A Guide To U.S. Coin Identification

You tipped out the jar. There is a wheat cent, something with a buffalo on it, and three quarters that look nothing like the quarters in your pocket. Now what?

This book is built for that moment. Every United States coin series struck since 1900 gets one page. Both sides are photographed large enough to hold your own coin against. Numbered marks point at the date, the mint mark, and the two or three details that settle what you are holding.

Two examples of what that looks like in practice:

• A 1909 cent with V.D.B. on the back was struck 27,995,000 times in Philadelphia. The same coin with a small S under the date was struck 484,000 times. One page shows you where to look and why the difference matters.
• A 1982 cent weighs 3.11 grams if it is copper and 2.50 grams if it is zinc. The two are identical to the eye. A kitchen scale settles it in two seconds.

There are no prices in this book, and that is deliberate. Printed prices are wrong by the time a book reaches a shelf. Every coin carries a value band instead, and a chapter at the back shows you how to look up what your own coin is worth today, from sources that update continuously.

Buying this for someone else?

It suits the person who has a jar, a blue folder, or a tin that came down from a grandparent, and has never known where to start. It assumes nothing. No vocabulary, no prior collecting, no equipment beyond a kitchen scale and a magnifying glass.

It is 8.5 by 11 inches and printed in full colour, so it opens flat on a table next to the coins rather than being read in an armchair. Someone can use it the same evening they unwrap it, with whatever is already in the house.

The photographs are not stock images of coins. They come from the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection, the United States Mint, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

What is inside

• 52 series, one page each. Cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, dollars, gold, bullion and commemoratives.
• Both sides of every coin, photographed, with numbered callouts on the photograph itself.
• A look-alike box on every page, naming the coin it gets confused with and the single test that separates the two.
• Mintage figures taken from the annual reports of the Director of the Mint.
• Grading in plain English, written to help you sort your own coins rather than to impress a dealer.
• A chapter on errors and damage, and how to tell one from the other before you get excited.
• How to find out what your own coin is worth today, and how to avoid being taken while you do it.

Open it on the table, next to the coins. That is what it is for.