New Comprehensive Attribution Guide for Large Cents
opportunity
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Hey everyone, I'm pleased to officially announce that I'm in the early planning phases of writing a brand new, modernized, comprehensive attribution guide for early Large Cents 1793-1814. I have essentially everything together that I need except for the photos. I have permission from Heritage to use some of their photos, and am trying to pull some strings to get an authorization from PCGS to use some of theirs. Once I get everything in order, things should be moving along fairly quickly. The last attribution guide was published in the early 90's I believe, and is badly outdated. I plan to write my book in a practical manner designed to help you attribution coins, not to entertain you with fluff. There will much much included in the book that has never before been seen, and I will be introducing a totally new style and method of attributing coins in general that will be intuitive to everyone. If anyone thinks they may have anything to contribute, including high resolution photos, please advise!
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.
Comments
If you can produce a better reference that Noyes, I'll buy it.
Not to discount the great work he did, but I do plan to go all in on this publication. Notwithstanding the updated rarity ratings and missing (newer) varieties, I believe one of the things that will set my book apart are the much higher quality photos (with the help of PCGS, Heritage, and others) as well as a new style of attribution which will help speed things up greatly for the user. For some of the very rare low grade varieties, I will be using the obverse/reverses from the more common marriages and mating them together as a "fantasy example" in order to show more detail, while keeping in mind die states applicable to the variety. It's going to be great.
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.
I await publication with great anticipation!
How, if at all, do you intend to address die states? An updated and corrected Breen system (for DBLCs) would be fantastic.
Smitten with DBLCs.
What I can say for now is that die states will certainly be addressed more comprehensively than ever before.
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.
You have to out-do the Noyes book here, not just produce another one, so you'll have to pull out some innovative ways of making this a must-have. Some thoughts:
Since you want to make this an efficient attribution guide, use line drawings to make key illustrations, like the Grellman book. This way you won't be at the mercy of dark photos of dark coins that can be difficult to read.
Look at the Peterson Bust Half Book, which makes a composite of stuff that can be found on a single shot of each side, and then provides one or two key photos. This may work well for large cents.
Use color to illustrate die stage as cracks grow or clashes and gouges show up.
Some might want to use it to see if they have a rare variety, but not care about the common ones. If you group the rare ones together at each date, you'll let those people stop looking sooner. Grouping them that way will also help people learn the rare ones faster, as they can do so without looking through the common ones to find the rare ones.
In the world of VAMs, there are some champions of the "One (OK, Maybe Two) and Done" method of attributing coins. Find a unique feature (or one on each side) and you're done. Don't see it, and you move on. I'm not sure how this translates to early large cents, since the scale of what you're looking at is much larger, but on the line drawing, a box around a feature that means "yes -- stay on this page, no -- turn the page" would make things go pretty fast.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I'm working on a similar project - a Liberty Seated Half Dime attribution guide, though the format is not a book but a free online guide with a separate PDF for each date / mintmark combination.
I have obtained permission to reproduce photos from all the major sources:
It's possible that since my guide is a free product that permission was easier to obtain.
I "watermark" every photo to identify the source.
I've done 12 date/mint mark combinations so far; should take a couple more years to finish at this rate.
https://web.stanford.edu/~clint/hdag/index.htm
Thanks for reminding me, yosclimber...the Goldbergs are on my list that I need to contact, as well. Since I'm planning a printed book, free obviously can't happen. I look forward to your attribution guide.
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.
This sounds interesting... especially with a new and improved method of attribution. Cheers, RickO
It sounds like a good idea if it's not reinventing Noyes or Grellman... I think something that would be useful is if there's a companion CD or.. better yet... access to a website database that's searchable and accessible to mobile devices.
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If you can make a guide similar to what Peterson did so the position of leaves and berries to letters are noted...
Believe it or not, If someone were to put images to the things Newcomb devised for his attributions, it would be very useful. I stopped using this reference years ago when other books were published.
I'm pleased to report that I've gained permission from PCGS and Heritage to use their photos. If any EAC folks out there have anything they may like to contribute, please let me know what it may be. I am especially interested in high res. photos of rare varieties in unusual die states.
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.