Customer Reviews

2011 Standard Catalog of World Coins 2001-Date (Standard Catalog of World Coins: 2001-Present)

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Another issue of the 21st century World Coins Catalog proves yet again that the whole idea was aimed mainly at selling the same thing twice to the same group of customers. The 2011 issue still is not big enough to justify the separation from the 1901-2000 volume (no, there is no need to list prices for trial strikes in the latter volume!) while the editing leaves far too much to be desired.
The list of flaws is quite long but let's be general here. The more recent issues of most countries are not brought up to date (strangely enough Ukraine is well done but its neighbour Belarus is not to such a degree that in some cases some coins from a series are listed and some are not) and this applies to a quite strange degree to countries living on coin production (and quite popular among collectors) such as Isle of Man or Gibraltar (current circulation issues introduced in 2005 are still not listed!). The prices show little connection with market reality or are not given at all (Monaco 2007 issues). Mistakes from earlier volumes are not corrected e.g. there were two Polish 2 zloty commemorative coins issued in 2005 and 2007 missing from 2010 issue and guess what? They are still missing. The same coins are listed twice. The sequence is sometimes quite inexplicable i.e. the latest coins are listed as the first. Etc etc.
Conclusion - unless you are a dealer and you need it for your business (and you can deduct the cost for tax purposes) don't buy this volume. You will find more specific and up to date information on new coin issues on the Internet and more data on their prices on eBay. To make matters worse Krause apparently decided that adding a CD was too much and cancelled it in this editions, you have to buy it separately in effect paying twice for the same faulty material.
You will have to make your decision but I am not very likely to buy 2012 issue.

I was disappointed that the DVD-ROM discs were not included with this edition. The last edition I bought included them.

One of the main reasons I purchased this item was because I thought it came with a CD so I could have the info on my computer. The 2010 edition had one and most major book companies are adding digital copies of books not removing them. This book is not necessarily cheap and the digital copy is really the only reason I purchased it. Will probably return the book as it is too much money for just a book.

This is a catalog listing of everything. I was looking for an encyclopedia - not just a catalog database dump

Must have ref book if you are a coin collector!!!
Use it whether you buying or selling the coins.