Whats best book on US gold coins
walkinstick
Posts: 45
Need to bone up on pre 1933 gold coins. Can you advise what I should read.Thx U all. May 2005 be a good year to all. Gayle
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Comments
Breens a good start for information. Official Red Book of Auction records is a good start for pricing trends information.
You're on the right track by investing in research material.
Tom
Coin's for sale/trade.
Tom Pilitowski
US Rare Coin Investments
800-624-1870
<< <i>Tom. I need to read as much as possible. Purchased a double eagle that I like still do but realized I know very little. And I really like them Thx >>
Definitely buy the new Bowers book on double eagles then. It's short, concise and great information specific to double eagles. Send me a pm or email with your vitals if you like and I'll send you one free.
Tom
Coin's for sale/trade.
Tom Pilitowski
US Rare Coin Investments
800-624-1870
Basic texts include the following, and these are the basic ones:
United States Gold Coins, An Illustrated History Q David Bowers
How to Grade U.S. Coins James Halprin
A Handbook of 20th Century United States Gold Coins 1907-1933
David Akers
Of course you will want a red book but the mintage numbers are not very good for prognosticating the rarity of a gold coin in a given grade. I still have to subscribe to the pcgs population report but have been too lazy. Though a few hundred thousand of a piece may have been minted, the number of slabbed coins in a certain grade (a true test of availability) may be only 5 or 10 total graded. There are many 07-33 US gold coins in Europe and I suspect, other places so any very high rarity could become common with just one bag being released from some bank in Austria so you really don't know how rare a coin is and like I mentioned, the true number minted may have nothing to do with availability.
Following auctions and perusing auction records on a specific coin is by far one of the more valuable indicators of price and availibility. You will need to know these two things before you start collecting US gold. Oh, I forgot a couple of books...Coin Collecting for Dummies, a must read and Counterfeit Detection (I cant find mine just now) by PCGS. There are a number of other books on US gold but I would advise to begin with the ones in this text.
Enjoy,
Mike
As far as gold coins go, although there are several books on individual series or mints, there's not much on gold coins as a whole.
For a good overview of everything, there's Breen, of course (Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of US and Colonial Coins); if you just want the sections on gold coins, they're available as individual pamphlets (as part of the Hewitt's series from the '60s) - these pamphlets are frequently available on eBay or from numismatic booksellers.
A few years ago, Dave Bowers wrote "United States Gold Coins: An Illustrated History", which, as I recall, is more of a coffee table book - it's a big book with lots of big color pictures, if I recall correctly. He also just published the Red Book of double eagles. He's also written books on the California Gold Rush as well as several on treasure ships.
Doug Winter has written books on the gold coins from the Charlotte, Dahlonega, New Orleans and Carson City mints; he's also written books on Type I, II and III Coronet double eagles. He also has several very good articles on his website or the Pinnacle website.
There's a book by Miller on early (1795-1838) half eagles; there's one on early (1795-1804) eagles by Taraszka.
About 20 years ago, David Akers wrote a series of books on gold coins, using auction records to estimate rarity. These books are still well thought of.
If you're interested in southern (Charlotte, Dahlonega, New Orleans, etc.) gold coins, you might want to join the Southern Gold Society, an Internet-based coin club. PM me your e-mail address and I can send you the latest copy of the club's eNewsletter.
Check out the Southern Gold Society
michael