I've pretty much sold off all my Morgan dollars. Buffalo nickels will be next. To "up" my variety/grading awareness I'd like to get the best guide to Buffalo nickels. Research has turned up two possibilities: The Authoritative Reference on Buffalo Nickels - Kevin Flynn; Ron Pope; John Wexler The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels - David W. Lange Is one of them considered significantly better than the other? Or would getting both be a reasonable action? Or is there another, better choice? P.S. I already have the Cherrypickers guide.
Oops, I tried to edit the misspelling in the title but apparently that's not a option. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cancel this. I found out how to do it.
Hobo Nickles guide? By who author wise???? Gem can be found @ yard sales that could be One Good thing
Be advised. There is someone currently making hobo nickels. He was at the ANA Summer Seminars in 2012 when I was there. Apparently doing a very presentable job. Obviously not trying to fake out buyers. BUT his buyers may not have the same ethics when they sell.
There are quite a few folks making modern hobo's and they are getting strong money for them, not sure if there is much incentive to sell them as anything but what they are. A lot of the modern ones come with a COA by the artist.
I have The Official Red Book: A Guide Book of Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels. It wasn't on your list, but if you're interested, this is my review: The idea of the book is to take you year-by-year through the buffalo and Jefferson nickel series, giving specifics about strike, luster, general eye appeal, and pricing. It's really interesting for serious collectors, and it recommends an ideal grade for each date for buffalo nickels that balances price and value. It also has a lot of behind-the-scenes information about the minting process, and why certain years are more available than others. But there are some major problems. One is all the typos and spelling errors. There are a lot, and it's very distracting. It makes me question some of the content of the book, because you never really know if something was put under the wrong year. One part, in particular, lists the 'sharp' and 'full' strike percentage of buffalo nickels. In most cases, it's annotated something like this: (10% + 2%). But for about half of them, it's written (10% 1 2%). I was confused by this for a while before realizing that the "1" is supposed to be a "+". Of course, I could be wrong, but if so, that just goes to show that it isn't very clear. The other major problem is the lack of illustration. For buffalo nickels (my primary interest), Bowers strongly recommends buying the sharpest strike possible, noting that they will probably be more valuable some day, and can be bought for similar prices to poorly-struck examples of the same grade. This is good advice. The problem is, "Full Details" coins are described only in text, and in a quotation from another author, at that! This is a MAJOR point in the book. Saying "look for the line that goes upward and slightly left from the braid" is much less effective than simply showing a picture with an arrow pointing at it. And saying "look for full details in the fur" is meaningless without a picture of what full details should look like. All that said, I'm not sure there's a better reference work available for buffalo nickels. Considering that you can buy this for about $3 used on Amazon, it's not a major investment.
I got The Authoritative Reference on Buffalo Nickels - Kevin Flynn; Ron Pope; John Wexler, yesterday. Appears to be a standard Flynn product -- more info than I had but less than I want. But I haven't seen a specialty guide that covers 20th century coins that I would consider "complete". Anyway, waiting on the Lange guide to see if the two together can give me the info I'd like to have.
And that is typical of most books, which is why you always need more than 1 book regardless of the subject
Lange's book arrived so I'm as ready as I intend to be to check out my Buffs for varieties. I already have Breen's encyclopedia and the appropriate Cherrypickers. I'll do the variety check and grade them at the same time. Then I'll be ready to list them. But since we're in the process of moving this all several months off. It'll keep me busy for quite a while. I may be asking for grading help later. Buffs are nasty to differentiate between a weak strike vs. circulation wear.
