Thank you all for your comments. I will print them out and make them available to the other members of the committee for their consideration.
This certainly is not an easy task. I personally have used a database with my own system that is similar to Bob Ginsburg's (CT) with some differences. As I was a stamp collector in a previous life, I keep coming back to the fact that stamps have an individual number (assigned by the cataloger) that is chronologically ordered. Therefore a stamp collector can go up to a dealer and ask to see his Scott(the cataloger) US #1750 (for example). New variations do turn up in stamps and they are fit into the system, but generally #1 is the first issue of a country.
There are problems identified for chips (and tokens) -most identified very well by Dick. However, there are numbering systems that are being used now. So the question is more like should these systems (assuming that the authors agree) be changed to a universal system.
BTW, Jim Reilly, I did go back and read your article and I did lose you on the denomination codes <G>.
Thanks--Alan.