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Originally posted by Canadian_Nickle

Some of you may be familiar with the old Usenet xxxxCode phenomememe, whereby subcultures (goths, geeks, perverts, etc.) create a brief descriptor code system to provide a condensed personal profile in the signature file.

I've developed the HoardCode (v0.1) to provide a similar function for this community. The code begins with your gender (use and X if that's private) and age, followed by a slash and how many years you've been hoarding.

For me, being a 28 year old male who's been hoarding for 4 years:

M28/5

The next four characters identify your country and state, using two characters each.
I am in Canada, so CA (US would be, of course, US)
I am in the province of Ontario so ON
Use whatever the proper mailing contraction is for your state or province, so Quebec, for instance, would be CAPQ, not CAQU

My location code
CAON

This section terminates with a full colon:

:


That's it for the fixed demographic portion of the code. What follows next depends on what you hoard, and how much you have hoarded. The largest group (whatever you have most of) should be first, followed by the second largest, etc.

The general format for each group is Country, currency, composition, collection.

For an example, let's use me again. I collect Canadian .999 Nicxel 5 cent coins.
Country: Canada
Currency: 5 cents
Composition: .999 Nickel
Collection: 27,615

The first two letters of the group describe the origin of the currency hoarded, using the same method as the demographic information part of the code. In this case:

CA

The currency value is stated in cents. So, if you collect $1 coins be sure to give them a currency of 100, not 1. For nickels:

5

Composition is simply the metal the coins contain. Purity is not required, only an identification of what the call option being collected is. In the case of composite coins like the US nickel, list both metals. Use the 2-letter chemical element abbreviations from a standard periodic table. For me:

Ni

Follow that with the number of that coin you have in your hoard (or your nearest guess, if you've stopped counting... ;) ):

27,615

Put this group code together together and you get:

CA5Ni27615

You can add as many group codes as you like, just separate them with - marks.

So: here's my finished code as per the instructions above:


M28/5CAON:CA3Ni27615


And, once I add my other major collections:

M28/5CAON:CA5Ni27615:CA1Cu1200:CA100Ag345:CA10Ag250:CA50Ag100:CA25Ag30:CA500Ag48:US100Ag20:CA10000Ag16

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