Thoughts On 2010 Charlton

I like it. I do miss having some of the NCLT stuff listed (as a reference), but not enough that I'll be buying volume 2.

Overall it's a good book, so I'll focus on minor complaints:

-No MS-66 or UHC pricing.
-No post-1967 PL or SP sets. It would only take half a page to include them. If you're going to include PL sets in a circulating issues book, why only list a portion of them? If you're going to list test tokens right up into the 21st century, why the disparity between their inclusion versus the PL sets? Modern issues also have prices listed for SP single coins...so again, why list modern specimen coin prices, but omit the sets from the listings?

I also agree with the sub-EF comment. As an example, the 1955 NSF is probably most commonly seen in VFish grades...yet the guide lists nothing lower than AU-50. A simple extra line of text with grades of VG, F, VF, and EF would be reasonable - just as Trends will add an extra low-end grades for coins that are rare (1906 sm. crown for example).

Overall it's one of my favorite books, and I buy it every year, so don't take my complaints as expressing any real disappointment.

Charlton is better with mintage information.

Take for example the 1924 penny.
Charlton lists the mintage at 1,593,195 whereas Haxby-Willey just says 2 million minted.

However Charlton gets lazy with sub-EF40 coins. They basically get their pricing for MS and SP coins from the grading services or auctions and plug it in. They can not be bothered to research sub-EF40 pricing for coins made in the last 70 years. Haxby-Willey provides better information for these less expensive coins.

The reason given to split the book into 2 volumes is the plastic binding limitations.I would suggest that they change the format to include all the information into a single book.They have changed the format in 2007 making the 61th edition larger.Sure they can do it again and raise their price accordingly.