What countries coins do you think are the easiest and hardest to look up?

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For me, the easiest is the German Republic hands down ; the coin system is so organized. And, the U.S., but that's probably because I from here. The hardest for me are China Cash coins and their empire provinces and the states of India are tough. German states are hard for me as well. Some Middle East countries are tough, too. I am almost completely ignorant of coins prior to 1700. For some reason, they just don't interest me very much.
Switzerland is certainly one of the easiest and I would probably rank it easier than Germany simply because of fewer coins in Switzerland and too many mints in Germany. Russia is quite easy too, at least after the Empire, which I have not had much experience with. One of the hardest is Nepal due to different characters for same numeral in some cases but I generally agree with frankhammer on the other most difficult countries.

Will
The most interesting (i.e. harder) countries, for my point of view are:
- Roman coins
- Old indian / persian / islamic coins
- Tibetan
- any coin before the SCWC

Easier but still interesting:
- Chinese Empire coins
- German States
- Nepal

The most boring (i.e. easy) :
- Euro coins
Referee of south atlantic islands
I think coins with foreign characters are very hard because on mobile devices, there is no foreign character keyboards available.

Easiest, probably Sarawak. :D
I live in Hungary, for me:

Easiest:
Hungary
Czechoslovakia (+Czech Republic, Slovakia)
Romania
Yugoslavia
Poland
Soviet Union
Austria (+Habsburg)
Germany (DDR, BRD, Reich)
France
Late Roman Empire

Hardest:
Old (dated before 1945) coins from Africa and Asia
Quote: "nthn"​I think coins with foreign characters are very hard because on mobile devices, there is no foreign character keyboards available.

​Easiest, probably Sarawak. :D
​Hmm, If you use android or iOS, you should have pretty much all the language options including Klingon. I regularly type in Devanagari and there are alot of people typing in Cyrillic, greek, hebrew, arabic etc. Unless you meant something else entirely ?
Outings administrator
For me, probably any non- latin derived language (except Hindi) is pretty hard...thankfully most fairly recent coins out of China, thailand and most arab countries have enough tactile features to help identify the coin in a catalogue.

This becomes much harder as we go back in time, even for those which are machine minted... chinese republic/empire, ottoman coins, certain indian princely states etc come to mind....

forget going into hammered coinage... I just stay away from that because I'm way in over my head lol.
Outings administrator
Quote: "ashlobo"
Quote: "nthn"​I think coins with foreign characters are very hard because on mobile devices, there is no foreign character keyboards available.
​​
​​Easiest, probably Sarawak. :D
​​Hmm, If you use android or iOS, you should have pretty much all the language options including Klingon. I regularly type in Devanagari and there are alot of people typing in Cyrillic, greek, hebrew, arabic etc. Unless you meant something else entirely ?
​I am talking about the drop down list beside the simple search that displays foreign language's characters that you can click to input into the search bar in Numista.
Quote: "nthn"​​I am talking about the drop down list beside the simple search that displays foreign language's characters that you can click to input into the search bar in Numista.
​D'oh, i figured you must have been talking about something else ;)
Outings administrator
I think probably the Chinese provinces are the hardest for me to look up.
Easy: Most coins with Latin script made by a machine.

Hard: Old Indian coins and anything with wobbly lines as a script like Arabic and non identifiable pictures .... I don't even know were to start.
Ancient coins are often of higher quality than there medieval succesors, so easier to read but my lack of knowledge in this field makes this advantage moot.

Not in Numista: Japanese Mon ... you have to look at them side by side (because most have the same characters, the chinese at least changed the ruler) and with a loupe and even then very often you can't get the sub-type right.
Easiest. Any coin that comes with English wording. This is the only language I know.
Most difficult. Israel, due to dating system. Never worked it out. Looked on the internet, and there is still a difference between numerals on the actual coin against those shown on the internet.
I'm just a collector of coins, not a slave to it, unless I am in a coin shop.
For all you banknote collectors. Link to my swap list.
https://colnect.com/en/banknotes/list/swap_list/COINMAN1
From the coins I find and buy in.

Easiest
1. Coins in English language

Easy
1. Coins in a European langauge with a western alphabet

Hard
1. Coins that are super worn
2. Coins in Arabic and script that uses different dating systems to AD like Thailand in its BS dates and Arabic AH years, particularly if its Iran and Afghanistan which use 365 day year dating of the AH year.

Hardest
1. Any coin in a bizarre looking language like Chinese, Japanese low value, Khmer, Thailandese, Nepalese, Armenian etc.
2. Chinese "cash" coins as they could date from 221 BC or 1911 AD!
I love coins

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