JOEL OROSZ ON ONE-COIN COIN BOOKS

We call them “coin books,” but wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “coins books”? Nearly every such volume covers many coins.

For example, A Guide Book of United States Coins by R.S. Yeoman and edited by Kenneth Bressett, the “Red Book,” catalogs hundreds of different U.S. coins, from half cents to double eagles.

But few volumes — they can be counted on your fingers — are written about just one coin. Such coins are something special, and so are the books that describe them. Buy all nine of them, and you have an impressive mini-library or a dynamite show exhibit.

Best of all, none are rare, so all can be purchased for a total of less than $100. The first, published in 1962, is Eric P. Newman and Kenneth Bressett’s The Fantastic 1804 Dollar, which demonstrated that some of these dollars were made as diplomatic gifts, while others were struck surreptitiously by Mint employees for profit.

Next is Pete Smith’s The Story of the Starred Reverse Cents, published in 1986, which explained the discovery and probable reason for the creation of the variety of 1794 Liberty Cap cents with 94 minute stars encircling their reverse rims.

Only these two single-coin books were written during the first 150 years of coin collecting as a mass hobby in the United States, but for reasons unknown, starting in 2004, the single-coiner pace accelerated to one per year.

To read the complete article, see: Developing a mini-library (www.coinworld.com/articles/developing-a-mini-library)

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