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From QDB's Lincoln Cent book-- was Rick Tomaska's Proof Coin book truly a ground breaking study?

I am reading QDB's book on Lincoln cents and it is great. In it, he refers a few times to Rick Tomaska's book about proof and cameo proof coins. Specifically, he writes,

"As the years rolled on from 1950 to 1964, cameo contrast proofs were made with increasing frequency, but still in the minority, and those with today's highly prized deep cameo contrast were made in even fewer numbers. Scant notice was taken of such differences back then, until the 1980s-- and especially after the 1991 publication of Rick Tomaska's "Cameo and Brilliant Proof Coinage of the 1950 to 1970 Era", a little book that had a big effect on the coin market."

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For those in the know:

(1) How ground breaking was Tomaska's book?
(2) How much did the markets move as a result?
(3) Was Tomasaka's book a reaction to the market, or did it drive the interest in cameo proof coins?
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Comments

  • Bower's points there are hardly earth shattering, are they? Is this typical of his revelations in this new book?
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    Apropos of the coin posse/aka caca: "The longer he spoke of his honor, the tighter I held to my purse."

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  • BearBear Posts: 18,953 ✭✭✭
    Rick was not the first person to write a book

    on modern DCAM coinage. What he did though was

    to expand on the manufacture, rarity scale, and peculiarities

    for each year as well as the 1965, 1966 and 1967 specimen coins.

    What is ground breaking about the book are the pages of superb pictures,

    of what top of the line Cameos and DCAM should look like. It is not an

    overstatement to make the claim that Rick expanded modern DCAM coins

    into a major collecting series. Ricks original book, stands as the seminal book

    of the DCAM modern coinage . It is as valuable and helpful today as when it was first

    published.
    There once was a place called
    Camelotimage
  • percybpercyb Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭✭
    I'm in the dark but would like to know the ans' to the q's you pose.
    "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." PBShelley
  • SkyManSkyMan Posts: 9,493 ✭✭✭✭✭
    The first major book on "modern" cameos is Val J. Webb's book "Cameo Proofs 1950-64". Rick filled in a lot of the holes in that book and as mentioned by Bear the estimated rarity ratings and the pictures in Rick's book were a MAJOR improvement over what went before. I don't quite think you could say that Rick started the market for modern cameos, but he certainly supercharged it.

    And while we're at it, here are two plate coins of mine that were used for Rick's book, the 1950 is plate # 3 and the 1959 is plate # 46.

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  • MyqqyMyqqy Posts: 9,777
    Skyman- those are a pair of beautiful cams! I think I need to go dig that book up, and browse through it again.... image
    My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable !
  • LeeGLeeG Posts: 12,162
    This book was one of my first numismatic related purchases. Great read and very nice images.

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