Inventory Upgrade · Free Import

Replace your coin collection spreadsheet.
Without losing what you've typed.

Spreadsheets work until they don't. MyCoinage imports your existing Excel or Google Sheets file in under a minute and gives every row a live valuation, photos, alerts and a real database engine behind it.

CSVimport in under a minute
Freeup to 25 coins
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Quick answer Most serious coin collectors started in a spreadsheet. It works for the first fifty coins. After that, the missing pieces start to hurt: no live valuations, no photos, no alerts, no series view, no insurance export. MyCoinage is a free coin inventory tool that imports your existing CSV, keeps every column you care about, and adds the things Excel cannot do, including live realised auction prices on every coin and a 4,700+ coin reference catalogue you didn't have to type.

What works about a coin spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are not the wrong answer. They're the first answer. They cost nothing, run on every device, and let you put any column anywhere. For a few dozen coins, they work fine. What works:

  • Total control. You decide what to track and how to label it.
  • No lock-in. A CSV is a CSV is a CSV. Take it anywhere.
  • Quick edits. Tab, type, tab. No form, no validation, no friction.
  • Free, on every device. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, LibreOffice. Same file, same data.

That is genuinely the best of it. The case for moving on isn't that spreadsheets are bad. It's that they stop helping past a certain size.

What breaks at 50 coins

Most collectors hit a wall around the fifty-coin mark. The friction stops being about typing and starts being about the things you cannot do at all:

  1. You don't know what your collection is worth. A purchase price column is not a current value. Manually checking eBay for fifty coins every month doesn't happen, so the "value" column drifts from reality.
  2. Your photos live somewhere else. The Dropbox folder, the camera roll, the loose folder on the laptop. The sheet has filenames at best. When you need an insurance file, you spend an evening matching photos to rows.
  3. You can't see series progress. The 50p Olympic series has 29 coins. Looking at a row count doesn't tell you which 29.
  4. You miss every price movement. A coin you watch jumps 30 percent at auction. The sheet doesn't know. You don't either, until next month.
  5. Mobile is painful. Tapping into a column on a phone, scrolling to find a row, fat-fingering the wrong cell. Excel on mobile exists but isn't how anyone wants to enter a coin while standing at a fair.
  6. Insurance becomes a project. Insurers want photographs, grades, market values and provenance per item. A spreadsheet plus a folder of photos is several days of work to assemble. A coin tracker exports it as one PDF.
  7. Death and probate. If you die tomorrow, can your partner read the sheet and know what it means? "1c VictoriaSP" is meaningless to anyone but you.

Bring your spreadsheet across in 60 seconds

The CSV import tool is the bridge. Save your coin spreadsheet as CSV (every spreadsheet program supports it), upload it from /account/import-csv, and the rows land in your collection.

Required column: coin_slug. The rest are optional.

Recognised optional columns:

coin_slug,grade,purchase_price_gbp,purchase_date,purchase_source,storage_location,tags,notes 1-crown-victoria-1st-portrait-1839,VF,750.00,2024-06-12,Spink,"Safe A","Investment,Rare","Edge knock at 6 o'clock" half-sovereign-elizabeth-ii-2000,UNC,180.50,2023-11-04,eBay,"Album 3 slot 5",,"Gift from dad"

Find the coin_slug on any coin page in the URL. /coin/1-crown-victoria-1st-portrait-1839 means the slug is 1-crown-victoria-1st-portrait-1839. If your sheet has only coin names, use the catalogue search to look up the slug for each row, paste it in, then import.

Common spreadsheet column → MyCoinage field

Most existing coin spreadsheets map cleanly. Here are the typical ones we see:

Your spreadsheet
Coin Name / Description
→
MyCoinage
coin_slug (looked up via catalogue)
Your spreadsheet
Grade / Condition
→
MyCoinage
grade (UK or Sheldon)
Your spreadsheet
Paid / Cost / Price Paid
→
MyCoinage
purchase_price_gbp
Your spreadsheet
Date / Purchased
→
MyCoinage
purchase_date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Your spreadsheet
Where bought / Source
→
MyCoinage
purchase_source
Your spreadsheet
Album / Slot / Drawer
→
MyCoinage
storage_location
Your spreadsheet
Notes / Comments
→
MyCoinage
notes (private)
Your spreadsheet
Theme / Category
→
MyCoinage
tags (comma-separated)

Anything that doesn't map directly can go into tags or notes. We have yet to see a sensible coin column the import couldn't accommodate.

What you keep, what you gain

The migration is additive. Everything in the sheet stays. The list below is what shows up once your rows land in MyCoinage:

📈
Live realised value
Every imported coin gets a current market value pulled from real auction sales. Refreshed daily.
📊
Per-grade price history
A graph of recent sale prices for each grade, with the latest sale, 30-day change and source links.
📸
Photos per coin
Upload obverse and reverse images. Stored against your record, exported with PDF.
🔔
Watchlist alerts
Pro members get email alerts when a watched coin crosses a target price.
🧩
Series completion
Visual grids for every series. See which coins you're missing in one glance.
📄
Insurance-ready export
One-click PDF with photos, grades, market values, ready for home-contents insurers.
📱
Phone-friendly
Add coins, view values, mark sold from a phone. Works at coin fairs, in the car, in the post-office queue.
📦
Still your data
CSV export back to spreadsheet on the free tier. You are never locked in.

