ISBN: None (printed in 1977 and published by Stack’s)
Price: ??
Overall Rating 4.2 out of 5
Coin Photos – 3.5 out of 5
Coin History/Summary – 4 out of 5
Contextual History – n/a
Contextual Photos – n/a
Paragraph/Chapter Flow: 5 out of 5
Summary:
Though only 96 pages long, the book is an easy read and gets directly to the point and has now become my new standard for type set books. You won’t find anything technical in nature like coinage manufacturing processes, errors, dies etc… but what you will discover is how incredibly organized Norman Stack’s train of thought is, how considerate he is in regards to the various perspectives people use in determining what constitutes a type set, and 210 color photos. I’ve heard many bashings of other type coin books where this is no index to look up types but Stack has organized this book so well that there is no need for an index.
In the opening chapter, Stack quickly defines that the definition of types, varieties, and sets is not clear and left to the interpretation of the collector and this sets the tone for the layout of the book. The book is broken up by chapters that define copper/nickel coins, silver coins, gold coins, commemorative coins silver, commemorative coins gold, coins of the colonial period, private pioneer and territorial gold coins, and California fractional gold coins. Each chapter is prefaced with a short a concise summary and then sub sectioned by denomination. For each denomination, you will get a type number, summary of mints that produced each type, and the coinage act that introduced the coin denomination.
The chapters are so well structured that it provides guidelines for many different methods of forming a type set. You can try for one of each and every type, or one of each and every type by mint, by denomination, by metallic content, or through what stack refers to as a “modified type set” that includes pioneer and territorial gold coins or California fractional gold coins. It’s this simple and straight forward method that makes this a powerful book to have on your shelf.
What I really enjoyed about this book is the lack of pricing. When a book associates prices it instantly becomes a dated piece of material but without it, it becomes timeless. Additionally, the book came with the original checklists from 1977 and one can't help but laugh at the colored index cards they are printed on in relation to modern books where a CD would probably have been included instead of index cards.
I cannot express how much I appreciated this 40 year old reference and it is something I will refer to many times later.