Coin Compendium

The Coin Compendium (CC) is the most ambitious data curation effort ever attempted in the history of numismatics. No historian, no museum, no publisher, no mint, no treasury, and no government of any kind has ever hoped to achieve the goals of the CC. The basic idea is simple: record types, specimens, and sightings for "all known coins" (TM). Every coin worth the effort of recording can be uniquely identified, and its travels through the ages can be permanently stored. From those fundamental units of data, a gravity well forms that draws in supplemental information like photos, provenances, and price charts. Like with bricks and stone masonry, limitless possibilities can emerge from a good foundation. The Coin Compendium is that foundation.

After several years of development and routine operation, we have succeeded in demonstrating that a project on the scale of the Coin Compendium can be done, because IT IS being done! We have shown the world what we can do, and our bold ambitions must be taken seriously. The CC's data is meant to be preserved permanently as a historical record in itself. Our efforts are as much focused on technological advancement as they are on mundane record-keeping. The "Coin Compendium era" had to wait for sophisticated new computing technologies that could verifiably guarantee that stored data has not degraded over time, and that it can be fully and verifiably restored when inevitable degradation occurs due to ordinary ravages of time. We built our own custom data storage and retrieval systems that can provide the guarantees of data integrity that we demand, and once again, we have succeeded.

One of the greatest threats to numismatics is as ancient as numismatics itself: counterfeiting. Information is the ultimate weapon against fakes. When the fakes are detected and documented in the CC, they are immediately forced out of the market, and possibly traced back to their source, to expose counterfeiters and their collaborators. The counterfeiting arms race can be reduced to an information game that the forgers are destined to lose. Counterfeiters cannot change their tactics faster than information about them can be recorded. If fakes are rejected by the market before they can be sold, then counterfeiters cannot prosper. The Coin Compendium has the power to crush the business of counterfeiting, and politely encourage the counterfeiters to find a different occupation.

To be useful, CC data must encompass as much of today's available numismatic information as possible. If we can't record data from today, there is no hope that we will be able to go back and record the data later. We have assembled a dedicated CC data entry team to augment and aid the volunteers and casual users of the CC. Having a dedicated team ensures that more data is entered, it is entered correctly, and it is entered from a wider range of sources. We would like to expand our team's size and responsibilities, to enrich the CC with ever-more data. The CC will always remain a work-in-progress, but one of our new goals is to make it easier for casual visitors to report information about fakes. Then, the CC team can do the tedious work of entering the researched information into the CC.

If we reach our funding goal, we will:

1. Initiate the CC's new fake reporting program.2. Upgrade software infrastructure.3. Enable price charting features that are now available.4. Create a new system to automatically show you CC data for any coin you view online, for ultimate user-friendliness.

See the CC here:

* https://www.coincompendium.com/* https://forum.coincompendium.com/index.php