The Red Book
Courtesy Peter Jones
To price coins in the early 1800s, coin collectors used dealer fixed-price lists, like Cogan, W. E . Woodward, and the Chapmans. In the early 1900s, B. Max Mehl and J.W. Scott's catalogs served the same functions. From the 1850s, auction prices realized became more important for pricing.
The Numismatist magazine, the organ of the American Numismatic Association started in 1888, with advertisements of what dealers would pay for coins or what they would sell coins for.
In the 1920s, Wayte Raymond produced pricing material for US coins but this was dealer centric not consumer centric. He normalized date and mint collecting, and with Whitman, popularized penny boards and thus collecting. In 1942, Yeoman started a yearly Blue Book for wholesale pricing.
In 1947, Yeoman produced the first Red Book for retail pricing. Bear in mind that early grading systems were much simpler than today. In 1947, they listed Good, Fine and Unc coins, but most of their listings showed only two grades. They also listed Proof, but that is a production format, not a grade. The Red Book was revolutionary because they actually listed retail prices to collectors. They also included identification, mintage data, and historical notes making it an ideal handbook.
In 1949, Sheldon introduced the 1-70 grading system in his book Early American Cents (1793-1814). At the time, it accurately represented that if a large cent in Good cost $4, the same uncirculated large cent would cost $60-$70. People took up the system in the 1950s for other coins, but the price differentials rapidly became outdated.
Incidentally Sheldon was a University Professor who spent a lot of time photographing naked young men, whom he listed by “Sheldon types” Skinny he called ectomorphic, medium he called mesomorphic, and fat he called endomorphic... really a restatement of the obvious! He also stole 129 high grade large cents from the ANS, today worth millions. The other two major numismatic criminals of the twentieth century were Walter Breen, a convicted pedophile who died in prison, and John Ford. Ford concocted silver and gold assay bars and California fractional gold coins, which he sold through Stacks. After he died, his coins sold for $55 million (also through Stacks). They were mainly the collection of FCC Boyd, which Ford obtained in a predatory fashion from Boyd's widow for a tiny fraction of their true worth.
To continue with the Red Book... by 1960, it listed coins in Fair, Good, VG, F, VF, EF, and Unc (seven not the three grades of 1947). PCGS started in 1986, and NGC in 1987, using 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 20, 40, 50, 55, 58, 60, 63, 65, 67, and 70 (16 grades). Today TPGs use 30 grades, which with + or star designations, leads to 60 grades... for most collectors, totally out of control!
Today the Red Book has become the bible for US coin collectors, a mini-encyclopedia with values, which is what every one wants to know. But when your aunt asks you what is a coin worth, what they really mean is how much could they get for that coin. As we all know, that depends what the coin is. You can probably sell an ASE (American Silver Eagle) within 10% of retail. But a coin listed at $5 may only realize $1.
Past Red Books were 7.5 x 5 inches. The 2026 Red Book edition was 9.25 x 6 inches (and no longer fit in pockets). It starts with the history of coinage, collecting US coins, mint marks, grading, and Third Party Grading (TPG) like PCGS and NGC. It then lists foreign coins that circulated in the colonies, then colonial coins, then federal coinage. All federal issues and even some colonial coins have a listed GSID number (Grey Sheet Identification number).
After federal coinage come commemoratives, proof and mint sets, US bullion coins, then specialized coins (patterns, territorial gold, tokens, CSA pieces, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Philippine issues, and Mint Errors). Many coin retail prices are listed in eight different grades.
Since 1947 the Red Book has sold 24 million copies (see table courtesy of chatgpt numismatics), making it the best numismatic seller of all time. Sales by decade parallel the popularity of coin collecting which reached a peak in the 1960s (especially in relation to a lower population then)
By contrast the top non-fiction sellers in the US are The Bible 1 billion, Webster dictionaries 250 million, Guinness World Records 140 million, then the Red Book.