What do want in a reference book?

Do not include prices. The Red Book does and the prices are never correct. You’re writing a reference book, not a price guide. You can rate the coins for rarity but I would not include prices. Any price where I live will not be the same as it is 100 miles away. Each area is different. Rating them by a rarity scale is more better.

 

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#1 is pictures. It is best if the pictures are shown next to the descriptions and not in the back or some other place. Of course accurate information is a must.

 

I wrote a book myself on coins. My approach was to include EVERYTHING a collector might, even at the slightest possibility, want to know, down to the detail of the toenail.

• Is a written description of a token's design and lettering helpful, or are pictures sufficient?

Written descriptions are always helpful. The reason is, you will want IMAGES, and darn good ones. Corner-to-corner SHARP images. The TPGs are a great source as they will give you free permission to use their images if you ASK(!) nicely, and of course, if they have images of the tokens you are writing about). Auction houses are the next option. But the reason you'll want written descriptions is because there may be imagery or symbolism that is not always easily understandable. Sure, there's a bird on a token, that's easy to see (for example). But does what is the reason for THAT bird? What is its common name and genus and species?

• Do you want to know if the token's orientation is medal or coin alignment?

Always include this. How does including ANY information hurt?

• Should the weight, diameter, composition, reference numbers, date range and rarity be in fine print or in a more prominent position and obvious? If so, which ones or all?

It depends. Are you writing a catalog sort of publication? Then make it prominent next to the image of the token. If not, including it in readable, but small print (probably next to an image of that exact token) is still helpful.

• Does the in-depth information and history belong at the beginning of each town/state's section, or should there only be a summary at the beginning of each section and the more in-depth information somewhere else?

Good question. This is an editorial/style consideration that you'll need to decide. It's not just based on what us reader want, but what you think will fit stylistically, and space-wise on the pages. You can do your option #1 there. That's great. But option #2 is great, too. I have written extensive histories at the beginning of the sections (option #1) in my Korean Coin Price Guide and I have done histories at the beginning of a section with extensive or highly detailed information attached as CAPTIONS to photographs mixed in with the text (sort of your option #2 there) in my South Korean Coin Book . I like both. However, for most readers, they MAY prefer to have an entire detailed written (text) history first, then details at the end with photos, drawings, charts, etc.

• Are prices, estimated rarity and date ranges necessary even though the figures given may not be entirely accurate?

If you want to write the BEST book on the subject (which is what you are going to do, btw!), then try just try to get SOME auction information, even if it is the most recent 3 months of eBay sold listings (which is what you see when you use that search function on eBay).

Look, collectors want pricing information. It's all about how much they can expect from a sale or how much they might expect to shell out for something. If these tokens are a rather esoteric field of collecting (I mean, "picker tokens?" ha. Yeah, that SOUNDS rather arcane), then maybe YOU have as a good an idea of their pricing than anybody else, especially if you have been collecting/dealing them for some time now. You are probably the expert on pricing already! You might also want to get into contact with the main dealers of these tokens and get their basic feedback on the pricing. Offer them a free copy for their help. That's what I did quite often.

I used realized sold auction listing pricing (pricing examples from the most recent years and high/low realized prices) from the main auction house that sells Korean coins. There's no messing with that. That is on-the-ground PROVEN sold pricing data. I also used my own data collection from ACSEARCH (Heritage/Stack's/all the European auction houses) and eBay sold listings I've been collecting for each key-date circulation coin sold there for the last 15 years(!). That's about as good as it gets.

• Should each state's section have its own unique color band or tab similar to the Red Book?

THAT is something I wish I had done for my first book. That really helps the reader find things easier by "thumb-flipping," especially if it's a catalog publication, but really any collector-oriented text that is broken into clear sections. You'll have to figure out how to do that with the software you are using. I just used Word and turned it into a pdf. The printing company you are working with (or publisher) may have some ideas for you. Your publisher may even have editing/publishing guidelines that govern things like color-tabbed pages. You might want to ask.

Good luck! Make the very BEST book for your readers that you possibly can.

 

I'm not sure at all what you are shooting for. But could you rewrite Vam World with pictures that actually go with the VAM descriptions, including arrows depicting the exact VAM referenced instead of pictures of something obtuse and not remotely associated with the description? LOL

 

I'm working on a book about picker tokens of the USA. These tokens were used to pay field workers based on how much they picked.

This one's for picking 1 quart of strawberries:





I don't have any interest in collecting or writing a book on VAMs at current the moment.

 

Best to stick to the basics when doing so.

 

https://stacksbowers.com/have-you-ever-seen-a-strawberry-certificate/
Not really on topic for the actual question, but I saw this in my email and it reminded me of this thread. I love strawberries and I had no idea I could collect them