Collecting Catholic medals.

Collecting Catholic medals is a great hobby who offers you endless possibilities.  From the simple satisfaction of seeing your collection growing & obtaining a brighter cultural insight to even make people around you happy.

A passionated collector of those items knows that the collection never is completed, because of the enormous quantity of different medals.

They represent countless Saints, Our Ladies, Holy apparitions, Christ, Popes, priests, monks, nuns, Catholic congregations, special Catholic events, relic devotions, religious places such as churches, basilics, cathedrals, ... 

All this representations offer already a bright choice of collection. But it surely doesn't stop here.
For every kind of representation, medals come in endless different kinds of shapes, colors, kinds of metals, languages, countries, manufacturing artists, artistic styles and ofcourse periods in history (it's age).
And again, no end in sight, because medals can be part of rosaries, bracelets, religious devotion cards and even in keychains...
I'm sure you get the picture when I say that collecting Catholic medals offers endless possibilities.

It's a passionating hobby, not only because of the enormous quantity that is collectable, but also because it offers so much more. Let me explain ...
 
A part of your work as collector will be first to find medals. You can always ask friends and family to receive them, I'm sure they'll  be happy to help you in your quest. But the best way to grow your collection will be to find a place where you can buy them frequently. Churches, stores and second-hand fares are places where you'll physicly meet them to buy, but they come in extremely small quantities to find.
The best place to buy them is ofcourse Ebay, where thousands are for sale every week. I won't be writing about how to buy them, as there is already a good review written on this subject by one of my review-writing collegues on ebay. You should read it. It surely will help you buy them on Ebay.

But to collect Catholic medals , there is more than just acquire the medals. The passionating work is still ahead...

With any good luck, you'll buy them already in a cleaned condition (as I mostly sell them). If not, the cleaning part begins. Very important and you should know this, medals are delicate items to clean. But I have for you, a great tip on how to clean them safely. But first I strongly advise you, not to clean them with chemicals!!! One wrong handling and your medal could be definitively damaged, worse even completely solved away.
Cleaning them is easy, and here comes my priceless tip!!! You'll be so glad and amazed about this simple technic. What's more, it's so cheap! Just some physical muscle activity is required :-) .  Ofcourse if you have to clean hundreds... imaging how my arm muscles are expanding. ;-)
GUM ! Gum solves the problem when it comes to clean up a medal on a safely matter. Just wrap on the medal with it and check out the difference! You truely will be amazed. I use 3 different kinds of gum; soft, middle hard & hard gums (those for erasing inct, as I call them 'the blue gums'). Always use first the soft ones and use harder when you see the dirt has trouble getting off.
I'm sure you'll get back to me and thank me for this technic.

After cleaning, comes the cataloging part. Everyone has his own way ofcourse. They are usually stored by group, as I described already above, there are different kinds of medals. A simple cataloging technic is storing them in easy to use maps. They have the exact dimensions to store the medals. The same maps are used for coin collections.

So, they are cleaned & stored. You could just stop here and be satisfied with owning such beautifull items. Or you could go on. Learn more about them. What do they mean. What is the story behind the representing Saint...
The possibilities are endless, as well as the knowledge you'll get from it.

Knowledge you finally could use for making people around you happy, by offering them the right medal they might need in their lives.

Collecting Catholic medals not just is a personal satisfying hobby, but you can be helping people who believe. Make a great appropriate gift for someone in need. It's a passionating and human-contact rewarding hobby.

Be passionated !

Thank you for reading my review, I hope it was interesting.
Greetings,
Saint-Nicolaas

Click here to see all my items for sale ! Happy biddings !!!! Thank you