Harvester: copy information about coins from Numista into Excel

Introduction

My primary coin collection is cataloged in Excel. I like to record all kinds of information about my coins, mostly found in Numista, but until now I had to copy it by hand from Numista into the Excel sheet. This takes quite a bit of time, so I wrote an excel Macro which is able to transfer most of the data from Numista in less than 10 seconds per coin. If you struggled with the same problem, you can download and use my macro.

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Reflections on the fifth birthday of the blog

It has been five years that I started this blog. It feels like it was just now. First, I have to say it has given me so much, before you wonder, mostly because of the people I met through the blog. For some nostalgy, this is how it all started.

Soon after I started it, a guy sent me an email from Australia, who is also a visually impaired collector. Today I can call him a great friend, and our relationship extended much farther than just collecting friends, though we never got collecting off the table. We even had a chance to meet a couple of times, as it turned out we work in the same industry, so we attended a couple of conferences together mostly just by accident. I also met people who were interested in the blog, with some I have exchanged coins, and I think it also helped me to be invited to speak at some clubs, I will never know for sure. Recently I have visited many places, and I think my blog also helped me to get some appointments in museums where they could see I was serious about it. This, I will not know either, but it happened several times that people who hosted me in museums knew my blog inside out.
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Dora de Pedery-Hunt

Dora de Pedery-Hunt is known to be the first Canadian designing the effigy of the queen, but it is a less known fact that she was also Hungarian. I have heard her name before, but given her last name I never thought that she was Hungarian, until I had a dinner with Kevin Day-Thorburn in Fredericton a few months ago. He was telling me a little bit about her, and it sparked my interest, so I wanted to know more. As I was researching, it was hard to find much information about her, most resources tend to refer to the same information, which is, however, interesting.

Centennial Medal 1
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The Silver Hungarian 200 Forint

In 1992, an exciting new coin showed up in Hungary, a 200 Forint, KM #689. Such a denomination didn’t exist in recent currency, but even more interesting, it was a silver coin. In 1994, this coin was replaced by another design, KM #707, also made of silver. The reason was believed that the original contained more silver than the value of the coin.

200 Forint reverse with National Bank

The first coin had the national bank on the reverse, the second had Ferenc Deak, so it was very easy to tell the two coins apart.

200 Forint reverse with Ferenc Deak

After the first coin was discontinued, people started talking about how it contained more silver, and later in the 1990’s, these 200 Forint coins sold for as high as 20000 forints in circulated condition, even at the time it was close to $100.

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Collecting in India

It started about a year ago when I was first asked to do some work in India. After much preparation, I spent almost two weeks in Bangalore, and some days in Visakhapatnam and Pune. In general, I try to prepare for my trips by reading about the place I’m going to. Sometimes I do very poorly, but I tried to take India seriously.
I talked with people, read some articles, and books. My favorite was Ervin Baktay’s book about his three stay in India. This Hungarian orientalist spent three years in India between 1926 and 1929. It is almost a century later now, but the concepts were interesting, and in case of such a rich and ancient culture, or should I say cultures, a hundred years should not matter much. It was fascinating to read about the different religions and how they coexist together in India. Baktay’s book was the most helpful throughout my trip. I of course, also prepared numismatically, which wasn’t as easy as it seemed originally.

Practically, I have not done anything I wanted to, and managed to do things I never thought about. As always, when I put efforts into my trips, these turn out to be better than originally expected.
Throughout my more than two weeks in India, I still managed to get exposed to numismatics, and learn and acquire a little bit.

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Back to Columbus

I was fortunate to get back to Columbus one more time, and while there, I visited the CONA club again. Interestingly, I haven’t been to Columbus before this year, and now twice in two months. These trips just pop up in my life. Once I was in Tennessee twice within two weeks, never before or after. Anyway, Gerry Tebben was nice to offer me a ride to the club’s meeting again. Thank you, Gerry!

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Variants in Coins

About ten years ago, when I got back to collecting more seriously, I met Ole Sjoelund, who is an expert of coin variants. Ole is originally from Denmark, but now lives in France, but has traveled extensively. It’s been ten years now that we are exchanging emails, though we never met. Our conversations often exceeded coin collecting, However, I got quite a bit of help and inspiration from Ole over the years, not only in numismatics. If I just mention that currently he has over 38000 coins, it is quite likely that if I have a question about something, he has it. I really enjoy that we tend to collect similarly, except that he is approximately a life-time ahead of me, which is certainly to my benefit… During our conversations, I learned about some of his work regarding coin variants. The topic fascinates me, because it is not anything I could easily understand. Variants in general are such that one cannot really distinguish by touch only. I thought this would be interesting for anybody, who wants to learn about coin variants, so I asked Ole to talk about it. However, where this post is going to be unique is that I asked him to address the topic so that it makes sense for blind readers and without pictures. I had a few questions after I got the first draft, and since Ole is a good writer, I didn’t want to change his writing just to make it fit the original style. So, though it is originally not an interview, you will find a few questions I had.

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