What Are Good Reference Books?

Thanks valleyco and John1 for the info and the link.

It sounds like I should use the books to find out about the coin but ebay & NumisMedia to see what they're worth and yes valleyco your site too lol.

Thanks again!

And I too recommend the Red Book. However, if you want to see a list of lots and lots of books on coins, go to the Whitman Publishing web site.

Adam4478

As others have stated previously the "Guidebook to United States coins" AKA the RedBook is your best starter book, and a must have for quick information, it's faster than almost any website in finding out information quickly. Don't forget to read the intro section too. You can often find great deals on older redbooks on ebay or at used bookshops, they should only be a few dollars for one a few years old. For values it works to show what is valuable but is not very accurate as to pricing the current market. For pricing there are a lot of resources out there, but all of them are worthless without the knowledge of accurately grading your coins.

For a great read on US coins in general, my favorite two books are "Adventures with rare Coins" and "An Illustrated History of United States coins as Illustrated by the Garrett collection" both books are written by Q. David Bowers, who is probably THE most prolific numismatic author to have existed and he still writes books at an astonishing rate (about 2-3 each year).

There are so many good books out there on coins (my interest is only in United States issues) contact CCF member "meadowview" to receive a listing of our compiled U.S. Numismatic literature listing. It includes out of print books as well as current publications. My personal library is now well over a 1000 different books on US coins and still growing, if there is any coinage series you would like to know more about what types of books are out there drop me a PM or start a new post here in the book forum (so others can benefit too). I'm happy to offer up suggestions.