Okay — I will admit it. I am an extreme “list checker offer”. I enjoy tracking my progress on things, crossing them off lists and the satisfaction that comes from seeing a completed list. This is really true in all facets of my life but nowhere is it more prevalent than in my travels. Recently for my birthday, my wife got me an awesome memento of the different travels that I’ve made.
Visiting Counties, States and Countries
I am attempting to visit every COUNTY in the United States. At the time of this writing, I was at 1,971 visited out of 3,143, for a total of 62.7%. I also am aiming to visit all 50 states. I sit at 49, and in fact, had a trip planned to Hawaii (my final state) earlier this year. That trip was scheduled for March 16-March 24, so…. you can guess how that turned out.
And of course, I am also tracking my travels worldwide. I even have a slick magnetic world map that I keep in my house that shows a list of where I’ve been, the top 10 places I WANT to go (travel bucket list) as well as one yellow pin for my next trip.
What is a country?
Trying to track down how many countries you’ve visited starts begging the question of what even is a country? Different people have different ideas. Personally, the main thing I track is the Most Traveled People list. They divide the world into 949 different jurisdictions (at the time of this post, I’ve been to 107). If there is a standard at all for the whole what is a country question, I’ve seen people use the UN+3. That’s 196 countries including the 193 members of the UN, plus Taiwan, Kosovo and the Vatican City. Different people have different lists, and that’s okay – you use whichever list you want 🙂
My list currently
1 Germany Apr-76
2 France Jul-76
3 Austria Jul-76
4 United States Mar-78
5 Canada Jul-94
6 Dominican Republic 9/26/95
7 Ireland 9/16/15
8 United Kingdom 9/16/15
9 Monaco 9/21/15
10 Italy 9/21/15
11 Vatican City 9/23/15
12 Japan 3/9/16
13 China 3/9/16
14 Singapore 3/10/16
15 Malaysia 3/11/16
16 United Arab Emirates 3/14/16
17 Peru 5/28/17
18 Sweden 8/31/17
19 Greece 3/8/18
20 Switzerland 3/12/18
21 Iceland 8/21/18
22 Denmark 8/21/18
23 Belgium 8/23/18
24 Luxembourg 8/23/18
25 Netherlands 8/23/18
26 Taiwan 9/20/18
27 Jamaica 11/22/18
28 Portugal 5/28/19
29 Spain 6/1/19
30 Andorra 6/8/19
31 Qatar 10/1/19
32 Morocco 10/2/19
Because I was born in Germany and traveled around Europe as an infant, I did put some of those countries on there. Others that I know I visited while young but have since visited as an adult I put later on in life.
My country keychain
I had seen online a few options for commemorative rings to celebrate different countries visited. I thought that was a really cool idea, but most of them cost anywhere from $4-$7 per ring, and I didn’t really want to pay that much for keychains, so I decided to see if I could make it on my own. Actually, I punted it over to my wife and asked her if she could make something like that for my birthday 🙂
It took a little back and forth of buying different stamping kits, metal rings, and even a metal block on which to stamp them. In the end, I think that they turned out great.
We used the ISO 3166 3 digit Alpha codes along with the date visited and the order in which I visited them. Here is a closeup of country #9 – Monaco
All credit goes to Mrs. PWaC 🙂
Other options
As I mentioned, there are other options available that you can purchase. I will warn you, if you ever visit any of these websites, be prepared to have these products show up in your Google and Facebook ads forevvvvver. (None of these are affiliate links)
The one I looked at most was WanderClub. They have Country rings for $4, US States for $3.50, National Parks for $4.50 and a keychain for $25
Again, that was a bit rich for my blood, and might be for you too, depending on how many states, parks or countries you’ve visited. I can’t see a UN+3 country completer dropping over $800 for a full set but of course it depends.
Another option is the Traveler Collective. They are similarly priced but also have the option to add dates as well. They also have a “Starter Pack” which is a key ring and up to 50 countries, for $99.
You can see that those rings are much smaller, probably because they have an actual machine that is doing the stamping instead of doing them by hand. In any case, I am super happy with the one my wife made for me, and can’t wait until I can get back on the road and add some more rings to my collection!
What do you think of my countries visited keychain? Do you have something similar? Let me know in the comments!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I love the idea of the keychain as well as the one your wife made for you Dan. The only thing I would like different is that I would try and spell out the country rather than an abbreviation.
Wishing you continued, adventurous, and safe travel.
Thanks. That is the benefit of doing it yourself vs. ordering a stock one from one of those companies – you can make it however you want! One limitation that we ran into was just the amount of space on each metal slug. I think you’ll have a hard time fitting in, say, PAPUA NEW GUINEA or TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO unless you have a MUCH bigger slug 🙂
Great momento/gift! Awesome wife!!!
I do have a Global map in my bedroom plus I used to buy one souvenier for every country I visited and put it in a table along with some pics. little things made us be happy and this count.thanks, Dan for share it.