Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;V. Kurt Bellman, post: 3106571, member: 71723&quot;]I agree with pretty much all that. The &quot;problem&quot; with Whitman books for me ONLY occurs when someone wants to ascribe ANA&#039;s imprimatur to them. Yes, Whitman IS now the ANA&#039;s Official Supplies provider (Makes it hard to get Dansco stuff at summer ANA shows - jus&#039; sayin&#039;.) but for lack of a more precise term, Whitman books tend to be &quot;consumer&quot; oriented. When the ANA wants to really put their &quot;stamp of approval&quot; on educational materials, they self-publish, as they did with the work I referenced above.</p><p><br /></p><p>It probably shouldn&#039;t be this way, but it mostly is - there is a &quot;soft wall&quot; between truly specialist material and consumer/collector material. It is lessening some. The specialty so-called Red Books (the ones on a single series) or the MegaRed are &quot;bridge publications&quot;. But the real high end stuff doesn&#039;t have enough of an audience for Whitman to handle it. Even the modernized Overton volume isn&#039;t under their umbrella, and Bust Halves do have quite a following. And its not even necessary to mention their lack of &quot;world&quot; material. My Swiss coin guide was written in Switzerland. Ditto the U.K. (Spink), and France, and even Russia. I had to teach myself the Russian alphabet. I get to Kolbe and Fanning auctions from time to time, also.</p><p><br /></p><p>You&#039;re right, Mike. The first words out of Brain Silliman&#039;s mouth when I took his grading course at Orlando (being offered again in Philly in August) WAS, &quot;In mint state coins, we don&#039;t so much &#039;grade&#039; them as &#039;appraise&#039; them.&quot; He then spent over 15 hours over two days teaching us how to do that. He passed out the Whitman so-called &quot;ANA Standards&quot; book [7th edition], and within 5 minutes, we ignored it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Is that &quot;fair&quot; to homebound collectors who never get to major shows? I guess not, but sometimes learning one&#039;s craft well requires the expense of time and airfare. And not just to sleep outside on damp concrete to wait in line for an overpriced oversold piece of gold either.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in