Call for Coin Collecting Blogs

I have a small section on my Web site called a "blogroll widget." This blogroll widget is a place where I can provide links to a half-dozen or so blogs that are related to coins in some manner which I find to be of high enough quality or interest to appeal to my readers. You can see an example of this widget under the heading "Related Blogs" on the right-hand side (below the square ad) on any one of my coin blog pages. I did a net-wide search about 14 months ago, when I first got this widget, trying to find some worthy blogs to link to. Although I found a few, I was mostly disappointed at the quantity and quality of numismatic blogs available at the time. However, in the intervening months, several outstanding blogs and coin-related Web sites have come into existence, (and one very excellent one briefly flared brightly and died), so I'd like to update my blogroll widget. This is where you come in.

I am putting out a call for the best blogs in coin collecting. Although I might or might not think any given blog is worthy of being on my blogroll, I want to try to compile them all in one place, where people can find them easily. To that end, I'd like you to nominate any coin-related blogs that you think are worth other people's time to read. It's okay to nominate your own blog, but all nominations must be made to the Comments thread attached to this page. I receive more than 200 emails a day (and that is after the spam filter has eaten most of the incoming flood) so I want to make sure I don't miss any nominations. It is important that you nominate your blog, even if you think I already know about it, because this page is going to become my central reference point for setting up the new blogroll.

I have established a few guidelines for submissions:

1. Please nominate blogs only. No regular Web sites should be posted here. There'll be a separate call for them in a few weeks.



2. Don't bother nominating splogs. (Splogs = Spam + blogs, the type of "blog" that calls a few 100-character RSS headlines for "content" to justify the advertising.) If you're not writing your own content, do not nominate your site here.



3. Nominate only blogs related to numismatics. This means coins, banknotes, tokens, bullion investments, etc., and blogs that discuss these subjects and services related to them, but does not include your kid's soccer team or the latest development in medical devices for men.



4. Do not nominate a blog that has already been mentioned.

Important: I will be actively monitoring the comment thread on this page, and will be deleting any comments that contain nominations for non-qualifying blogs. I want this page to be a useful resource for everyone, not a link-farm for splogs or off-topic blogs. I want to make it clear that I am not trying to do quality control on the blogs, I'll leave that to readers, but I do want to provide links to real blogs that people are really writing, not crap that some automated 100-character RSS feed is creating. After the nominations have been open a couple of weeks, I will select 6 to 8 blogs to appear in my blogroll widget for the next year or so. All qualifying blogs will be listed in categories on a permanent page I'll create for that purpose (whether or not they make the widget.) In the meantime, take a moment to check out the nominations, because you might discover something really, really sweet that you didn't know about!

Here's an example of a blog written by an artist that I bet nearly none of my readers have ever seen, and yet it contains consistently high-quality and interesting information about coins, coin photography, and cleaning coins using advanced methods. Take a look at Jerry Jones' blog, and be sure to check out his archives! He's got some really great ideas, even though he wanders off-topic a little now and then (don't we all?) Help me discover all of these numismatic nuggets hidden out there on the web by nominating your favorite coin-related blog now!

Update: Well, d'oh! It never occurred to me that maybe the blog's spam filter would merrily consume the short nomination posts people are leaving. A dozen or so blog nominations have been recovered, plus several more came by email. I'll post a comprehensive list here by Wed. morning (Oct. 1.) In the meantime, I will accept nominations by email at coins.guide@about.com. My apologies for the confusion.