A local used-book store has several copies of the DVD-only Krause World Coins guide for $15. I think it's either the 2007 or 2008 edition, and I believe it's three discs -- 1800's, 1900's, 2000's. I was thinking of grabbing one, instead of the set of "telephone book" printed guides at a much higher total price. Thoughts?
While I like the cd's and think they are helpful, I am a hard copy kind of guy. The Krause's have life sized photos of coins which I find very helpful. If you are more of a computer guy, and don't have the books, I do think having the cd's would be very valuable to you. I never worry about having the latest editions, as the prices are simply a guide and suspect many times anyway, but useful for pointing out relative rarity, (though of course not always perfect). Chris
I'm old enough to have a stubborn preference for hardcopy, but I've also accumulated enough printed material that managing it is a big problem. Digital info has that overwhelming advantage -- with drives continuing to get larger and cheaper, you can accumulate as much as you want, and it never takes any more physical space. I guess my main question is this: with all the information that's available for free now on the Web, is there still a compelling case for buying resources like Krause? Will I end up using it a lot, or will Google (which is almost always handier) most often turn up what I need? For fifteen bucks, I'll probably go ahead and snag it. I was going to see if it made sense to grab all three (they're doing a buy-two-get-one-free deal), then resell two of them, but I probably shouldn't be greedy.
Hah! I just found this review. It looks like the electronic versions are simple, single PDF files. That means I don't have to keep the physical discs nearby; better yet, I can load the onto the iPad! Sold...
At the FUN show a couple years ago, The catalog publisher had a booth & they were selling some previous edition CDs for $5 each. I prefer the books but the CDs are certainly handy. JeffB- If your source has the 1600-1700 or 1700-1800 books on CD, then please let me know where I can order them.
But that is the entire purpose of having a standard. I look up stuff on the internet and find wrong information all of the time. There is no review process on so many internet posts, its easy to get wrong information. This is the continuing value of standards which have been vetted by experts. The second reason a Krause will always be needed is for numbering and having a common nomenclature. A third reason is websites can change at the whim of the owner. How would you like to organize your collection on a website for 15 years, and then one day they reorganize, renumbered, and reattributed a lot of the material? Sorry but I do not see the need for standard references ever going away. They may be ebooks, or subscriptions to a website, but they will always be needed.
Alas, no such luck. All I saw was the old phone books at $30 each (!), and these three-DVD sets at $15 each. If it turns out the sets have the older books, I'll snag all of them, but I'm pretty sure they don't. I also see that the pirated PDFs are widely available, but I'd just as soon own the real thing, even if it's too far down the remainder chain for the original publisher to see any of the money...
I am actually subscribed to the online version of catalog since its more up to date and is easy to access on the go.
I have been thinking about getting the 5 Book DVD set, but a price of 99.99$ is making me think again http://www.krausebooks.com/product/62197/coins_papermoney
