Community voices: Vinícius Oliveira Godoyi
Community voices
Coiniverse launches a community voices blog series, where we give our users the chance to share their coin-collecting stories and experiences. Our first community voice is Vinícius Oliveira Godoy, 45, from Brazil. He is an art historian and has been collecting coins since his childhood.
Coin collecting: a hobby, an art appreciation and a window to the past, present and the future, piece by piece.
The first page of my first coin collection (that's how all started!)
I started collecting coins at a very young age. What interested me since the beginning was the sense of wonder having something of the past in my hands. I remember looking at a coin from the middle 1800 and thinking about how many hands had it passed through the years, how many people, time and places... and it came just to my hands. Little pieces of the past, like a little window to somewhere else in time and space. A little later, I began to be interested in aesthetic features: shapes, designs, the weird iconography from the past that few by few I started to understand. Some years later, I ended up studying history at university and specializing in Art History. It is not difficult to suppose that my special interest in this type of collecting contributed significantly to my professional vocation, even though there are multiple factors for this type of decision in our lives.
Old and new: Morgan silver dollar (1881) and a silver minted Doge Coin (2014).
Collecting coins, if was important in the choice of my academic background, at the same time, today such academic background influences my activity as a collector and appreciator of coins. My training as a historian made me look with greater interest at coins in their aspects of historical documents, fundamental pieces of material culture, and human activity through the ages. Coins narrate a significant part of human history, either directly, as a historical vestige themselves, or indirectly, in the case of commemorative coins. They are material testimonies of the varied notions of value, beauty and inventiveness of the civilizations that coined them. I think it is possible to understand the iconography of an era and its changes from its coins. From an artistic point of view, I cannot fail to see, as an art historian, how much coins can present a true historical unfolding of the various dominant artistic styles in each historical period. From the classic trait of Greek and Roman coins to the grandeur of 17th century baroque coins, just to name two examples, we see the artistic values of an era circulating in a practical way in the daily lives of the people who used them. I’ve been thinking a lot about the possibility of cataloging my collection based precisely on artistic and aesthetic criteria, inserted into a broader panorama, which is the History of Art.
When we talk about the divisions and criteria of coin collecting, we also think about the ways we have to classify and organize our collections and the evolution of such classifications, from the old catalog sheets to electronic methods. From those early years when I started collecting coins until today, a lot has changed in collecting. Perhaps the biggest change has been the global proximity, provided by the internet, between collectors, the market (individual sellers or large companies) and the organizations and companies responsible for minting. And, within this evolution of collecting, I think the Coiniverse platform plays a very relevant role. The app, for me, presents itself as a great portal to bring collectors together, a privileged place to exchange information and experiences and as a place to keep up to date on coin releases. In addition, Coiniverse is a safe place to purchase coins from the most respected minters in the world, and, going back to the issue of classification and cataloging, it is still an extremely practical and efficient platform for cataloging my collection.
Thinking about the future of numismatics, I believe Coiniverse will also be able to house collections of virtual coins and NFT – perhaps the app’s badges are already a start of this? I see the future of coin collecting in an integration between past and present, physical coins and tokens coexisting. Possibly, the tokens will attract new collectors, who will discover the immense cultural, historical and artistic richness of physical coins. Coiniverse, for me, is a privileged space to establish this meeting in new and old generations of collectors, new and old ways of relating to coin collecting and a privileged space to think about the very concept of numismatics and coin collecting.
Tips and hints by team Coiniverse
The easiest way to add a new coin if you have it at hand is to scan it and add the right one to your collection. At the same time, you might also discover other similar-looking coins from other countries or even centuries!
Hint: After adding a coin to your collection you can move your coins easily between collections in ‘My coins’ -view. You can also add personal notes for your own coins for your reference – they are not visible to other users at any point – even if you share your collection with your fellow users.
Sharing is caring. Make your profile public in ‘Edit profile’ -view and you can also start sharing your collections with others and receive likes from fellow collectors.