Is Exonumia coins worth collecting?? [opgelost]

Is Exonumia coins worth collecting?? Can they be valuable?? I need info please?

To me they are worth collecting. To others they are junk. Some have value, just depends on mintage, condition and the number of collectors looking for the item. As for collecting Exonumia, some collectors only collect certain areas. I myself like them all. 

Jerry

I do not collect exonumia (just because one cannot collect anything, unfortunately, in Italy,

 the houses are quite small to store collectables), but I think that if one like them, they are valuable. 

Other than coins, I collect more items:  coffee makers, coffee cups, small liqueur glasses, egg holders, cookbooks, mystery novel books, instruction cards from aeroplanes, and hotel keys in the form of a card. Their monetary value is quite low, but still, I love them.

Also, for the coins, the monetary value is not the reason for selecting a coin. I collect only circulable coins, and so not those minted just for the collectors, that in many cases are made of silver or gold and so are quite valuable.

By the way I have here on Numista several tokens that I will be happy to swap for coins.

Some exonumia pieces can have some value :)

This one ghere for example sold for over 103 million US Dollars

https://www.ha.com/information/dmitry-muratov-nobel-peace-prize-medal.s

I love to get tokens in amongst a bag of coins - they are something different that isn't so easy to find out about.  Whether I'd buy a token that isn't silver or gold is another matter though, unless of course it has some sort of personal connection to me (what I've done, where I've been, who I've met, etc. etc.).  I found a silver Canadian badge from WW I some year back and that proved to be quite valuable, but only because I sold it during the WW I commemorations.  Timing is everything !!!

As with everything, 'One man's junk, is another man's treasure' (apologies for the correct use of ‘Junk’ to all our American friends).

LDC

I find many exonumia pieces are much more beautiful and much more historic than coins. For example:

Exonomia is a huge field of interest. It is funny what people decide to collect and get really excited about.

I have collections of European pay telephone tokens, US subway tokens, parkway toll booth tokens, 

and I am a sucker for shiney silver historical medals from Franklin Mint.

 They are low brow, I know. 😏 but always worth the silver in them, and a tiny bit more.

I'm generally of the opinion that the super-majority of exonumia is basically rubbish outside of:

A) Historic significance - e.g. If you had tokens which were issued to workers to use at a worker's shop, then they might have some interest as part of a museum piece in a display on that workplace, but probably nowhere else. However, ones that celebrate (e.g.) the coronation of a monarch might appeal to a much larger audience.

B) Artistic merit and/or significance - Steve27 showed you some lovely pieces from an artistic point of view. Or perhaps a significant artist designed a few coins at some stage of their life. If Picasso designed any, then they'd certainly be interesting, and possibly valuable if rare enough.

C) Intrinsic value - I don't really think I need to explain this one!

D) Sentimental value - A lot of the more modern ones are sort of souvenirs of where you've been (I used to collect such “medallions”, now I just collect the country's actual or historic currency). It can be fun to flick back and see them and get that memory hit. I don't think my “medallion” for Fort Napoleon in Ostend, Belgium would be of any interest or value to anyone unless they've been though.

Now of course, there are a lot of collectors in the world and people collect the weirdest things. And some people will pay premium prices just to own something for their collection. But to get the most value, you want something that has a large appeal but is limited in existence.

A car wash token made in tin from a random business in Skegness - super specific, extremely niche market, low intrinsic value and probably low artistic value - might as well be worthless. 

A coronation medallion of King George III made in gold, issued only to those who actually attended in person - broad collector market [Coronation/Royalty/George III/Historic/UK in general], high intrinsic value and probably high artistic value - definitely valuable!

If you know what you're looking for, then it can be valuable. But I'd put good money that for every high-value exonumia piece, there's a thousand pieces of worthless “rubbish”.

It depends on what you define as exonumia. I did quit Numista a few years back after several  hundred of my exonumia medal entries were deleted because some jackass editor thought exonumia were not wanted here. Now Numista even has banknotes. Collecting a coin type issued in millions and finding a Krause reference number for it is the easy thing. Numismatics is never that simple though and always comes with extra baggage in exonumia.

Anyway, returning back to the subject, this is a vast field. Tokens would of course usually would have localized interest, but I have seen some 16th-18th century German, French or British tokens fetching very large sums at auctions. Most modern machine use sort tokens though could be considered as junk I suppose by many. 

But art medals on the other hand is something else. These are minted in limited numbers and executed by best engravers at the mints or sculptors or various other artists. Some may have been issued for occasions, some for artistic reasons. There is always a huge market for them depending on what you are seeking. Napoleonic medals for example (even restrikes) usually have a large demand. I personally go after art medals then tokens though any token of historic importance may be of interest to me. 

