I have a growing numismatic library and over Christmas I added a couple more of these Bowers Series books and since they are numbered on the spine, I have noticed that I am only missing a few. This is this one: A Guide Book of United States Type Coins (The Official Red Book) It's number 3 in the series. Does anyone have a copy of it? Do you like it? I think I'm going to buy it, but I'd love someone's opinion if someone has one to share.
Pretty sure I have it. I'll have to check. If it's the book I'm thinking of I didn't find it very useful for my type set im in the middle of building. To me it was just an over glorified Red Book. He wrote a MUCH better book that I would buy over this one. I'll check when I go upstairs in a minute.
Yes that's the one that I am thinking of. To me that type book mainly had the mintages and just a basic Red Book description of everything with VERY general information on each series and things like strike quality and such. The better book to own and it's by Bowers is The Experts Guide to Collecting and Investing in Rare Coins. I expected the Type book to kind of guide you through picking and building a decent type set, instead it's more of a factual research book on each type more than a quality selection guide. The Experts guide actually does a much better job of guiding you through picking quality coins and has sections on most types from what I remember. Also there was a lot of additional info contained inside like Bowers' main point on grading. Always buy the full details coins and look at everything on the coin and not remain focused on any one particular detail. Essentially look for all around solid coins and don't be duped by fancy names and designations verify things for yourself. To me, the Experts guide was what I was looking for and I would've rather saved the $12-$15 I spent on that Type Coin book, seriously it's just an over glorified Red Book.
Hey treylxapi47 - I appreciate your review of "The Experts Guide to Collecting and Investing in Rare Coins." I'm embarking on a type set but I want to do my homework first. Sorry Mike, I don't really have anything to contribute to your post.
I'm reading the Experts Guide now - it has a ton of valuable information and a lot of history of the markets and collecting fads. It also gives a wealth of information about popularly collected coins. Definitely one to own.
I own The Expert's Guide. I wanted to round out my RedBook series. Thanks, Trey. I think it's probably a better book for my purposes than yours. I guess I'll buy it. Thanks for the advice. Mike
From Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-g...d-q-david-bowers/1009165032?ean=9780794822835
you can also buy it on Amazon and from Whitman themselves. I wanted to know if someone who had the book was glad that they bought it.
Go with the Experts Guide then, much more beneficial and thorough information contained in it about how to collect, not just raw data or statistics. I'm 100% serious when I say that any of us that have collected for more than 6 months would be better off with the Experts guide paired with a Red Book over this Type book. @mikenoodle. It's only $10 or so to own for completion of your library so no big deal. Content just wasn't what I needed or was looking for
I understand what you mean. I like to do research on coins and I'm not as much interested in how to acquire them as I am in the history surrounding them. The Bowers Series seems to me to be mostly geared towards me and my interests, and I understand where this may not be as good for some as the Expert's Guide (which I also own).
I understand what you are saying, and honestly a big reason why I bought the book was because I was looking for the informational side of building a Type set and figured this book would be useful. I 'assumed' it would be a break down of every US type coin, which it is, but I also figured with it being written by the leading numismatist of today that it would also guide you on how to build a nice type set, on that note I was very wrong, which is why i draw the parallel to the RedBook, very little extra information contained within, but a good overall idea of what to expect from US Type coins. The type book to me, and keep in mind this is just my personal opinion, was simply written to make money. It wasnt creative or overly informative, and it seriously looks like someone just went and buffed up the content of the Red Book with some additional minor commentary, it just lacked 'heart' or 'meat' if you know what i mean. I also understand Bowers' perspective with the book writing, thats a very lucrative money maker and if the idea sounds good it will likely make him some money by publishing a book. I guess I just didnt see where the effort needed to be spent on this one when it didnt really provide any new information in any better of a format than how it has already been presented. Ill put it to you this way, I still reach for my RedBook when buying coins for my type set, i can access better information for what i need, like mintage numbers and prices relative to each other within a given series or grade scale. Out of curiosity though, what other books in the series do you own? Are the individual coin books any better? I want information about the history of each coin, which years produced better strikes, what are some of the major variations to be on the lookout for, known double dies, etc. Thats what these books are lacking to me, and what I figured he wouldve been adding in. Guess I need to work on publishing a comprehensive guide/encyclopedia on coins myself. Anyone wanna join me? It will be a combination of the RedBook, Snows attribution guide, the Cherrypickers Guide, the VAM book, and Breens Encyclopedia, with a few ideas sprinkled in from Bowers. It would be massive, but it would have the BEST information contained within and would help the coin community out immensely. Imagine being able to buy a current, complete, attribution guide and reference book that actually tells you what to look for along the way within each series. Better than any Krause manual, better than a whole library of Bowers' books, better than a RedBook, and current to where the price isnt more than $80-$100 in a solid bound book that will last a few years and some heavy reading/studying. Thats what i want!
Not to hijack the thread, but is there anywhere that lists what all the books in the Bowers' "A Guide Book of..." series are?
https://www.whitman.com/store/Inventory/Browse/Coin-Reference-Books The Redbook series starts on page 2. they have them all listed.
trey, I believe from your description that the books on individual series are more what you're looking for. Too much info for a general reference like the type book, but in a book on Lincoln Cents, you can go into great detail. I own books 1,2,5,8,9, 12, 13,15 and 16. Each of them covering a series. I don't own any of the general ones mostly for fear of not liking the depth of the info.
Looking at Whitmans site its hard to tell what numbers correspond to which books. I also thought there was a SLQ book in this series too. I could have swore that i seen it at my local Books a Million. (Check there if you plan on buying the book anyway, walked out with it for under $12 with tax) Anyway, if you want I would be willing to swap my book with you on an exchange sort of deal, not like a trade or anything, but just a chance for both of us to check out a different book from this series to see if we want to buy them, would only cost the price of shipping and at media mail that would be like $2. Since I cant correlate your numbers to the site do you have any books on early half dollars, nickels, peace or morgan dollars, or commem coins?
they are listed in order from 1-16. #1 is The Morgan Book 2 is Double Eagles, etc. I think that I'm going to take a chance on the Type Coins book. Worst case scenario is that I have a more complete set. Honestly, I use my books almost every day for research. I'd love to send you one to check out, but for almost the same price as it would cost you to send it back and forth, you could buy this one on eBay with free shipping: http://www.ebay.com/itm/A-Guide-Boo...139?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item485dd29cf3
Very true, I was just trying to think of an easy way to help us both out on some possible new material. If you go the route of getting it though, seriously check BAM if you have one nearby, it was on the shelf for $9.99, I even picked up a 2013 Large Print big spiral Red Book for $1.27 the same day (it was on sale and I threw a coupon on it too) And for $10, whats one more book to complete the set, we probably all do it with coins too. Lord knows theres about 25 that I dont want in my set now, but for completions sake I have to have them.
