Used book sales--numismatic finds

Longacre

This past weekend there was a huge used book sale in my town in Newtown, CT (about 150,000 books). That is probably not very big by some standards, but on my street there are more cows than people. I looked through the "collectibles" section and unfortunately there were not many coin books. There was a large world coin catalog reference book (put out by Krause) for $3 and some other US pricing guides that I didn't recognize (some were from the 1960's and listed a lot of gold issues at $24!). Last year there were a ton of old Red Books, and unfortunately I did not buy any. Does anyone else troll around used book sales for good coin books? Did you find any hidden gems?

UncleWiggly

I'm always looking, but haven't found any coin books yet. The best I can do in my area is garage sales.


Jerry

Pistareen

There is nothing I more enjoy cherrypicking that good numismatic literature.

Now that I've moved out of New England, I'll relate a tip: the annual book fair in Concord NH. In the past I've found the deluxe hardbound set of Bowers' Silver Dollar Encyclopedia there (both volumes for under $100) as well as a rare (200 printed) work called The State Coinages of New England, which contained the Miller work on Connecticuts and Ryder's work on Vermonts and Massachusetts coppers. The Miller/Ryder was once owned by a relatively famous CT collector and contained a number of useful annotations, added photographs, and notations of new varieties.

Book stores know that coin books are popular and tend to price common works too high. But they usually miss the value in rare early catalogues, out of print standard references, and the like. Good numismatic literature cherrypicks are where you find them -- I once bought an important large cent sale from 1912 from a bookstore in Tasmania!

I'm interested to know what others have found.

PreTurb

It's tough to find nice items... A lot of Redbooks around, not much more.

mrearlygold

I bought a Breen Encyclopedia for 5 bucks at a used bookstore in Pompano Beach once!

Tom

Conder101

I've picked up a few things but nothing really special. My best was a library discard of the 1947 first edition Redbook for a dime.