Anyway, here is a few from my humble collection that got deleted then.  I do not suppose after my many hours of effort got deleted, I would care to upload those missing here again.  

Anyway, here is a few from my humble collection that got deleted then.  I do not suppose after my many hours of effort got deleted, I would care to upload those missing here again.  

Very nice!!

I could not at begin to calculate how much time I have spent adding to Numista. I am sorry to hear about your experience and can only hope that you may change your mind about adding your collection again. 

JLHare

Anyway, here is a few from my humble collection that got deleted then.  I do not suppose after my many hours of effort got deleted, I would care to upload those missing here again.  

Very nice!!

 

I could not at begin to calculate how much time I have spent adding to Numista. I am sorry to hear about your experience and can only hope that you may change your mind about adding your collection again. 

Agreed - Please try again !!!

It's well worth the effort to see your Name/tag/initials against an item on a website that may well outlast us all.

I had something like 300 entries deleted at that time, maybe 8-9 years ago. You could still read how I tried to explain that exonumia are important for many collectors if you search for Thespis26 in the forum. That was when everything not a regular coin was being put under a file named “tokens” only and we tried to organise it though many people found the existence of tokens on a coin site repulsive. What really broke my heart then was that somebody could just decide to delete so many people's effort at one go. Many many hours of hard work was deleted just like that, while we could have simply organised them better and solve the existing problem at that time. 

Yes the site looks now much better and organized. Addition of banknotes is also very much wellcome. 

Returning back to the site, I really have to think that through. 9000 varieties of coins I had in my collection list got deleted as well then:) And I was putting my effort to add my collection of medals here, that was completely destroyed. 

I do understand a need for leaving info somewhere for everyone after we are gone. But as a professional academic (doing ancient numismatics by the way) that need can only be satisfied with books and articles written and published in proper scientific journals for me anyway.  As a collecter of modern coins and medals I am not or will never be there as an academic on those, not my field anyway, but my interest in collecting continues. 

I remember as a teeanager collecting foreign coins, suddenly finding an art medal for a cheap price at a flea market. That became my first medal some 35 years ago. I had no idea what it was until these things started to be featured on the internet some 20 years later. But for many years I enjoyed the aesthetic beauty of that object with no idea of what it was. 

Frankly, I do not anymore add modern coins to my collection (or at least spend money on them). I prefer to go after puzzles that are not easy to solve.

This above for example was a great find and presented a lovely puzzle. It is a “James Mudie” medal. In 1820 Mr. Mudie employed best artist in Europe, including Louis Nicolas-Guy-Antoine Brenet (who signed this piece) from the Paris mint; amazingly Brenet was making real Napoleon medals only up to 5 years ago there. And Mudie ordered 40 medals with very much British propaganda on them. Then he even wrote a book about it in which for example he describes this piece as:

I am not sure if they are the same people but, this James Mudie or another similarly named person whom I found in wikipedia apparently was a ex officer of the Napoleonic wars and after his retirement, tried his chances at a book company, though lost something like 20k gold in not so wise investments. Maybe hiring engravers from all Europe and minting medals if they are the same people? Anyway, he migrated to Australia and becomes a magistrate there.  But some of his court rules were so harsh that he made enemies and had to run back to UK after many years. 

Well it took me like 3 nights to learn these things. If it was a proper coin, I would have opened my world coins catalogue resting on the shelf and identified it like in 5 minutes and forgotten maybe in a week:) 

Are exonumia worth collecting? Moneywise I would say this was a good investment. But the enjoyment I get by looking at it everyday (as it rests on a plastic stand in my library) is priceless. That really is what I care about.  

I like all Exonumia, but I'm a huge retail history nut and tokens that tie into that appeal to me a lot.

Arcade tokens, shopping cart tokens, bus fare tokens, etc. Some of my favorites of all time are the Chuck E Cheese tokens (probably gonna be a relic very soon), the various Sunoco collectible token series (they did many, as far back as 1968, and all of them are fun finds),  and one-off promotional tokens for large corporations, like the Burger King “king coin.” One of my white whales I'm trying to find without spending too much is an arcade token that K-Mart produced for a small number of stores with their old logo on it, since I have a lot of nostalgia for that company.

They're definitely not valuable most of the time, with a few exceptions (in 2012 McDonald's did a Big Mac coin series, with most of them being traded back in for a free sandwich as the average person didn't see them as valuable, those fetch quite a hefty sum now), but it's more about allowing your coin collection to bleed into your other interests. For example, I collect LEGO products and have a couple of the collectible coins they've put out over the years.