I just picked up copies of Breen's Half Cent and Large Cent books. The Half Cent book covers the entire series, but I was disappointed that the Large Cent book only covers the coins from 1793 through 1814. That's only 22 years but the book is 870 pages long. I guess if he had included the remaining 43 years through 1857 the book would have been around 2500 pages long! Got me a lot of reading to do.
Nice buys, I don't have the 1/2 cent book-- But I have heard that it is great. However, that said, don't take Breen's comments as gospel. (eg: Extremely rare, rare, etc.) He was never shy about making up facts when he didn't have any.
That may not be as much of a problem with the cent book. Breen wrote it but it spent over ten years being edited by a knowledgeable numismatist before it was published.
Good move ! :thumb: Well, sort of. Personally, I read all the text about minting process and history. But when I got to the micro-detail about individual die varieties, I only read part of it. The rest is reference work; when a given coin pops up, I delve into that part of the book and attribute. Enjoy !
