Numismatic corner

Return to Meetups index page

The numismatic corner is a place where people interested in collecting different currencies (coins and notes) can take advantage of the huge number of countries represented at Wikimania to extend their collections. This has been done in previous WIkimedia conferences informally. We now want to have a central place where you can find other people interested in this hobby.

The meeting date is Saturday, 2018-07-21, between 13:00 – 14:00, in the Community Village, by the CEE table (3rd floor, just in face of the Mexico City room).

The Numismatic corner aims to be:

Community run
Donations-based
Fun

Community run

The Numismatic corner aims to be a truly decentralized place. While we have assigned a timeslot and a place, the corner will be available throughout the conference. There will be no formal organizer, nobody at the "booth" - you just come by, leave whatever you can and take whatever you want. While we do have some guidelines, we're counting on the participants' common sense to ensure the success of the corner.

Donations-based

Due to the high number of participants at the conference, finding someone for a 1:1 change might become difficult, so we suggest a donation-based approach: people donate money to a common pool from which anyone can take whatever they are interested in. As weird as it sounds that's a system that has worked before, the key being to keep in mind the fact that this is for fun, not profit.

Pool guidelines

These are only guidelines. There is no-one enforcing them and we depend on the community to ensure a good experience for everybody. If they get in the way of fun, feel free to ignore them.
Keep the amounts low. We suggest limiting your donations to the equivalent of 2€ maximum for each coin and 5€ total. Out of circulation coins can be brought within the same value guidelines as current currency.
Both coins and banknotes are welcomed, but keep #2 in mind. Whenever we say "coin" in the page, we mean coin or banknote.
This is not a currency exchange or coin exchange, so don't think in terms of monetary value. If you have spare change, feel free to just donate it. If you don't, but want some cool coin from the pool, help yourself.
Try to share some coins that you can easily access, but are hard for others to find. For instance, Bulgarian levs are easy to obtain if you live in Eastern Europe, but much harder to come by in South America.

Fun

This is by far the most important part of the project. We want to welcome both hardcore and casual collectors, so you shouldn't think of it as a specialized fair or an occasion to significantly improve your collection, but more of an occasion to get acquainted to money you haven't seen before.

Fun also means that you shouldn't feel obligated to participate to the pool (see the section above on the process). You can come by even if you just want to glance at currency from countries far-away from you or if you have some pocket change you want to get rid of. If you do decide to participate, you should not give away more money that you can afford (if in doubt, ask yourself this: if I loose that sum on the street, would I miss it?).

Participants

Sign-up below to gauge interest:

Strainu (talk)
Saileshpat (talk) 13:50, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sturm (talk) 14:18, 15 June 2018 (UTC) (remotely from Brazil, :D)[reply]
I'll contribute coins I've picked up in my travels. Ijon (talk) 15:31, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ibrahim Husain Meraj (talk)
I'm totally in! I will bring Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, Soviet, Tajik and Uzbek coins. Nataev (talk) 11:25, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Visem
CEllen
Aliwal2012 has 40 brand new Mandela 90th Birthday coins, graded MS66 by NGC and mounted in air tight holders. Going price ZAR180 or £10/- a piece.
I'll bring some Nigerian naira, I'll probably pick up some new currencies too.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 16:37, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Plan to bring some UAH (Ukrainian Hryvna) --Perohanych (talk) 06:07, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was actually thinking about proposing something like this myself—glad to see others have the same idea! Antony-22 (talk) 19:24, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Bringing some banknotes! --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 20:56, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll bring some American state quarters (probably boring as heck from collectors' POV). If you have a special request for a particular state, let me know. अभय नातू (talk) 01:55, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
NahidSultan (talk) 01:48, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
have brought coins from India Balajijagadesh (talk) 06:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Chinmayisk (talk) 03:47, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
--Alaa :)..! 07:38, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Results

We had coins and banknotes from more than 22 countries (possibly more, if some have not had a label) and most of them were claimed by someone. The rest will be brought to future wiki events by Ijon. A big thank you to all of you who donated and sorry to those who didn't learn about it in advance. I hope you liked the meetup and remember: was it cool? make it a tradition!.--Strainu (talk) 14:35, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Lessons learned

Place the meetup in the first day of the conference, otherwise impatient collectors have already given up part of their stash
Better promotion is needed - try to reach a more diverse crowd.
Prepare a poster (or several) to guide people to the meetup