field, with the situation where skipping it costs you.
Identity: what the coin is
Country, year, denomination
Obvious, and rarely skipped. The one trap is date ranges on worn coins — if you cannot read it, record that rather than guessing, because a guess hardens into fact once it is written down.
Mint mark
The field most often left blank, and the one that most often matters. On plenty of American series the mint mark is the entire difference between a common coin and a scarce one. A 1916 Mercury dime is an ordinary coin; a 1916-D is one of the keys of twentieth-century US numismatics.
Record it even when it is absent — “no mint mark” is information, not a blank. Philadelphia struck without a mark for most of its history, and a blank field leaves you unable to tell “Philadelphia” from “I did not check.”
Variety
Only some series need it, but where it applies it can be the whole value. Doubled dies, overdates, repunched mint marks. If the seller described it as a variety, write down exactly what they said.
Cost: what you actually paid
The total, not the price
This is the field people get wrong most consistently. A coin knocked down at 200 with a 20 percent buyer’s premium and 15 shipping cost 255. Record 200 and every later calculation of what you made is wrong by a quarter.
Fold in whatever it took to acquire: hammer price, premium, shipping, and grading if you sent it in afterwards.
The date of purchase
Cheap to record, impossible to reconstruct. It is how you answer what you spent last year, how long you have held something, and which coins came from which trip.
Currency, if it was not yours
Buying from a foreign auction means the number on the invoice is not the number that left your account. Record what you actually paid in your own currency.
Condition and certification
Grade
Whether it is a professional grade or your own estimate, record which. “MS-63” and “looks about MS-63 to me” are different claims, and in two years you will not remember which one you made.
Certification number
If it is slabbed, record the cert number. It ties your record to the grader’s, survives the slab being cracked, and is the fastest way to verify a coin is what the label says.
Notes on the coin itself
Toning, marks, a scratch you noticed, an attractive strike. These are the details that explain a price to your future self — both when you paid more than a price guide suggests, and when you paid less.
Source
Dealer name, auction house and lot number, the show, or the family member. For most coins this is simply how you answer “where did I get this?”. For the good ones it is provenance, which is worth real money on the right piece.
It is also how you learn which sellers treated you well, which is not a small thing over a decade of collecting.
Photographs
Both sides, in even light, before the coin goes into storage. The most-skipped field and the most useful one.
A photograph settles arguments no written note can. It shows the coin as it was when you got it, which matters if toning develops or damage appears. It lets you check a variety without handling the coin again. And it is how you remember which of your four similar Walkers is the nice one.
Even a phone photo on a plain background is far better than nothing.
How Numistify handles each of these
Numistify is built around exactly these fields. Going through them in the same order:
Identity, filled in for you
Photograph a coin and it reads what it can from the image — country, year, denomination, mint mark, composition — and fills those fields in. You check it and correct anything it got wrong.
The camera is optional. There is a standard form for typing a coin in by hand, and a bulk add for several at once, so you are never forced through the scan for a coin you already know. Templates for the common series fill in composition, weight and precious metal content without you looking them up.
Alongside coins it handles banknotes, bullion, medals, tokens and exonumia, so a mixed collection stays in one place rather than three.
Cost, added up properly
Hammer price, buyer’s premium, shipping, grading fee and grading shipping are separate fields, and Numistify totals them into what the coin actually cost you. There are fields for the less common charges too — handling, error and designation fees — so the total does not quietly under-count.
It also records the purchase date, the source you bought from, and how you paid.
Condition and certification
Grading service, certification number and grade each have their own field, so a slabbed coin keeps its full identity. Beyond that there are fields for CAC status and stickers, top pop, toning, strike type and variety — the details that explain why one example is worth more than another.
A free notes field takes anything that does not fit.
Telling duplicates apart
Every item gets its own SKU and item ID automatically, so two identical coins are never confused. Each keeps its own cost, storage location and history. There is an invoice field as well, so several coins bought in one lot can be grouped and the whole purchase found again later.
Where you put it
A storage location field, so you can find a coin again without opening every album and box.
What happens when you sell
Sale date, price, channel, order number, fees and shipping all have fields, and Numistify works out profit in dollars and as a percentage against the total cost rather than the tag price. Sell four of ten identical rounds and the remaining six keep their cost straight.
Dealers can import eBay listings and transactions directly, which pulls the fees, shipping and net payout across without retyping.
Seeing only what you need
There are more fields than any one collector wants. You choose which columns appear, and there are ready-made sets — Essential, Financials, Numismatic, eBay — so a beginner can work with a handful and ignore the rest until they are needed.
A note on photographs
Numistify reads a photo to identify the coin but does not store it. Keep your images yourself and note the filename or folder in the notes field if you want them tied to the record.
Getting your data out
The whole collection exports to CSV whenever you want it, so your records are never trapped.
Free for the first fifty items, no card required.
Questions people ask
What should I record when I buy a coin?
Country, year, denomination, mint mark and variety; the total you paid including buyer's premium and shipping; the date; where you bought it; the grade and certification number if slabbed; and photographs of both sides.
Why does the mint mark matter so much?
On many series it is the difference between a common coin and a scarce one. A 1916 Mercury dime is ordinary; a 1916-D is a key date. Record it even when absent, since 'no mint mark' is information and a blank field cannot be told apart from not having checked.
Should I record the hammer price or the total?
The total. A coin knocked down at 200 with a 20 percent buyer's premium and 15 shipping cost 255. Recording 200 makes every later calculation of what you made wrong by a quarter.
Do I need photographs of every coin?
It is the most-skipped field and the most useful one. A photograph shows the coin as it was when you acquired it, lets you check a variety without handling it again, and settles questions a written description cannot. A phone photo on a plain background is enough.
Related guides
How to track a coin collection — the wider picture, if you are just starting out.
Coin collecting software: how to choose — what to look for before you commit to a tool.
How to send coins for grading — choosing a service, and tracking coins while they are away.
Need to track your collection?
Numistify is where collectors keep track of what they actually have — coins, banknotes and bullion in one catalogue, with the date, mint mark, grade and cert number on every piece.
It also works out what each item really cost you, with the buyer fees, shipping and grading added in rather than just the hammer price. When you sell, you can see what you made on it.
Free for your first 50 items, and there is no card to enter.