access to information

[DrLarry]

I should like to ask the newer collectors, of which I am one having only started four years back, a few questions.  How easy do you think it is to get access to information on coins you want to collect?  I find that reference books seem to choose arbitrarily which varieties they want to list and which they do not want to list.  there appears to be no reason for the source of this discrepancy other than whether one person who has a variety want to push the books like SPINK to include it.  It does not seem to be that they only choose the most common because some are listed as "PU possibly unique"   it would be more useful to have access to the information in wikipedia at least that way if we searched for a coin type we could get some information.  One long term member feels that there are just too many varieties to list in anything other than an encyclopedia.  It seems that the science of digital photography and greater access to microscopes as well as "increasing number of collectors???" may be presenting too many new listings.  I wonder then if we each of us find them why we cannot just list them as wikicoin pages.  It seems clear that the books available in print form cannot keep up new findings so why can we not do it ourselves. I believe that you just have to register to begin making new events or pages.  It may be that when a letter is put over another letter that it does not tell us much on the individual level put surely if there are enough pieces of information we might learn something new about the making of the coin or its history.  Let's face it records have been lost by fires and the death of a collector who might have spent ages looking for things the only way to change that then is not to rely on the British Museum, or the collection of Cambridge or Oxford but to make the information freely available.  

[PWA 1967]

I hopefully dont want to be negative  unless you had someone who could be sure of the variety you could have just thousands of pictures.

The english grading company has about 80 different 1860 pennies and they are just ones they have had in hand and given an opinion on by close inspection.

On the other thread you posted on the 1817 they have done about twenty different ones......Was it a B or an R or a P  i just use that as an example.

Some of the copper pennies could end up in the thousands as its more unusual to find one that has not been repaired re-cut or punched.

I think if you put them in an encyclopedia it would not fit through the front door 

Good luck though 

[Mr T]

I've found no one reference book is perfect which is why I have more than a shelf of books on various coins. Invariably only a few get used.

The Internet should make this easier but I think it's the same problem as the various reference books - everyone has a different opinion.

[Peckris]

12 hours ago, DrLarry said:

I find that reference books seem to choose arbitrarily which varieties they want to list and which they do not want to list.  there appears to be no reason for the source of this discrepancy other than whether one person who has a variety want to push the books like SPINK to include it. 

Not so. Spink is a general catalogue so they will be rather picky, though they have included many more varieties over the past 20 years.

However, there are exhaustive tomes which have attempted to list all known varieties in a particular field : English Silver Coinage started the ball rolling, then Peck did the same for milled copper, bronze, brass and tin. He was supplemented by Freeman for bronze (who did his own exhaustive studies), then by Jerraims and Gouby. Our own Dave Groom did the same for 20th Century coinage, and Davies covered silver from 1816.

The point is, all these studies were pretty much comprehensive at the time of publication. However, new varieties get discovered all the time, so no book will be comprehensive for all time. Even so, Peck, Davies, Freeman etc are still very valuable references, and we still use them all the time.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Peckris

[DrLarry]

I love them too I am hardly of the generation that seeks instant gratification I simply want to have the information accessible without paying for some special privilege to access these esteemed publications and websites.  I know it has been a great help to go onto the farthing and the penny websites and look at wonderful examples of the varieties it took me a few years to find them though.  I have walked the Camino de Santiago a few times and all along the path are bright yellow arrows Las Flechas it would be nice to have a few more yellow arrows to point the way in an online way so we dont get lost.  Even on this path, which is 1000 years old, sometimes one route points one way when another an alternative.  if you walk it a few times you can change and try the other path the next time...if lucky enough to have the opportunity.