3 great online resources on error coins
Posted by D&G on
October 25, 2008
Searching for error coins can be a fun and potentially rewarding hobby. The key to being successful with any hobby is learning where to find knowledgeable resources. We’ve mentioned a couple of books that we found particularly helpful while researching error coin collecting:
- The Official Price Guide to Mint Errors by Alan Herbert
- Strike it Rich with Pocket Change: Error Coins bring Big Money by Ken Potter and Brian Allen
Type “error coins” in any search engine and you’ll find plenty of links to sites on this topic. Below are three sites that we’ve found particularly helpful.
- Mint Error News
We’ve reviewed Mint Error News in a previous post. We discovered this site shortly after we became interested in error coins and kept returning for the helpful and up-to-date information it provides. The website provides a detail error coin glossary with photos and a helpful pricing guide. - Baker Numismatics
This family run coin collecting business has a wonderful website dedicated to helping collectors “find answers to their questions.” The site provides a very helpful learning section on error coins. The site also includes useful articles on different facets of coin collecting. One in particular offered details on State quarters with missing clad layers. This article is a great education on how dealers authenticate error coins and the unfortunate issue of fraudulent error coins. - Ken Potter’s Variety Vault
Ken Potter co-wrote the book that helped kicked off our interest in error coins: Strike it Rich with Pocket Change: Error Coins bring Big Money. His website provides outstanding highly detailed macro photos of coins. The details captured in the photos really gives us an apprecation for beauty of coins. Suffice it to say, this is a website with articles and information written by someone acknowledged to be a leading expert in the field of error coin collecting. For Simpsons fans, be sure to check out the photos of the Simpson coins.
Extensive online resource for error coin information
Posted by D&G on
October 10, 2008
A great resource for error coin collectors is minterrornews.com. This site is the online version of a print magazine dedicated to mint error-related information. Mike Byers is the publisher and editor of this publication. According to the site’s about us page, Mike has been a professional numinsmatist since 1978 and is the largest dealer of the world’s rarest mint error coins.
Mint Error News delivers many great features for the error coin collector, including:
- An error coin category glossary illustrated with photo examples
- A helpful pricing guide that provides compiled by the top major error coin dealers
The site is a highly informative resource on error coins. Additionally, Mint Error Coin News provides links to many of the major collectors as well as extensive article base.
Error Coin Book Review: The Official Price Guide to Mint Errors
Posted by D&G on
September 28, 2008
As my wife and I educate ourselves on error coins, one book has stood out as a resource for us: The Official Price Guide to Mint Errors by Alan Herbert. In its seventh edition, this guide has been available to error coin collectors since 1974. The book provides details on over 400 classes of minting varieties.
For coin enthusiasts, this book provides detailed explanations on the three basic parts of the minting process: making of the planchets, making the dies and the striking process. On a recent tour to the Philadelphia mint, I found that the information I had gleamed from this book gave me a greater appreciation of the minting process as I watched pennies being created.
Alan Herbert’s error coins guide delivers wonderful and helpful advice for collectors, including where to find additional resources and what to watch out for when purchasing error coins through the Internet. Additionally, he provides an honest assessment of error coin values, acknowledging that non-collectors “have a very inflated idea of the value of minting varieties.” His approach in the book of giving rarity levels and a range of values is helpful and honest.
Error Coin Resource: Strike it Rich with Pocket Change
Posted by D&G on
September 23, 2008
If you’re looking for a very well organized book on error coins, then you’ll appreciate Strike it Rich with Pocket Change: Error Coins bring Big Money. Written by Ken Potter and Brian Allen, we find this book to be an invaluable resource in quickly and easily finding information on specific coin types.
This extensive guide is perfect for the beginning error coin collector. Ken and Brian provide detailed information on error coins with more than 1,500 large illustrations to assist with identification. Additonally they provide an easy-to-follow grading scale.
We appreciate how Ken and Brian provide beginning collectors with the necessary information to get started with this hobby, including evaluating, protecting and selling coins. Additionally, the book offers great tips on how to search for error coins. If you’re serious about collecting error coins, then we highly recommend this guide.