google book search seems to have a lot of coin related books.

fc

i was doing a google search for die erosion on half eagles and i
came upon a recent tool released by google.

here is an example of the search they offer and some useful things
it pulled up.. it has full copies of heritage auction catalogs, merchant magazines from 1862, all sorts of crap scanned in!

http://books.google.com/books?q=coin+auction&btnG=Search+Books

i hope it may help someone who wishes to use it! i know i will
spend some time trying to find some interesting material.

For your information!

tightbudget

Unfortunately, most other things that you search for yield only snippets...

fc

yea, i need to use it a bit more to see if it has value.
i was impressed right away though by the older books from the
1860s like the merchant books discussing gold coin mintage ratios.

maybe if enough of us give it a try we will discover what uses it has...

like i said, just an fyi. the auction catalogs alone may make it useful.
you can download full pdf copies.

DaveG

Google Book Search is particularly useful for original 19th century source material, including digital copies of Hunt's Merchants Magazine and even a couple of Mint annual reports. It also has 19th century books on business practices and economics (like the Silver Question, etc.)