Coins Books

These folders are a great way to start coin collections. I have found that this is a great way to keep all my coins organized!

These folders help keep all your coins organized. I enjoy seeing the progress of filling them up. As a beginner this is a great way to start.

I bought this book for a class in terrorism.It's a well made paperback.It was very informative.Many views on terrorism from different leaders in the field have been compiled.A great idea.But I feel the book is WAY too wordy.I literally had to read it with a dictionary in the other hand.Not bad for people who want to train for a spelling bee or learn new words to dazzle their friends but it really does add a lot of extra time to a reading assignment that you may not have.I would like to say I learned new words from the book but they are really obscure words I will never ever use in day to day conversation and will likely forget...actually I can't even remember them right now.

I rarely give five stars to anything, but this is quite possibly the best terrorism book ever, at least in terms of the sample of readings. Twenty-one chapters in all, the contributors all being well-known scholars in the political science field mainly. The textbook is very scholarly, divided into three parts, corresponding to the purposes of science: description, explanation, and prescription. Each part is excellent, and the book is well-balanced. Part I (description/characteristics)is a little heavy on the theoretical side, especially where there is some repetitive use of the phrase "post-modern" and exploration of historical side roads, but doesn't devolve into a bunch of navel-gazing over definitions and typologies like so many other books do. One could actually "use" the stuff in Part I, either for further theory development or other grounded purposes. Part II (explanation/causes) is probably what most readers would turn to first. It's nothing more than a collection of writings by all the luminaries in the field: Crenshaw, Wilkinson, Rubenstein, Laqueur, Howell, Juergensmeyer, Lewis, and Gurr. One couldn't ask for a better lineup, and although some of the articles have been previously published, a lot of them look like they were updated and revised for this book. Selection bias is always a possibility with books of this kind, and to be sure, the book is overall critical of mindless understanding approaches to counterterrorism, but not overly concessionistic. Military solutions are discussed, and lesser-known authors like Howell write about darwinistic solutions like letting failed states collapse on their own. However, Part III has counterweighting articles like Falk and Johnson's excellent discussions of why the war on terrorism is a moral war against "evil" (in the non-metaphysical sense). The third part of the book isn't about strategy or grand strategy, as one might expect, but is about tactics and counter-tactics, representing, in short, as good of a primer as any, on the political science approaches to counterterrorism option selection. I highly recommend this little book be read by anyone who wants to quickly become an erudite scholar of terrorism. It's highly educative.

...and found it to be excellent, it is THE definitive coin book INHO. And is most certainly not short on details. As for the two grading services...they are absolute industry standards, of course they are the ones discussed. To tell prospective purchasers to "get the book from the library instead" is...well I found such advice to be unpleasant.

I'm new to coin collecting so I think I'm probably the target audience. Although he covered a lot of ground, I felt it was quite short on detail. For example, he really only examines 2 of the grading services, so I still don't know how all the others compare. I'd borrow it, enjoy the easy to read style, take a few notes, and then spend my money on an other one. Which one, I don't know.

I agree with everything Mr. Howells above says in his review. However, to add to what he said above, I found this book not only a "how to" guide, but also a very enjoyable, relaxing read. In short, this is a friendly book. It is well organized and takes the reader step by step through the research avenues used (and available) for the authors' "example" medals. The results were surprising and interesting, especially for the medals' uses in geneological research. The beauty of British medal collecting is that the vast majority of awards are named to individuals. This book illustrates well that these medals represent not only historic events, but full, rich and sometimes tragic lives as well.

Books on medal collecting tend to focus on the medals themselves - the criteria for their award, numbers issued, and the physical characteristics of the medal itself.

This book is entirely different. Its focus is on the records behind the medals. It was a tradition in the British military to inscribe medals awarded to soldiers with their name, regiment, and often service numbers. This means that these baubles of cloth and metal are not mere keepsakes, but actual links to an individual's past.

Medal collectors, military historians, and genealogists will all find this a very practical guide explaining how to flesh out the story behind the medal by consultation with the available records. Most of the records discussed are held at the Public Record Office but the author also discusses sources including those found with the medal (cases, telegrams, etc.) newspapers, and other libraries, museums and archives.

The volume is profusely illustrated in black and white with period photos, close-ups of medals, and examples of the records involved. It is a very good step-by-step guide for learning the history of a serviceman based on their medals.

