On storage I was going to say exactly what Andrew did. Certainly the capsules are great if you are going to do any transporting. If not then you can just place the coins on the felt and the
diameter doesn't matter much as they won't slide around a lot if the case is left static.
However, that
still created some frustration for me. I have a similar
collection to yours. I tried to keep it to mostly large, and to a lesser extent middle, bronzes for most of the 1st to early 3rd century, though there are a few
denarii in there too. But then of course the
diameter shrinks in the mid 3rd century and most of the fourth (although you can cover the tetrarchic period with large nummi / folles and the Theodosian with the AE2s). The 5th century ones are all really tiny. I keep them in a three tray wooden Leuchturm case which has large circular places with blue felt. I
had a nice handwritten round tag for each. The tag was covered by the
sestertii,
asses, nummi and AE2s but was of course larger than the smaller coins. That meant they
sat on the paper tag and slid around with the slightest movement and just plain looked wrong to me. Finally I took all the tags out and keep them in my old coin holder
binder pages.
While we are on the topic of transporting coins I want to share my recent experience with moving.
I was posted
home this summer from
Vienna to Ottawa and thus faced with moving my
collection. My
collection is very large. Though I have many nice coins I have a huge number of not so nice or valuable coins - many many LRBCs,
Chinese cash, etc. Now that my coins are all in trays, including a half dozen of the large and heavy Biba trays, a bunch of wooden cases and over 100 of the individual leuchturm/lighthouse
style trays it is a high
weight, high volume
collection. It actually weighs well over 150 lbs, of which the vast
bulk is made up of the
weight of trays themselves.
As a result special shipping was out of the question. It
had to go with the household effects which, including
car, went in a dedicated 40' shipping container. I arranged special transit insurance through a specialist broker - the policy itself was actually Lloyds coverage. I then secured all cases by
security taping them shut and adding paper to the plastic trays so that you could not see their contents. I also packed them in boxes myself so the packers only
had to take the sealed boxes away - they packed the rest of our goods.
I was happy with the result in terms of
security. No losses whatsoever and in fact no box, tray etc
had been unsealed. However, there were some "motion" issues. While I put all the trays in flat and carefully I could not control the shipment which involved not just trucks and cranes and six days on the high seas but most importantly movers who do not keep all boxes level as they carry them in and out of trucks and up and down stairs.
So the result: I
had emptied my three coin cabinets as I knew they would slide around. I
had placed those coins in mylar
flips in binders so they were all
fine. The leuchturm/lighthouse plastic trays were 2/3
fine but about 1/3
had a
fair bit of movement - coins spilling over into adjacent spots. Two of my Biba cases have trays with the plexiglass cover that you sort of snap in place. Those
had almost no coin transfer at all and were
fine. However the Biba trays without plastic cover and the three tray wooden leuchturm boxes were a disaster. The coins were completely jumbled, maybe 5% in their original space.
Luckily as
part of my inventory and insurance I
had photos of every tray from before shipping.
Still it has been several evenings to re-arrange it all to the original positions.
It certainly taught me that not all trays are equal and that it is not just the risk of coins sliding back and forth and getting "cabinet wear" but if you are not careful you can end with everything completely jumbled up even after a short trip.
Shawn