Countries: a different approach

The country list is arbitrary and long, we confuse a change in government or even a change in name as separate countries (ex. British Honduras and Belize). Why list both when we can list them in one chronological "country"?

Instead of having a list of countries spanning from the dawn of history to the modern century, the country list should have all modern "countries" that link to, but do not include, predecessor governments. When we list separate governments, we list them either as separate currencies or a completely separate country. In my experience with the catalog, we should be able to access the modern country through the country list, and select predecessor countries and governments. A member should be able to choose whether he wants to see all coins issued by this country, or select the government or time period the coins were issued, thus eliminating the "1 country listed 5 times" issue.

After selecting a country, members will be able to choose what period their coin is from by drop down menu. These periods are separate listings, but not separate countries in the country list. On the top of the page, members can select the preceding or succeeding period, easily "scrolling" through the history of the country. If the member does not wish to separate the different periods, they may select a "see all" function which would list all coinage together.

Let me break this down. "Germany" will appear in the country list. Because the Federal Republic did not exist before 1949, the country will allow you to select the Third Reich, then the Weimar, than the Kaiserreich, then the individual states. Think of it as a timeline: the Reich and Federal coinage are two different species, but they are both Germany. They are not two separate countries.

In my experience, I think Numista will work best in a Wiki-style listing of countries. On this page for example, Numista lists "South Arabia" as a separate country. However, on the top of the page it shows the successor state South Yemen and predecessor state Aden. On Numista "South Arabia" would be a choice of selection under Yemen.

By allowing the drop-down menus, this may also pave way for colonial entities to be grouped together. Those who collect Portuguese colonial coinage, for example, may find these coins under Mozambique or Brazil, or have all the colonies listed under one sphere. I think of a new country list that will contain each colonial power, with each country containing separate colonies.

In short, we can solve two issues here: countries that change government, such as Austria, can be listed both separately and together, but will not appear more than once in the country list.

This is just a little thought. Any suggestions are warmly welcomed.

What about countries that are confederations of modern countries - like Yugoslavia or the USSR?

Russia > USSR > Russia - Empire > Moscow Duchy

USSR will link to all predecessor and successor states

That's pretty counter-intuitive (especially for Yugoslavia)!

This suggestion is pretty much what I am thinking. The current interface does not handle complexities well, so there need to be better graduations and more information within the country list - then we can really start piling it on.

First, the country-level "See also" function needs to be expanded and made more clear, like so -


If we really want to make the catalogue easy to use, then I think that every country needs to have a bit of background information about it. I don't think it's possible to be concerned about the catalogue's ease of use to new members without bringing this topic up. Here's another mock-up:



Once we have this kind of listing-linking interface in place, we will have many more options open to us.

That's not a practical way to solve the problem. When searching for many coins, I use advanced search and I type the first letters of the country then maybe the denomination and/or year or maybe first letters of metal and find the coin quickly. If you have a drop down menu it will take much more time to find one coin because you can't enter all important information for the search in 2 seconds. For that reason I never look up more than one coin on the ngcc page- their search system is really frustrating me. If numista would work like this it would take much more time for everyone to bring the collection up to date on this page and I think numista would lose much of its usability!

I see what you're saying DonChori, but you're speaking of the search function (which I use to find my coins too). The suggestion I have is only for the country list, the search function would remain the same

But in the search we also use the country list or do you think there will be two different country lists on numista? I don't really think this will work but if the search function would stay the same I'm with you

Kenny, do not go far in common sense!

For some of those complaining in other threads, The very definitions of "country" and "state" are very vague and have changed throughout the years. And from a numismatic point of view it's even more complicated.
In the end, for collectors, it just depends on how each of us organize their collections. Just like the current numista setup, Kenny's idea would be very useful for some "countries" but would be somewhat confusing for others.
There can never be a way to please everyone.

This is really a headache and I am along with Kenny solution

I have myself solved this problem separating the politic name of the countries by territories: -I store the coins in groups and registering them in an Excel file (a page per territory).
A few examples among dozens:
1) Old Vietnam/Indochina/North Vietnam/South Vietnam
2) French Affars & Issas/Djibouti
3) South Rodhesia/Rodhésia & Niassalandia/Rhodhesia/Zimbabué
4) French Territories of Central Africa plus issuing banks…
5) India...
6 Ceylan/Sri-Lanka
The solution would be to group them for territories with a currency for each politic name.
The function “Searching" for the denomination would be the same but directed to the corresponding group of politic name.