Contributor’s Email Introduction (July 8, 2015)

Hello Contributors,

I came to Krause Publications in 1987. Many of you were already helping and many more have joined the ranks over the past 28 years of my tenure. All of us have the same purpose: to further numismatic knowledge and to share what we have learned with our fellow hobbyists. While we must sport thick skins because criticism can be daunting, I am confident that we have made a positive impact.

In 1987 we were producing one annual world coin catalog that spanned the mid-1800s up to present. At 1,632 pages, the 1988 edition of the Standard Catalog of World Coins was double the 864 pages of the 1974 version of my youth. But even bigger changes were afoot.

The first edition to carry my name was completed in 1988, and its cover offered an inkling of our direction with its techno-modern global theme. It had an additional 160 pages of content, and growing the data in all directions became our objective from this point onward. The 1991 double-volume ANA edition added 100 years of listings, and in 1993 we broke off our first century volume covering 1701-1800 at 1,008 pages. The 1601-1700 and 1801-1900 centuries followed in 1996 at 1,152 pages each. We had burgeoned from about 150 years of coinage on 1,632 pages to 400 years of coinage on 5,000 pages. Finally, in 2006 we made the final break and established the first 2001-Date coin catalog at a mere 314 pages of content.

Today the five-volume series of Standard Catalog of World Coins covers from 1601-Date with nearly 8,000 pages of images, descriptions and values. Take a bit of pride in that, my friends – you all played a part.

Along the way many changes have occurred in how we store and process this massive amount of precious data. Many of you worked on Excel spreadsheets for the first time this year while updating the SCWC 1901-2000 43rd edition, the SCWC 2001-Date 10th edition and our current project, an 8th edition of the SCWC 1801-1900. I hope you have enjoyed sharing your knowledge, and I thank you all for adapting and growing along with our guidebooks.

It has always been a desire of mine to improve our communication with those who assist in updating our catalogs. To that end, I have enlisted the help of my colleagues, Maggie Judkins and Connor Falk, in establishing this quarterly newsletter. In each issue we hope to give you three things: a better understanding of the content of our listings, a clear idea of what volumes are planned for the near future and some personal insights from me.

This newsletter is exclusively for you, our contributors, and some of the more structured content will be made available for you to reference in an electronic library of sorts, housed on our main website.

Again, thank you for your contributions to these important works. I look forward to our continued growth and success now and in years to come.

Best,

Tom Michael
Editor, Market Analyst
Standard Catalog of World Coins