Hey, my first review! Here goes - I am not sure what I was expecting when I bought this book, but I was definitely expecting more than what I got.
As a coin collector, I've been buying coins for a few years, and I have maybe a dozen of the basic numismatic books. Such as The "Red Book", Lange's Guide to Lincoln Cents, Photograde, and a few others, plus I regularly read Coin World, and the monthly magazines. I am at the point now where I have pretty much collected almost every coin from 1850 to date (about 50 coins shy of a complete date and mintmark collection), so I have started looking at picking up some of the more common errors and varieties. I was primarily looking for a guidebook that would list just that -- as the title (and the website) implies.
Well, this book DOES list some of the top die varieties and error coins by denomination. However, the list is far from complete, and many of the more well-known varieties (such as those listed in price guides) are omitted completely. But that is not my main complaint against this book -- after all, you can't list EVERYTHING, and a publisher has to draw the line somehwere. Okay, I can live with that.
My biggest gripe is about the printing quality of the book. One of the primary purposes of this book is to help identify die varieties and errors. Some of the pictures are decent, but a majority of them are too muddy, too pixellated, too small, or just plain too damn useless. The quality of the pictures is very low -- they appear to be black and white 300-dpi scans, and the printing quality is no better than xerox-level copying, so some of the pixels are starting to break down on the page. I've been involved in publishing and printing myself, and this is just plain sloppy work. The printing quality is no better than VANITY PRESS LEVEL printing job. For a book where the quality of the pictures is all-important, the publisher did a very poor quality on the printing job itself. You would expect 1200-dpi or better for the job, and hopefully higher quality paper, and to use an offset press instead of xeroxing, especially for the price-per-page on the book. For several of the pictures, the contrast is too low to make out the relevant details (such as trying to see that D mintmark below the S). Many of the pictures are completely unnecessary -- such as including a picture of the coin inside a slab -- the coin itself being nothing more than a dark circle. What's the point in showing the slab? Is the author just showing off his collection?
The accompanying text is short, sometimes useful and sometimes lacking. For example, it may mention the variety is listed in Breen, but so what? It may say there are five varieties of this error, but fails to identify what these five varieties are. It may give a single "value", but does not give that value in relation to others. I was hoping for some expert information, and all I got was some short text slapped next to a hard-to-identify picture.
The layout of the book itself is basic and passable. Somewhat on the amateur side, and that does make it a bit difficult to read the book easily. For an example of what I consider a good layout that is easy to read, check out Lange's "Guide to Lincoln Cents". Also, the multiple self-serving ads sprinkled through the book for the Moneybucks website was a bit annoying, especially when it's not entirely clear when the book content ends and the ad begins. Somewhat unprofessional.
In the final analysis, I found this book lacking. I guess I should have listened to my inner self and grabbed the "Cherrypicker's Guide" instead. There's very little information in this book that can't be found elsewhere. I bought the book for about fifteen bucks, and consider it fifteen bucks essentially wasted. I generously give the book a "2 star" rating, because it does have some good pictures of varities that I can use to identify coins, but not too many. And also, this book does have POTENTIAL. This book needs some serious revisions and a good editor to tear it apart, it could use multiple contributors to provide more relevant content (text and pictures), and MOST OF ALL, it can use higher production values. Drop the vanity press and go with a REAL printer, guys. Hopefully in a year or two, there will be a second edition. Until then, give this book a pass, unless you MUST have it for your numismatic collection.
