Besides the price of gold and silver fluctuating, do the collector's price of coins normally stay the same, or do they go up and down drastically enough to buy a new Red Book every year?
I have used redbooks for about a decade at a time, same with KM catalogs. The pricing is NOT why you buy them, its for information like mintages, relative rarity, etc. So I never felt the need to update them very regularly.
For $15 you can get the electronic PRO version right now: The Official Red Book: A Guide Book of United States Coins, Professional Edition [Kindle Edition] I own the paper version and like it a lot. I just wish the pages were printed on thicker paper and held up better. They can fairly easily be ripped right out from the spiral bound binding.
To answer your question, no, you do not need to buy a new Red Book each year. Your 2010 copy is good enough unless you want to know what coins were made since then and their mintages. I buy a new one every two years to keep up with all of the new issues.
The last two editions I have purchased were the 1994 and 2008 releases, so I am good for quite a while yet.
Honestly I am using a 2002 redbook, its more of a reference guide to look at coins, mintages and just a knowledge base. If I am trying to get a price quote I am going to check going ebay rates and numismedia in a quick pinch. Been meaning to start checking heritage auctions for prices too.
Do not use the Red Book for pricing. Other than coin A is more expensive than coin B, it is both useless and outdated before it is even printed. And sometimes their relative value is also invalid. Other than not including this century's coins, a 1999 Red Book is virtually as good as a 2014. BTW, eBay now has a sort allowing you to see only coins that sold. For instance, searching 1950-d ms66 pcgs under small cents gives you the pricing for MS66 Lincolns graded by PCGS dated 1950-D. Excellent pricing tool.
No one NEEDS, any book, unless you want factual information. In another thread a while back I noted changes in the listing for 1873 two cent pieces. Using my Red Book collection I was able to trace how the listed details of that coin had changed over the years as more recent research was done. It's all about information to a collector, not just the coin's value.
