I picked up one of these, 2017 edition, at an Ollie's store for $7 ! Ollie's sells salvage, discontinued stock, and buyouts of stores. The cover price is $49.95, but Amazon sells the current edition for $31. I guess these were surplussed once the new edition was out. Great deal if there's an Ollie's near you. 1500 pages, for the serious coin collector only.
I read a little last night, there's several pages about the roll-out of the Lincoln cent in 1909, concerning the VDB and how the Sec. of the Treasury objected to the designer's initials on the coin. I didn't realize how there was a rush to get the new coins, with people lining up at the Treasury offices. The treasury had to limit people to ten coins per person. After the Sec. objected to the VDB, it was thought that the VDB coins would be withdrawn from circulation, so people started hoarding them.
The strange thing is that the designer's initial were on almost all US coins at that point, mostly a single initial, but because the letter "B" was already on the Barber coins, they had decided to use three initials (VDB) to avoid confusion.
I read a little last night, there's several pages about the roll-out of the Lincoln cent in 1909, concerning the VDB and how the Sec. of the Treasury objected to the designer's initials on the coin. I didn't realize how there was a rush to get the new coins, with people lining up at the Treasury offices. The treasury had to limit people to ten coins per person. After the Sec. objected to the VDB, it was thought that the VDB coins would be withdrawn from circulation, so people started hoarding them.
The strange thing is that the designer's initial were on almost all US coins at that point, mostly a single initial, but because the letter "B" was already on the Barber coins, they had decided to use three initials (VDB) to avoid confusion.
When I used to work in retail, any time we would redo the book and magazine stock the manager would take all the old books and mags and rip the cover off and throw them in the crusher.... what a waste!
