Grading Guide for Early American Copper Coins
by Bill Eckberg, Bob Fagaly, Dennis Fuoss, Ray Williams
Early American Coppers, Inc.
2014
192 pages
ISBN 978-0-615-91186-1

Appropriately in time for this week's convention of the Early American Coppers Inc. (EAC), their new grading guide has popped to the top of my review stack.Since I'm no expert in the topic I'll keep my remarks from the bibliophile's perspective.

The long-awaited book fully describes the process of grading early American copper coins as practiced by collectors who specialize in them. "EAC Grading" is distinct from, and typically more precise and stringent than grading by third-party grading services and auction houses.

The book became available to EAC members at their convention in Colorado Springs, CO, May 1-4, 2014 and will be available to the public beginning tomorrow.

The cover price is $54.95 plus $5 P&H. EAC or C4 members in good standing get a $5 discount. Members purchasing the book at the EAC convention will pay only $45. All proceeds from the book will go to EAC to support its educational and outreach activities.

The rationale for EAC grading is laid out in the Introduction:

The Guide is not without humor, as exemplified by this illustration from p16 captioned, "While there are many ways to record a coin'sgrade, this is definitely not the way to do it."

The Introduction also provides a useful history of coin grading in the U.S., including the Sheldon numerical "Grades" from 1 to 70, Photograde, and the third-party grading services.

Chapter 2 outlines the EAC Grading Guidelines, summarized as follows:

The full-color images are extremely helpful; a great example is the color set on pages 18-19.

Chapter 3 delves into Authentication, and the meat of the book is found in chapters 4-6 on the grading of Confederation Era Coppers, Half Cents and Large Cents. Confederation Era Coppers include New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont coppers, Massachusetts Cents and Half Cents, and Fugio Cents.

The Grading Guide easily passes my back-of-the-book test. Appendices beginning on p145 (of the 192-page book) constitute a full 25% of its content. Appendix I "provides some details pertaining to die clash, die breaks, and die state in the context of grading, for specific large cent varieties." These short notes, arranged by date and Sheldon variety, seem very useful, pointing out specific features and other diagnostic clues to varieties.

Appendix II is a concise 3-page compilation of Photo Credits for the book's wonderful images, many of which are used courtesy of Ira and Larry Goldberg, Heritage Auctions, Stacks-Bowers Galleries, or individual collectors including Mike Packard, Neil Rothschild and Alan Weinberg.

The ten-page Glossary is useful for far more than just grading, covering relevant numismatic terms from A-Z including Annealing,Cherrypick, Dentils,Die Clash,Medal alignment, Oxidation,Patina,Re-engravingUndertype, andVerdigris.

And such early copper-specific terms such as Booby Head,Nichols Find, Silly Head, andWhist Match.

Here's one example definition:

And here's a term I don't think I'd heard before:

QUICK QUIZ: without consulting the book, who can provide a definition for the term "Gynandroid" ?

In summary, it's an easy call to highly recommend this book to any collector or dealer in early U.S. copper coins, as well as to general students of U.S. numismatics. There's a lot here for everyone to learn. Bill Eckberg informs me that over half of the print run has already been sold, so don't miss out - if you have any interest at all, order your copy soon.

For more information, or to order, see:www.eacs.org