What is the best book for researching technical information on world coins? (ie: mintage number, diameter, AGW, etc.) The web contradicts itself.
Krause Standard Catalog of World Coins. This is by far the most comprehensive one, and is relatively error free (as compared to any other source).
Every catalog, especially those big and comprehensive ones, will have errors. The one I use is the Schön (in German); better descriptions than the Krause, but fewer photos and, depending on the country, less info about mintage numbers. So I have both, like many German "world" collectors, but I don't buy new editions of both every year ... Christian
Krause is great as a general, all purpose guide, but obviously it's best to specialize when possible (ie: use the Redbook for U.S. Coins, Charlton for Canadian coins, etc.).
I have 3 Krause books for different time periods, I have their unusual world coins catalog as well...I also have a few notgeld references and a catalog for ancient Roman coins...I try my best not to buy that many reference materials and save the money for coins so I do not buy updates to them...they are not minting anything new when it comes to the coins I collect....
Krause also has a digital version of their catalogs on CD, yes? How about a web version? Has anyone used these? I'm getting a bit sick of having a couple of Krause catalogs in my lap while browsing through coins online, and I was thinking about switching to digital...
Welcome to the forum. Krause is good for identification (lots of pictures) and has some information on mintages, composition, mints and a 'ball park' for value. I find the US values are relatively accurate( again with the relative!!). If I really want to know the value I go to an auction site - Heritage Auction, Stacks, etc. and check their archives. It's free and they usually have real good pics. In the case of German I post a messge for chrisild - he reads it, i don't
The main problem with this is you get the very highest prices as these auction houses jack-up the price....regardless of what it is. So with realized auction prices for these auction house, you are getting the price of the coin + price hike and slab price hike, etc.... For this type of info you can go here: http://www.coinarchives.com This has realized prices from a bunch of auction houses. how over priced it is depends on the auction house.
