What are they smoking at Whitman Publishing?

Just checked the 5oz AtB’s in the Red Book and noticed they reversed the mintages for the P-Mint and bullion coins.

 

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It's amazing that it things like this can be correct in previous editions...and then in the newest one it's suddenly wrong. I'm not sure how the editing process works, but you would think they simply just copy it over from previous books. My guess is someone just flipped them and it will be corrected in the next edition.

 

Wouldn't it be interesting if these numbers were correct?

 

Yeah, that certainly would be interesting. In the meantime, it kinda stifles the market, if anyone still relies on the Red Book for mintages. Of yeah, the Red Book isn’t all that relevant these days.

 

Or, the numbers were wrong to begin with.....

Sometimes the editors will change information when more accurate data is received.

Here is an example of that:
Take a look at the mintage for the 1873 two cent piece. The 2015 edition reports a mintage of 600.

To refresh everyone's memory 1873 was the year the digit 3 of the date was changed on many of our coins from the Closed 3 to the Open 3 variety. The Red Book first listed these two cent varieties in the 13th Edition in 1960, then added mintage estimates of 600 Closed 3 and 500 Open 3 coins in the 21st Edition dated 1968. Also in the 21st Edition the term "restrike" was added to the Open 3 variety, meaning the coins were struck at some later date after 1873.

The new 68th Edition, dated 2015, now lists a total of 600 proof pieces minted for both the Closed and Open 3 varieties. This is a major change due in large part to the research done by Kevin Flynn and reported in his book "The Authoritative Reference On Two Cents Coins" 2011. His research focused on the sales of poof sets during 1873 and showed that the previously believed total of 1,100 pieces simply wasn't possible.

To a two cent collector like myself this is a major change. Also note that the 2015 edition added the word "alleged" to the word "restrike". Hopefully in some future edition the thought that there might have been restrikes made at a later date will be deleted entirely.

Edited to add: I should note here that I would not have been able to research the evolution of changes to the two cent listings over the years if Frank hadn't gotten me started collecting Red Books. Thanks Frank.

 

Well, they are wrong in the 2014 edition too. I don't have a previous issue with me, are they correct in earlier editions?

 

True, they do change listings as new information becomes available. But, the 50z's are clearly reversed based on the mint's weekly sales figures.

 

I'll have to look when I get home...my latest edition is the 2013. I thought that is what you meant in your original post. I have seen other coins in the past that were correctly listed only to have an error pop up in a newer edition (can't remember the coin though...I just remember thinking it was odd).

 

Maybe, they'll pull this edition from print and it will become super rare and worth a lot of money. : )

 

1990 Red Book
Liberty Seated Quarter 1891-O mintage 68,000

2005 Red Book
Liberty Seated Quarter 1891-O mintage 6,800

 

Looked thru my shelf of Red Books re: the 1891-O Quarter, and found:

2006 Mintage listed as 68,000
2007 Mintage listed as 6,800
2008 Mintage listed as 6,800
2009 Mintage listed as 6,800
2010 Mintage listed as 68,000
2011 Mintage listed as 68,000
2012 Mintage listed as 68,000
2013 Mintage listed as 68,000
2014 Mintage listed as 68,000

Wonder what caused that?

 

Either way, I can't afford it!

 

They still haven't fixed the album pages for the first lady medals either, btw (they have no additional spots for the presidents that had more than one first lady, throwing all of them past that off. It's been 7 years and they still haven't corrected it).

Sadly no other company makes any kind of album for First Lady medals. Closest you can get is unlabeled ones that have holes for the medals of the correct size.

 

About as relevant as encyclopedias. Print encyclopedias. It's a useful general reference as to what US coins exist but I can't imagine people use it for much more than that anymore. Certainly it's pretty much useless as a price guide. Eventually it will go the way of the newspaper.

 

Well obviously, a bunch of them went missing in 2007, but in 2010 a new hoard of them was discovered lol... people don't make mistakes in books.