Happy Monday! This past weekend, I got a comment from Mira G on the site. She posted her question after reading the article I posted on simple coin cataloging system I use.
What coin flips do you use to store your coins? I see in your pictures that you have saflips but in other places I see you have the cardboard flips. Which do you prefer and why?
Mira G’s Comment
First Mira, thanks for taking the time to post your questions.
You are right: In the article I show a picture of a 1947-D Lincoln Cent in a Saflip. As for the cardboard flips, I am assuming you are referring to the Tweet below as I don’t think I’ve posted any photos on the site of cardboard flips.
To answer your question Mira, I use Guardhouse flips to store my coins, although I have many in Saflips too. Early on in my collection days, I was using the cardboard flips but over the past 30-odd years, some of them have torn or worst case, started to impact the coin itself. I made the decision late last year to move all of my coins from the cardboard flips to either Saflip or Guardhouse flips as they are archival quality.
That’s not to say cardboard flips are bad, far from it. These too are now archival quality but back in the late 80s, some were and some weren’t. I didn’t know what I had so I decided to re-sleeve all of them. I’m still working through that process about 1000 coins later with another 300 or so to go. Yikes!
Of the Saflip or Guardhouse flips, I personally prefer the Guardhouse ones. They are a little thicker and they have rounded corners to make it easy to slip them into storage sleeves in my collection binders.
Which ever you decide to go with, make sure that you are getting flips that are archival quality, ideally made of Unplasticized Vinyl (or uPVC). These will be free of oils and plasticizers that can potentially impact the coin itself after long term storage. Unfortunately this means that these flips are a bit expensive. Right now you can pick up a 100 pack with inserts of the Guardhouse flips for $11.65 on Amazon (Affiliate Link) which is the lowest I’ve seen them in some time.
Thanks for the question Mira!
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