How much do you invest in your numismatic Library?

It is a good book

I purchased this book this weekend. Although it includes coin prices, I did not buy it for the price data. I suspect that there are better & more accurate sources for price information. I bought this book for the information that is presented for each country & coin/currency type. So far it has been a good read. :smile

Coins & Paper Money Identification & Price Guide by Allen Berman

 

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Last year I spent about $100, just buying basic books. Today I spent about $50 on variety books for Jeff. nickels and modern halves.

 

1913 price guide

It is fun to look up coin prices in this puppy. I got it this last weekend.

J.W. Scott's Standard Catalogue No. 2
Coins of the World, Copper, Nickel, Brass, and Roman Imperial Bronze.
1913 Edition

 

Yeah it is. Or reading what coins were selling for in coin shows in the 20's. I remember reading a coin dealer writing down prices from a show I believe in 1926. 1916 SL quarters BU were $1, any date/mm buffalo was $.07 in BU, and the like.

The grass is always greener. I remember fondly on the 80/90's on the price and availability of coins versus now. You wish you bought more, but until the time machine is mass produced, best you can do is buy what you can today since it may not be available tomorrow.

 

Yes and no. First of all - it depends on coinage you are looking for in literature. If you are looking for i.e. old books digitalized in Google Books, you are right. This is quite good source. Also official databases of literature in PDF files, mostly numismatic magazines.

But no, no and once more NO for websites. Many websites have information completely wrong, morover, copied from other (also wrong) websites. Better go to library and read what you need, you will be sure that information is correct.

 

This year budget so far to date:

Coins--Approximately $18,000
Books--$340
subscriptions: $250 (informational websites on coins)

 

I would caution you that books can also have wrong information. You should not believe everything you read just because someone printed it. But for the most part, I agree with you.

 

So do I. I love his point. The point being that books are more permanent, and as such usually have editorial control, fact finding, and peer reviewing going on. Any trained monkey can type something on the internet without any type of review whatsoever. If its on the internet, a whole other layer of background checking is needed before you can trust anything from a site. If Parthia.com claims something, you can be pretty sure its authoritative. If ilykeoldcoinz.com says something, I have no idea who they are, where they got their information, even if its just someone in their mom's basement making crud up.

With a book, you read the reviews of experts and know how reliable it is, with the internet there really isn't a good place for that information, plus it can change any second. I will trust the source that 1000 true experts have vetted and agreed its worthwhile information.

Put it this way, the "real" experts in the hobby learned from the greatest books, not from reading a blog. I think the internet is great, but I don't want my doctor to solely learning from internet postings either.

 

Good question. It is for sure bigger than collection of coins. When you have more books than coins in your collection, you can be sure you tried to learn about them

Budget - no idea, I do not sum it. One old auction catalogue cost $25 each (http://www.ebay.pl/itm/250938570199...X:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_2914wt_1163 or http://www.ebay.pl/itm/250938581735...X:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_3080wt_1163). Sometimes it is the only possibility to see rare coin you are going to buy. Also small books, really small, can be very expensive, like $30-$40 for 50 pages booklet. Sometimes you need these booklets as well.

You do not have to buy everything. The best option is to go to library, but I had no option like this. The nearest with all books I needed was 1300km from me

 

Sure, I agree. I wrote about it somewhere here (on CoinTalk forum).

But again - when you will read many books in one subject, you see which books are correct and which one are not. It is not easy but you can do it. I found one nice thing for example - one coin was described in literature as a siege ducat (in all books) until in 1955 one man checked this with acts of law for this coin. He publish results in a book, and since then coin is known as a crown, not a ducat. Writers are also humans, not gods. But if you want to study numismatics, no problem. Just need a lot of time and A LOT of perseverance and patience

 

Of course, the internet didn't exist...heck even the ENIAC didn't exist back when you collected coins!