Marking medal/coin orientation or alignment

[erb-57]

I searched the forum, but was unable to find the topic ...

I collect coins that come in quite a number of subvarieties differing in properties such as size, weight, composition. Because most of thes properties are defined on the level of type (not on the level of variety), I help myself using the variety description and the Comments field. In consequence, both fields tend to get somewhat full and cluttered.

There is one coin property, however, that I sorely miss for description: coin orientation or coin alignment. Would it be possible to include a field to distinguish between coin alignment and medal alignment on the variety info tab (a radio button comes to mind)? That would help a lot, especially if it could be used as a column for sorting when displaying types.

Thanks for any response

[admin]

Hi, yes we can add this to our list of new features to add.  Should the field be a simple text field, or should we also include some choices as well?  If it should include some choices from a drop down can you tell us what they should be or give a link describing the possible entries to this field.

[erb-57]

Thanks for the swift response. For (sub-)varieties I see several possibilities of adding the information.

1. There are two general types of alignment: (a) medal orientation (e.g. in British coinage) and (b) coin orientation (e.g. in US coinage). To add this information a radio button (either/or) would be sufficient. One of the two would need to be set as default.

2. Coin orientation is also specified as die rotation between obverse and reverse in degrees. Especially for numismatists collecting "error" coins, a combo box or spinning field allowing to set rotation between 0 (medal alignment) and 359 (1° die rotation, ccw) would be helpful. For coin alignment you would have to set the field to 180°. This however implies setting medal orientation as standard, which might upset collectors of coin aligned coinage. (However, this problem could be overcome by being able to set 0° or 180° as default for entries in the preferences section.)

3. Since not all collectors take the same view on alignement or use the same notation, a text field to manually specify die rotation would leave users to decide how to specify. As long as the field can be added as column (for sorting) or be searched, it would be up to the user to remain consistent when entering rotation.

I wouldn't dare propose the best solution for everyone. However, I would prefer the second solution with a numeric spinning field allowing for manual input, because this would accommodate most cases.

Thanks for your consideration ... I am really looking forward to this feature.