Now Displaying 694 Coins from 138 Countries
I did it! After 5+ years, I have my entire animal coin collection on display in the Coin Zoo. That's 694 coins from 138+ different countries around the world. I estimate that 60% of all animal coin types issued in the world from 1901 to date are represented here. Which means I still have a lot more coins to find, research, photograph, and present, but at this point I have caught up with my collection.
I started Daniel's Coin Zoo back in October 2005 and after a brief flurry of activity lasting five months, I had built the original site and presented just over 400 coins from 80+ countries. Perhaps that was too much, too quick, because after that I took a break lasting almost four years.
Not that I wasn't doing anything during that time. There was the normal site maintenance, a few articles here and there, and the occasional coin hunting safari, but no new coins were added.
In January 2010, I completed a massive overhaul of the Coin Zoo and set the goal to add my entire collection by the Fall. I did not quite make that deadline, but now it is done, along with some more design tweaks (and some more to come).
Now, I just need to find the 400-odd animal coins I am still missing!