Do books bring more monetary value to a certain series of coin?

STONE

Lets take Steve Tompkins new book on Bust Quarters. This series, before the publication of his book, was/has been fairly dead and a lowly collected/recognized series of U.S. numismatics.
Once his book was published and brought to the collecting community, prices for most dates/varieties seemed to rise quite a bit (as far as I could tell they did).

1) Therefore, does added information about a coin(s), such as a book, add more monetary value to a coin?
2) Or is it just the recognition of a book being published on a topic that temporarily rejuventates a series, such as Bust Quarters, where that series will slowly lose interest as time passes?


Follow-up question to #1 from above:
Therefore, if books directly increase the value of certain coins in a given series, why aren't more books being published/re-published for those series'?!

291fifth

Not always. Several books have been published on Shield Nickels in the past 15 years and the series seems to be as dead as ever.

Coinosaurus

Increase in the value of the coins doesn't necessarily increase value to the author, unless they have a substantial position in the coins and the market falls the right way - a risky proposition at best.

After having watched this a long time, my gut feeling is that individual series are more influenced by the overall market than by the appearance of a book.

RedTiger

A new book can and has raised interest and prices any number of times. A new book doesn't always have that result though.

slinc

well bust quarters are just great coins, hard to see why they were ever dead to begin with.

farthing

I think this occurs more often, and is more noticable on the 'fringes' of numismatics, at least in the short term.

The re-release of the SCD book last year had a noticable effect on prices, as did the CWT book released 5-6 years ago.

I know of dealers that stocked up on both items before the release of these two books so they could sell into the rising market.

19Lyds

I think if a book presents new information regarding varieties and history for a specific coin series it will definitely create interest and more than likely increase value in the series being written about.

The primary reason for this is that a book can arm the collector with a certain level of knowledge about what it is that he/she collects thereby giving the collector the ability to precisely answer why he/she paid $50 for a cent!

Arizonadesertrat

What really matters is getting a particular variety listed in the Red Book.

Dentuck

Who publishes the book might also be an influencing factor.

Which comes first, publication or popularity?

Perhaps some faint and nearly indetectable tremor within the day-to-day rumblings of the hobby community encourages a publisher to take on a manuscript, after which distribution merely fans smoldering embers that were already warm.

PerryHall

I remember a few years ago when the Breen Gillio book on California fractional gold coins was updated and republished resulting increased popularity and prices in this series..

MidLifeCrisis

A couple of significant new books on colonial era coins have been published recently. This certainly has not hurt the market for these coins!

BillJones

<< <i>Not always. Several books have been published on Shield Nickels in the past 15 years and the series seems to be as dead as ever. >>



The trouble with coins like Shield Nickels and later coins is that the varieties are so minor that most collectors don't care. In some ways Morgan Silver Dollars are like that, but the mint had to make so many dies to produce a coin that took a lot of tonage to strike because of the size of the coin, that some eye popping varieties resulted.

Generally early coins are the best candidates for die variety books because the dies were made by hand and there were significant differences between them. Once hubs came into play and most of the differences were in the date placement and mint mark placement the interest was less.

Die variety collecting also must have a core group of fairly common coins for it catch on. Sure the early U.S. gold coins have some wonderful varieites, but the coins are so rare an expensive that no one other than guys like Harry Bass can afford them.