This book has just about everything you need to know about stamps. It's easy to find what you want and the illustrations are well done. For the novice, some things are not explained, such as "imperf." Don't think you could find a better one though.

This book has some really nice color photos and is very organized. As it is a "Scott" product, it uses the Scott numbers and is easy to use. My only concern is that it does not picture every stamp and that the pictures are sometimes 10-15 pages away from where the stamp is actually listed in the book. Still, that not-withstanding, it was well worth the money.

The vast coinage of Alexander the Great, minted in cities from Greece to India, was the first truly imperial coinage the world had ever seen. This volume, the first of a projected three on Alexander's drachm mints, presents a detailed account of the coinage produced in Alexander's name from about 330-300 B.C. in the cities of Miletus and Sardes in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).

Unlike most of the other mints in Alexander's empire, which produced the familiar large tetradrachm coins, the mints of Miletus and Sardes, along with those of five other cities of Asia Minor (Abydus, Colophon, Lampsacus, Magnesia, and Teos), "produced the small change of the entire empire." This consisted primarily of coins in drachm denominations: thick silver pieces about the size of a United States penny and weighing roughly four grams. Although Miletus and Sardes did produce some larger silver denominations, as well as some coinage in gold and bronze, they clearly specialized in the smaller drachms that they issued in the tens of thousands.

Thompson's study of this coinage is divided into three chapters: one on issues attributed to Sardes, one on issues attributed to Miletus, and one describing sixty-six ancient coin hoards that contain specimens relevant to the chronology of these two mints. Thirty-eight plates clearly illustrate 800 coins, though as is often the case in publications of this kind, the life-size reproductions make many of the details of designs and mint marks difficult to see without magnification. The most common overall type is the one seen on most coins associated with Alexander: a head of Herakles wearing a lion's skin on the obverse, and a seated image of Zeus holding an eagle and a scepter on the reverse.

"Alexander's Drachm Mints" is a scholarly work that will be appreciated by Classical numismatists, specialists in ancient history and economics, and students of the history of Alexander's extensive empire. The volume is No. 16 in the series "Numismatic Studies" of the American Numismatic Society (ISSN 0517404X - ISBN 0897221931).

The title refers, one may surmise, to the conservative vs radical dichotomy of much of the output of the W.P.A. arts projects and their predecessors. The text, although it covers the subject matter in admirable detail, is rather pedantically written.

I purchased "Ancient Coin Colecting V, the Romaion/Bysantine Culture" as a hopeful intro to a collecting area that is far more difficult to figure out when compared to Imperial Roman coins. It makes no attempt to be a catalogue of coinage, but is an intro to the period and culture as the title implies. It covers basic numismatic topics of Romaiopn/Byzantine coins such as denominations, materials, marks, etc., and has a section of individual "masterpiece" coins with well photographed images that are quite helpful. The section I most appreciated includes short biographical sketches of each of the rulers, and this section gives a brief but informative outline of the Romaion empire, usually with an inset featured coin or two for each of the rulers.

It is helpful for those who have little or no knowledge of the period, and will provide collectors of ancient coins with a background of knowledge upon which to view those Byzantine issues that make their way into Roman Imperial coin lots. The advanced collector of Byzantine coins will probably have no need for this volume, but it is a worthy effort by Mr. Sayles that meets its intended goal quite well.

Non-western scripts are a challenge to western coin collectors. Plant challenges you to learn Arabic script with short, to the point chapters followed by amusing exercises (solutions in the back of the book). Those who are only interested in modern coins can just take chapters 1 to 8 and 23 to 26. Plant is not just knowledgeable about Arabic, but also about coins.

This book will be a revelation to modern arcade-goers. It looks back over a century, to an era long before Space Invaders or Mortal Kombat, to when arcade amusements were incredibly simple, barely interactive, and utterly charming. This is a book for collectors of truly antique arcade machines, so if you're looking for much on pinballs or video games, this isn't the title for you. But it does a great job of examing the machines the penny arcades were built on, like strength testers, fortune tellers, and peep shows. The author has turned up some fascinating material on the subject, like contemporary brochures and patent drawings, and the whole thing gives a sense of the flavor and feeling of a bygone period. Aimed more at serious collectors than casual browsers, this is a useful reference on a little-documented subject. Only the sometimes-grainy B&W photgraphy and the author's occasional bouts of social or political commentary detract slightly.