After about 100 hours of work, Daniel's Coin Zoo version 3 has launched. This time the whole thing was re-built from the ground-up. Hopefully it is now faster and easier to use.

The upgrade included moving from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5. Although Joomla 3.0 is available, I will be patient and wait for the 3.5 version. (For some unknown reason, Joomla numbers long-term releases as x.5 and short-term releases as x.0.) In the future, moving to a newer version of Joomla will be much easier than in the past.

I did it! After 5+ years, I have my entire animal coin collection on display in the Coin Zoo. That's 694 coins from 138+ different countries around the world. I estimate that 60% of all animal coin types issued in the world from 1901 to date are represented here. Which means I still have a lot more coins to find, research, photograph, and present, but at this point I have caught up with my collection.

Back in September of this year, I received an email from Luka in Lithuania inquiring about trading some animal coins from her part of the world with animal coins from my part of the world. Of course, I said, I always love the opportunity to do that!

This week I received a very nice package from Luka with a collection of seven different Lithuanian coins featuring Vytis, the White Knight. As well, there were two coins from Latvia, the country to the north. This was especially exciting for me, since up until now I had not found a single Latvian animal coin for the collection.

...you Google an animal, and it comes up all coins. Which is to say, you enter a search term like "Balisier Hummingbird", because that is what the Krause catalogue says is on the coin, and the results are pretty much all coin sites quoting the catalogue. But this one goes one better than that!

About two-and-a-half four years ago (3 years, 10 months to be exact) I decided to take a little break from building my Coin Zoo. At the time, I figured I would get back at it during Christmas break -- in 2006, that is. Then in mid-2007 I thought I would get back at it during Christmas break, a whole year later.

Now, just after Christmas break 2009, I decided to get back at it. But, before I started adding more coins to the zoo, there was another little issue to take care of first. Actually, three issues.

Today the Coin Zoo received a rather unusual communication. It came from the Ghamadan Zoo in Amman, Jordan announcing the birth of five white lion cubs on 27 August, 2007.

At first I thought it might be a scam, since the communication seemed to be soliciting money. However, on closer inspection it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity: The Business Development Manager of the zoo mistook Daniel's Coin Zoo for a real zoo!