I just picked up another old Japanese banknote and was going to write a post about it, but I ended up writing too much about collecting vs stacking, so I thought I'd move that talk to a new post and do the banknote later.

So... are you a collector or a stacker?

Both have their pros and cons.

With collecting you are generally paying inflated costs for the coin or banknote. With old coins/notes, unlike say baseball cards, the demand usually doesn't vanish for certain ones so you don't have to worry about that, so that's good at least. And that also means that unless you bought blindly (without knowing what you should pay) and were taken advantage of, you will probably be able to sell any collectable piece for the same or more in the future. Then we have the biggest potential negative of collecting—that collectors tend to become attached to their pieces and don't want to sell, even if the price goes up a lot.

With stacking, well, the market can be fickle and those prices can swing all over. This could be good or bad, but it does mean you should probably pay attention to the charts when buying—or buy from someone you trust not to take advantage of you. Long term the market usually moves up, so selling shouldn't be an issue. But if selling short-term, you need to be careful or might lose money.

And of course for both collecting and stacking, you need space. With stacking and with collecting too if your collection is valuable, you might deal with security concerns as well. This could involve figuring out a good place to hide them at home or storing them off site.

Although I do stack, as I have shown in the past, I am probably more of a numismatist: a collector and someone who studies currency. That's probably no surprise to those of you who have read all my Japanese coin posts where I give tons of details about the coin/note and a lot of historic info. I love these kinds of details.

How about you? Are you a collector or a stacker? Or both? Let me know your feelings in the comments.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.