Product Description

This book takes you deep into the fascinating and revolutionary world of 21st century coinage. This one volume, with searchable electronic pages of the book on the bonus DVD, contains virtually all 21st century coins, including series, singles, bi-metallic and tri-metallic coins, from all corners of the world. Represented in nearly 90,000 listings, all prices are updated to current market values, and presented in five grades of preservation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144171 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780896898158
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Colin Bruce II is one of the original creators of the Standard Catalog series, and shares responsibility for expansion of the series from a single reference into five distinct "century" guides. He's been employed by Krause Publications for more than 40 years. Thomas Michael has performed in-depth price analysis for Krause Publications numismatic line for over 21 years. His analysis takes him across the world in an effort to create the most accurate pricing database available.

Customer Reviews

Not up to date and full of errors
In a catalog of 21th century coins with annual editions, you'd expect a current, up-to-date listing of the latest world coins. But you'll be disapointed. In the so called "2010" edition (issued mid-2009), only the smaller part of 2008 coins is listed, and even for 2007, there are many gaping holes. Editing and reviewing of this catalog is not only slow, but also careless and inaccurate. Often, the same coin is listed with two different catalog numbers, with technical specifications varying by a tenth of a gram or milimeter. The quality and refresh period varies greatly from country to country.
For South Africa, the 2006 types are incorrectly listed together with the 2005 types and the 2008 issues are missing (whereas on the South African Mint website, you'll find the language rotation for all dates up to 2011).
For Gibraltar, the 2005 types and 2003 dated issues are still missing.
Not only small or third world countries are poorly represented, also the sections for e.g. Australia or Canada are in a total mess and you're lucky if you do find the coin you're looking for. This is partly due to the confusing issue policies of these countries, with circulating issues, special strikes of circulating issues, circulating commemoratives, non-circulating commemoratives, special commemoratives, and so on. But even if there are lots of different issues by one country, it is possible to arrange them in a clear way, as the Krause catalog itself proves in its US-section.
Since Krause doesn't even manage to get the types and dates of the latest issues right, you can't expect them to be serious about their market analysis. Most prices are very rough estimates, not updated between editions, and sometimes are very far from the market, as in the example of the Monaco 2 Euro "Princess Grace", listed at 45$.

Getting better but oh so slowly...
Another year gone and we have another issue of the separate 21st century coin catalog. A little more justified than the previous one but still it could be squeezed into one with the 20th century catalog. The 2010 edition brings once again a selection of new commemoratives plus a handful of fairly interesting regular coins. It also brings a very helpful CD version - highly practical if you travel with your laptop and buy coins abroad. This is just .pdf so you can't play with in any way but still it is a step ahead from the 500 pages long large size volume.
The volume still seems too big to handle for its editors. Some of the repeated coins disappeared (I complained last year of Bangladesh 2 taka listed twice and now it is gone!) but new ones appeared. The updating generally follows some mysterious personal likes and dislikes of the editors - Belarus and Ukraine are updated almost to perfection (basically all Ukrainian coins changed their prices) but listings of the Channel Islands (Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey) are stuck in the first edition and end in 2006 with prices of many issues below face value (5GBP Guernsey KM #108 is still priced at $6...). It is difficult to understand why listings of countries which basically live on coin and stamp production (Isle of Man is a little better but Gibraltar listing misses 2003 issues!!!) are so incomplete. Probably one e-mail to the Pobjoy mint or local authorities would be enough.
If you are interested in commemorative world issues (and you don't have the previous issue), this is your book. Yet if your interests are more moderate getting a new edition every two or three years should be enough. If your interests are limited to one or two countries it is enough to check their mints' websites and eBay auctions regularly. You will have to do it anyway because most of the listings are incomplete.
It also doesn't make sense to buy the new issue for new prices - in most cases all you get is either following a fixed pattern (e.g. each new Polish 2 zloty commemorative is priced at $3 regardless of current exchange rate or mintage) or the equivalent of issue price plus a moderate bonus.
Having said all that I feel obliged to add - there is no better catalog on the market.

The source for all sources!
I use this magazine in my store and label everything I have with a reference to the point in the book or CD I can arrive at.