Written by Q. David Bowers, Chairman Emeritus
Over a given week or two I get
many emails regarding numismatic history, research, and the like. Increasingly,
more clients as well as others are going beyond looking at the date, grade and
price of a coin and are seeking to learn more about it. To me, this is great
news, as nearly all United States coins have a story to tell. One of my
favorite suggestions for anyone starting is to spend a couple hundred dollars
or so for a Carson City Morgan dollar of the early 1880s. These have low
mintages, are beautiful to behold and the story of the Carson City Mint --
easily enough found on the Internet or by looking through some of our old
catalogs -- is absolutely fascinating. As has been said, such a coin is like holding
history in your hands.
Back to my idea of the week: If
history interests you, a good place to start is to take a recent copy of A Guide Book of United States Coins and
read the introductory material, the narrative preceding the colonial series.
Probably nowhere else in numismatics has so much information been packed into
such a small space!
I do not expect you to remember
it all, but reading from end to end will give you a nice narrative on a time
line. Later, you can check back and reread any items of interest.
A number of years ago I proposed
to Whitman that a Specialized Catalog of
United States Coins be created. Ken Bressett, editor of the Guide Book and I discussed this. To me
there would be room for such a book, following the success of Walter Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of U.S.
and Colonial Coins published by Doubleday in 1988. We sold 10,000 copies of
this book in the first year it was released! Times have changed since then, and
with a lot of free information on the Internet I am not sure if this many would
be sold of a new book. However, I certainly can envision a fine reception.
In the meantime, check out the
early pages in the Guide Book and
enjoy what you read.
See you next week,
Q. David Bowers
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