Standard Catalog of World Coins, 2001-Date [With CDROM]

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.

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.