In early 2019, we assembled together to discuss how we could improve the current state of the coin collecting hobby. The idea of a single source of accurate information, gathering experts to teach others, and provide an online platform for coin collectors, hobbyists, coin roll hunters, and those interested in learning more about varieties and errors was born. We began the journey of collecting and documenting varieties and designing the website and database schema. The description short-hand was developed, as was the labeling system and extensive list of abbreviations to be used.
The Coin Q & A YouTube channel was launched in an effort to begin building a public-facing YouTube-based teaching platform to further develop interest, develop collectors into teachers, and get coin-related questions answered in a panel format.
In 2020, we continued work developing the SAN database, getting it ready to launch to the world as a website, tentatively known as cooperativenumismaticgroup.com. The business was formed in Florida and the future looked so bright. We met daily, for hours sometimes, developing the most complete source of coin variety information ever assembled on the internet. We had a great start on a number of different series, and we knew that we wanted to pursue obtaining the numislabs.com domain, but it was not available and had not been available for a few years. We continued on anyway, knowing that the name was far less important than the efforts to gather all the information for the varieties.
We suffered a huge loss and setback in May 2020, a few months after the Covid-19 pandemic really took hold in the US. It was then that our very dear mentor and partner, Ken Peavey, passed away suddenly. Ken was a natural when it came to teaching, he had a way of inspiring people with accurate and valuable coin information, with an emphasis on ethics, and a healthy dose of humor that made learning about varieties and errors fun. The loss was so devastating to all of us that were close to him. After the news had arrived, we all had our own ways of dealing with the tragic loss. We were very lucky that his family opened the door to let us in to grieve with them, and they came forth into all of our lives. They were seeing and hearing us, the coin community, exposing a whole world Ken had been a part of, had such a great impact upon, but had barely mentioned in his family discussions. Without the family’s grace, generosity, and support, we might not have ever moved on with the project.
With Ken’s work on the Lincoln Wheat cents not yet finished, other projects were put on hold to further develop this part of the database. More was also to be done to identify the information that would be extremely valuable to variety hunters across all series. The Wheat series was finally completed with 2843 base varieties around December 2020. The Florida corp was closed down since no one was left in Florida to manage. It was during this period that we had a stroke of luck. We had continued watching the numislabs.com domain through the summer, and as luck would have it, the domain wasn’t renewed by the owners, it came up for auction and was purchased in August 2020. The difficult part about that was that due to the domain auction, the name could not be moved to another hosting provider for 90 days. But we had it, and with it reformed Numislabs, LLC in Texas and set up everything to proceed.
In 2021, the final touches were placed on how the website would work initially, with so much effort being placed in easily accessing the exact information needed when searching for varieties. With cross-referencing and cross-linking all the information together so that those new to the hobby, as well as veterans, would be able to go deeper, and discover key linkages they may not have thought of before. The inspiration has always been to help connect the dots, answer the questions that arise, deeper than the typical surface-level information you can gather from random sources. Have you ever tried to find out what a struck through capped die is? Maybe you have tried to discover more about the mint, the equipment used in the process, and diagnostic information about an error. What about understanding what it means to have Hub Doubling Class V Counter-clockwise from K-3, and what other similar listings have this same doubling. It should not have to be a chore to find this information. These informational linkage conveniences and much more can be found at NumisLabs, all at your fingertips!
