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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1775025, member: 19463&quot;]No, buy the book and support authors who might write another. According to Worldcat, there are two libraries that have this book within 200 miles of me so buying the book will be cheaper than going to the library for most of you even if the listed libraries would let you in (not all will).</p><p><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/100-greatest-ancient-coins/oclc/230705114&amp;referer=brief_results" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/100-greatest-ancient-coins/oclc/230705114&amp;referer=brief_results" rel="nofollow">http://www.worldcat.org/title/100-greatest-ancient-coins/oclc/230705114&amp;referer=brief_results</a></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I have some second thoughts about a decision I made in 1997 when I started ny website: When I started in 1997 there were very few places on the Internet you could go for free information on ancient coins. One was Warren&#039;s site but he specialized in different areas than I did. Between us and a few other early Internet posters we may have enabled some new collectors to skip buying a few books. For this I am sorry. I have worked with a couple people who put a lot of effort into their books and ended up eating a stack of them when people decided that they were not worth buying. Someone once asked me why I didn&#039;t put out my website as a book. The answer is simple: I enjoy being retired and not having to work to pay off my publisher bill.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Most of you know that I have relatively little use for catalogs of coins which have little information beyond a numbered (worse: numbered and valued) lists of what exists. I <b>love </b>books like John Anthony&#039;s<b> Greek Coins </b>which tell stories about the coins but don&#039;t pretend to help you ID your collection. I really value the many pages in RIC that discuss the coins as opposed to the catalog sections although even the catalog pages have a lot of information partially in footnotes that most people don&#039;t read. I have pointed out that there is a lot of great information about coins in CNG sale catalogs (now online which is great since they stopped sending me free copies a decade ago - not oddly about the time I stopped buying many coins from them). Books on ancient coins will be fewer and more expensive now that so much of the information is available on the Internet for free. It is not my fault but I feel a little responsible for the fact that there is (IMHO) no good beginner&#039;s book on collecting ancient coins in print today. I do, however, feel I share a little of the blame with Warren, CNG, ACSearch, Wildwinds and a bunch of others that made giving something for nothing as profitable as selling hardcopy books. If you prefer books, buy some. Used books don&#039;t count. Neither do remaindered books (I bought a half dozen copies of Anthony at $1.98 and gave them to friends). CNG publishes quite a number of possibly interesting titles I have not seen because I am too cheap to buy them blindly and no one writes book reviews except me (so I was told by an author of a book I reviewed none to favorably). If you want to see more books in the future, buy a few now (and tell me if I might like them as well).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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