One of the positive things that people do here and in other online
discussion groups is share information. Web sites are good for that
too, better in some ways in that the information is more easily
accessible later, more permanent, and typically better linked to
pictures. Web publishing is self-publishing. It's like writing a
magazine article or even a book and putting it out there yourself for
anybody to read. You won't make any money for your efforts, but you
won't have anybody editing or rejecting your work either.

There are lots of good sites put up by coin collectors. One of my
favorites is John Carney's RCC Users Coin Image Gallery:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jcarne...ns/rccers.html

It's a way for people to show off their favorite coins and for others
to get ideas on new collecting areas they may not have previously
considered.

Tom Buggey's The Most Beautiful Coins of Antiquity does this with
ancient coins:

http://www.people.memphis.edu/~tjbuggey/beaut.html

Stu Miller's The Stujoe Collection has lots of good information from
NGC about various coin series, coin grading challenges, and other
useful stuff:

http://www.thestujoecollection.com

There are lots of other good collector sites too. The better ones
share knowledge about coins rather than just showing off your own
coins, to help others appreciate their coins.

Putting together a Web site can take time, both in the putting up and
in the responding to queries you get from visitors. In this way, Web
publishing is much more interactive than traditional publishing,
particularly if you get a lot of hits. But if you're interested in the
subject matter, this is positive, not negative.

I did a little exercise with Google, which does a good job of
returning the most relevant and useful sites when people are searching
for information on the Web (the reason Google owns the search market
right now). With the coin sites I've put together, Google returns one
of my sites as its first selection with the following search phrases:

coin appreciation
coin toning
coin pocket pieces
coin fraud
counterfeit coins
Draped Bust coins
Bust coins
Bust dollars
Saint Gaudens double eagles

Several other of my sites show up second or third in a Google search
(when using the search phrases "first coins," "coin authentication,"
and so on).

It's interesting that with some search phrases that have commercial
connections, such as "coin grading" and "coin holders," the relevant
sites I've put together don't even wind up on the first page of
Google's results. For instance, with "coin grading" it's the
individual coin grading services that dominate, and with "coin
holders" it's the coin holder companies. It's a commercial Web out
there, more and more. But this doesn't of course prevent anybody from
putting up a noncommercial site, simply to share information.

If you haven't done this, it's not that difficult. All you need is an
ISP that provides free Web space (alternately, you can use a free Web
host, though typically there are more limitations with this). You can
create the HTML that directs how Web browsers display your pages in
Microsoft Word, using Netscape Composer, or with any of the more fully
featured HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia
Dreamweaver (some free Web hosts provide their own page creation
tools).

To create images of your coins, you can opt for anything from a $50
color scanner to a $1,000 (or higher) digital camera (lower priced,
lower resolution cameras work fine for Web imaging as long as their
macro capabilities let the lens get close enough to the coin). And you
can tweak these images afterward, ideally to make them look on screen
as they look in hand, with image editing programs that also range from
the inexpensive (Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, others even less expensive) to
the pricey (Adobe Photoshop).

Fun stuff...

--

Email me at (delete "remove this")

Coin Collecting: Consumer Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos