My 10-digit Sort Order Numbers Not Updating for 1 Catagory

I have multiple catagories and multiple sub-catagories in each. I have established a 10 digit sort order number for each of my products as there will be 10s if not 100s of thousands.

The 13th catagory's sub catagories will not update with the number I input. When I enter any 10 digit number and update it,what is stored is 2147483647. That is not a Sort Order number I have or will have. If I use a 9 digit number, it saves, but all my other catagories so far accept a 10 digit sort order number.

What is wrong with this one?? This may also occur in other catagories, but I havent entered any more products in other catagories yet.

2147483647 is the highest number allowed.

This is because the database is storing that data in an INT field, and MySQL imposes that specific limitation.

Simplest solution: use numbers smaller than 2,147,483,647

It would be very difficult to reduce the number below 2147483647. The products are coins and the sort order numbers are very specific to catalog by denomination, year, variety, mint mark, and grade. What is a less simply way? Is there a way to make my numbers work? The highest numbers will begin with 36

I suppose you could use phpMyAdmin to edit the products table and change the sort_order field in JUST THAT TABLE to be bigint instead of int.