NEW COLUMN: HIDDEN TREASURES

A new metal-detecting and coin-collecting column by award-winning author Frank J. Colletti will debut on Monday, March 1, 2021. The column, Hidden Treasures, will appear in Coin Update (www.coinupdate.com) every other week.

Frank Colletti, a Certified Public Accountant, is known to the numismatic community as a specialist and collector of the Guide Book of United States Coins, popularly known as the Red Book. He wrote the Guide Book of the Official Red Book of United States Coins (Whitman Publishing, 2009), a reference for book collectors, which Kenneth Bressett has called a fascinating account with a wealth of information. Colletti follows the market for rare and special-edition Red Books and regularly advises on pricing and rarity.

The longtime collector became interested in coins in 1962, when he received a Barber quarter (last minted in 1916) in payment on his newspaper-delivery route. His interest in metal-detecting is also longstanding, and he has written hundreds of related articles in various hobby publications, including Lost Treasure magazine. He wrote monthly columns on coin collecting (Money Talks) and on the good deeds that metal detectorists perform (Civic Patrol).

The hobbies of treasure-hunting and coin-collecting are richly connected, says Colletti. Metal detectorists often locate scarce and unusual coins, and we should be knowledgeable about our finds. As you learn more about coins, you become better equipped to form a nice collection, rather than just a random accumulation. And if you're already an active coin collector, you can enter an exciting new world by learning the ins and outs of hands-on treasure hunting.

Whitman publisher Dennis Tucker has seen growing interest in metal-detecting over the past year. We published the second edition of Dave Bowers's Lost and Found Coin Hoards and Treasures in the winter of 2019, Tucker says. The book was featured in social media and got coverage from the American Numismatic Association and the hobby publications. Then it started to gain more attention from metal detectorists. In five weeks I received nearly 400 Facebook friend requests from treasure-hunters who were interested in the book. There are active communities online, where detectorists share information and inspire each other to keep looking for the next big treasure.

Colletti joins a regular lineup of Coin Update columnists including Q. David Bowers, Michael Alexander, Louis Golino, and Michael Bugeja. News articles, market commentary, Mint reports, and opinion pieces on U.S. and world coins, medals, tokens, and paper money are published daily at www.coinupdate.com.

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