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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 31310, member: 57463&quot;]The Red Book (<i>A Guide Book of United States Coins </i> by Yeoman and Bressett, published by Whitman) is the <b>standard</b> reference book for collectors of American coins.&nbsp; Anything else just competes against it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Prices are totally irrelevant.&nbsp; Prices change every day.&nbsp; Prices quoted depend entirely on who you ask and what motivation they have for answering.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>All a &quot;price guide&quot; provides is an order-of-magnitude estimate to alert you to the rarities you might miss.&nbsp; One price guide shows an 1896-G Sliding Baseman Half Nickel in XF at $125 and in the 1896-E in XF at $15.&nbsp; Worrying over whether these prices are &quot;really&quot; $112.50 or $16.95 is not productive.</p><p><br /></p><p>New collectors -- and some people stay &quot;newbies&quot; all their lives -- get so focused on the prices that they miss the truly important content.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Red Book provides thumbnail histories of the coins, of course, and other price guides do this as well.&nbsp; However, the Red Book also provides a Bibliography in each section.&nbsp; These are the books that the Red Book was written from.&nbsp; They are the books you need to own if you are serious as a collector.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Every price guide on the market was written by someone who could justify their status to an editor so that the publisher could justify the author to the public.&nbsp; Every price guide is written by an &quot;expert&quot; of some kind.&nbsp; Kenneth Bressett, the current editor of The Red Book, was president of the American Numismatic Association.&nbsp; He has written or edited over 100 books and articles.&nbsp; Aside from The Red Book, Bressett is probably best known for <i>The Fantastic 1804 Dollar</i>, which he co-authored with ANS President Eric P. Newman.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are other price guides out there.&nbsp; Before I bought one, I would run a literature search on the authors.&nbsp; Who is the author of the Black Book?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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