Spreadsheet vs MyCoinage, head to head

CapabilityExcel / Google SheetsMyCoinage
CostFree (Sheets) / £~70/yr (M365)Free up to 25 coins
Live realised market priceManual lookupAuto, daily
Per-grade price history graphNoYes
Photo storage per coinExternal folderBuilt in
Watchlist with price alertsNoYes (Pro)
Series completion gridDIY pivot tablesBuilt in
Insurance-grade PDF exportDIYOne click (Pro)
4,700+ coin reference catalogueType each rowPre-loaded
Mintage, designer, edge, mintmark fieldsDIYPre-loaded per coin
Mobile entryPainfulYes
CSV import / exportNativeBoth
Total control over columnsYesStructured (plus tags)

The trade-off is structure. A spreadsheet bends to whatever you want. A tracker imposes a schema (one that handles 4,700+ coins consistently) and gets the live data, the photos, the graphs, the alerts and the export in return. Most collectors keep both for a few weeks, then stop opening the sheet.

A short note on coin inventory templates

We deliberately don't publish a downloadable XLSX template. The reason is that most templates online are either incomplete (missing grade or mint) or over-engineered with formulas that break the moment you change a column. If you want the absolute minimum schema to keep using a sheet today (and migrate easily later), copy this row into your first row:

slug,denomination,year,grade,purchase_price_gbp,purchase_date,source,storage_location,notes

Save as CSV when you're ready to import. Everything else is optional polish.

Coin spreadsheet FAQ

Can I import a coin collection spreadsheet?
Yes. The CSV import tool accepts any spreadsheet exported as CSV (from Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or anything else). The only required column is the coin slug; everything else (grade, purchase price, purchase date, source, storage location, tags, notes) is optional. A typical 100-row sheet imports in under thirty seconds, and the tool reports any rows it could not match so you can fix them by hand.
What is the slug I need in my CSV?
The slug is the URL-friendly name for a coin in our catalogue. You can find it on any coin page in the URL: /coin/1-crown-victoria-1st-portrait-1839. If your spreadsheet only has the coin name, run a quick search in the catalogue to look up the slug. We are working on auto-matching by name, but a slug is the foolproof way to import.
Will I lose any data when I move from Excel?
Probably not. The catalogue captures more fields than most coin spreadsheets, not fewer. Your existing columns (grade, purchase price, purchase date, source, notes) map directly. Anything that does not map can go in tags or the private notes field. Photographs do not import via CSV but you can upload them per coin once the records are in.
Can I export back to a spreadsheet later?
Yes. CSV export is available on the free tier. Pro members also get an insurance-grade PDF export with photos, grades, market values and purchase history, formatted for home-contents insurers. You are never locked in.
Why bother replacing the spreadsheet at all?
A spreadsheet does what you tell it to. A tracker also does the things you can't: it pulls a live realised market value for every coin from recent auction sales, shows the price history per grade, alerts you when a coin you watch crosses a threshold, and tells you which coins in a series you still need. Same data, plus everything a database engine and a price feed can do that Excel can't.
What does it cost?
The free tier covers up to 25 coins with the full catalogue, current prices, watchlist and series tracking. Pro is £2.99/month or £28.99/year for unlimited coins, full price graphs, alerts and PDF export. There is a 14-day free trial of Pro on signup.
Is there a coin inventory template if I want to keep using Excel?
You can keep the spreadsheet alongside MyCoinage if you want. Many collectors do, especially during a transition. The minimum sensible Excel schema is: slug, denomination, year, grade, purchase_price_gbp, purchase_date, source, storage_location, notes. Save as CSV when you are ready to import. We do not publish a separate XLSX template because the CSV import accepts almost any layout.
What if my coin is not in the catalogue?
You can submit a coin request from the search page. An editor adds the coin (usually within a few days) and you can then import the row. For now, save those rows in your CSV as a separate batch and import them after the new catalogue entries appear.
Can I import grades in Sheldon as well as UK descriptive?
Yes. The tracker accepts both UK grades (Fine, EF, UNC, FDC) and Sheldon grades (MS-65, AU-58, F-12). The grading guide lists all valid values. Mixed scales in one spreadsheet are fine; the system handles each row independently.
Is the import tool safe for a collection I've spent years entering?
Yes. CSV import always inserts into your collection; it never modifies the public catalogue. If you need to back out, you can delete imported coins individually or do a bulk delete from the collection view. Your CSV file stays on your machine; we keep no copy of the upload after the import completes.

Related reading

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