Nope. Krause is not up to date with most better coins, especially when they are in high grades. Their prices for Russian, Venezuelan and Chinese coins were not corrected after those markets got hot, so I don't think it will be any different for Norwegian coins.
I agree. Early Soviet bronze coins in XF to Unc with original toning go for 4 to 5 times than what Krause has listed. They need to hire more people or hire people who are in touch with the average collector market. They seem to only be really interested in extremely valuable coins. Plus there are a lot of mistakes and coin variations that are not explained either well or sufficiently. For what Krause sells it's books for they should be on top of it. At least that's my opinion. And one more thing. They should split the books in two. One for circulating issues and one for special or commemorative issues that are sold for non-circulating purposes: bullion, sets, etc. I know it seems complicated, but I hate having to flip through a half inch thick of Isle of Man pages to get to Iraq from India. :dead-horse:
I think Krause is not perfect because then no one would buy specialty books for ridiculous prices, lol. I mean, if a book existed that you can buy all 4 volumes at around $200 and it was completely comprehensive and accurately updated, wouldn't we all buy it and not resort to stuff like Spink for British coins, Charleton for Canadian, etc? That being said, I think the "Unusual World Coins" volume is quite good and has few of the same problems as the main volumes.
The truly ironic thing is that Isle of Man has some really interesting circulating coins but they are just lost among the collector dreck. I was a huge proponent a few years back of separating out the coins made only for collectors. Keep the old proof sets of course or anything with circulating counterparts and put the rest in its own catalog. I'd be buying both but as is there's no justification for buying the 2000 to date catalog and the junk is a large contributor to the demise of the 20th century Krause. Why they hide listings and even countries is beyond me. They separate denominations and then repeat descriptions even when they are identical. They make little attempt to keep up with pricing so it's not uncommon to see a price increase ten or fifty fold from one year to the next. They had a great catalog back in 1977. They should undo almost every change they made since then and update that catalog and update prices yearly if there's more than a 20% change. Surely they have at least one full time employee and they could get this done. There are a lot of prices that haven't been updated since 1977 and most all really need to be.
Again, I agree. It should be easier for Krause to figure out what's hot and not and what collectors are will to pay using online auctions and general surveys to sites like this. As I said before, it seems like many publishers only pander to deep pocket buyers. And those buyers only make up a small part of the overall collecting community.
Krause sometimes relies on a single source/expert for info on specific coin types. One of the best (and funniest) examples was something posted on another coin forum. Basically, it was a pattern button (salesman sample button) designed with obverse and reverse similar to two rare Chilean coins. The poster was confused because Krause had the same button pictured and attributed as a rare, unpriced pattern coin. I mean it was pictured with the button company name and mount for button loop and all. LoL =) It was listed in the 1801-1900 book as pattern number Pn6 or Pn8, can't remember which of the two it was, but it was just like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/290576104447 only with a different Chilean coin obverse.
i only ever use krause to identify coins, and even some of the newer issues are missing from the new catalogue.....
There is no book, and that includes specialty books, that is any good as a price guide. And if you buy books for use a price guide then you are wasting your time. The value of book is for the information about the coins that they contain like pictures of the coins, mintage numbers, mint marks, assayer marks, privy marks, legends, composition, strike characteristics, rarity, etc etc etc. If you want to know the value of coins then there is only 1 type of resource that you should use - realized auction prices.
