Books to order? I want to learn!
AlexSamuel
Posts: 3 ✭
I love coins and have since i was a kid, but I never really put in the time or the effort to learn and I didn't go out of my way to collect coins. I'd dig through my and my parents change, dad would give me foreign and U.S. coins every so often, and i had a half filled state quarters map and that's it. What i want now is to learn. I bought some coin folders to fill in so i'll do that for a while, but while i'm doing that i want to learn about coins. Basics that you all already seem to know here - varieties, known errors, definitions for terminology and how to recognize it, how to identify a cleaned coin, what different ones are made of, how they're made by era, etc. Does anyone know of any books i could order? Like from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles or whatever. I will be starting with simple collection books like state quarters, memorial pennies, etc so that's why this is in the U.S. coin forum section - that is where I will be starting.
However, I would also LOVE educational books or collection folders on foreign coins because that's how my love for coins began. My Dad would travel for work when i was growing up and he'd always bring me back foreign coins. So I want to learn about coins from European countries too, but being from the United States i don't know how easy that would be to find. Surely i'm not the only one over here that likes foreign coins. I'm a student fixing to put myself through college if i can get into the school i want, so i can't really afford anything extravagant. Currently saving all my change so i can go through it and start filling in the collection books i ordered when they get here.
Comments
Forgot to add this, but if anyone can explain those tv ad coins i always saw growing up that'd be great.
@AlexSamuel.... Welcome aboard.... Yes, stay away from the television con artists.... they will have you buried in worthless coins. Next, as Insider2 said... much is available on the internet, google is your friend. I would recommend you get a Redbook and the Cherry Pickers Guide (both volumes), as a starting point. Later on you will want other books. Your search for knowledge at this point in your collecting is commendable... will likely save you money as you progress. Keep asking questions here, there are world class experts that will help you. Best of luck... Cheers, RickO
massive ripoffs
go to the library and check out a red book guide to us coins.
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RE: "Virtually all you wish to know is FREE on the Internet."
And at least 75% of it is false, misleading, a commercial scam or worth every cent you pay for it. The internet is 'copycat' heaven.
Not sure if it is the politically correct book to suggest but Pleasure and Profit by Robert Shippee tells about the lessons he learned building a collection. It is a very enjoyable read and will hopefully inspire you. Good luck!
There are many 'specialized' books, available for individual series or even individual coins.
I would suggest a couple comprehensive for beginners books
The United States coins (any recent year) published by Whitman - commonly referred to as Red book
The Coin Collector's Survival Manual by Scott Travers (or any other general book by this author)
these can be bought used at most online booksellers (eBay, Amazon, Alibris)
Welcome to the Forum @AlexSamuel if your looking for information on the Foreign coins I would post this again to the Disscussion tab under World & Ancient coins. You can google just about any coin you find and get all the stats about it. You can start with the Red book. Good luck in your learning venture glad to have you on board.
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
From someone who owned hundreds of books, you can never have too many. That being said, determine your favorite coins and buy books about them. There are so many choices today. You can also preview most on the Newman portal and if you are a member of the ANA you can checkout most from the library before purchase.
For beginners in US coins a Redbook is a must and the Breen Encyclopedia will go a long way to introducing you to American numismatics.
Oh, don’t forget to join a specialty club for series you particularly like. There are a ton of those also!
Hope this helps a little. If you have specific questions please ask as someone here will have the answer.
A: The year they spend more on their library than their coin collection.
A numismatist is judged more on the content of their library than the content of their cabinet.
Welcome Alex! The knowledge base here is incredible. I echo the Red Book advice. You should probably just buy one because you will go back to it often. When I joined this forum in 2008 I don't think I even knew what the mintmarks were for, or how many there were. I was given the advice to buy a Red Book, and I did... could not put it down, reading it cover to cover. It will give you a good knowledge base to begin with, and then if you desire you can get the books they also produce about specific coins which are much more in-depth.
For world coins I would recommend visiting worldcoingallery.com. while you could buy books like the Krause guide they are expensive and heavy at 1250 plus pages each, and only cover one century each. Worldcoingallery is based on documenting each type, instead of each different date. It covers back to the 1700s and is inching back all the time.
For collecting world coins a popular way is One From Every Country, or OFEC. You can build an impressive collection for very little output that way...I'm at over 160 countries in mine and I've only crossed the $10 threshold three times, and have never gone above $25 for a single coin.
The great thing about this hobby is that you can do it any way you want. There is literally no wrong way to do it, except taking a brillo pad to the coins. If you want to focus on a specific design, or year, or country, you can do that, or if you want to cast as wide as net as possible, you can do that too, although most will tell you not to, I have found it very enjoyable.
The best thing you can do is read a lot of threads on this forum. It may seem overwhelming at first but eventually you will figure out what you enjoy learning about the most, and you can seek out old threads in the archive and learn even more. It you put in the time to do a lot of reading here, you can pick up some new factoid every day of the year.
Hope that helps!
For identifying foreign coins from relatively recent (or older) travels, reddit is fairly good:
https://reddit.com/r/coins/
They often refer to numista.com, which is a free online searchable world coin encyclopedia.
https://en.numista.com/index.php