Coin Update continues its series dedicated to reflecting on the long history of Whitman Publishing’s Guide Book of United States Coins, also known as the Red Book, now in its 72nd edition. “Red Book Recollections” features personal reflections written by Red Book contributors, collectors, and others with the aim of providing different perspectives on the long-lived reference work.
Our next narrative comes from Gene L. Henry:
In the fall of 1966, local Seattle coin dealer Sylvester O’Donnell and I started Loose Change, a television show to educate people about what valuable coins they could find in their change. The show would air on Channel 11, KTNT-TV in Seattle-Tacoma.
Luckily for me, I had just returned from the ANA convention, where I met R.S. (Dick) Yeoman. At the show I presented him with my idea of a TV program on coins. Dick Yeoman was our first guest on the first episode of the show. He even sent me 500 new 1967 edition Red Books, which I signed and gave out to viewers who sent in coin questions.
That was over 40 years ago, and I have been a contributor to the Red Book ever since.
Editor’s note: Loose Change, which aired in 1966 and 1967, was the first television program ever aired about collecting coins. Henry has commented that he still believes it would have been a success had it not been scheduled against ABC’s Wide World of Sports!
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Just picked up my copy. Liked the historical information on the publishing team. Didn’t like two things. First, each time I open the book to read it I end up with paper “crumbs” all over me? The holes drilled out for the wire binding spine are loaded with paper shards? Never had that happen before. Second, the publisher decided to leave out the final mintage figures for most of the modern commemorative coins. As a modern commemorative collector I valued that information. Many (such as the first spouse coins) have very low mintages, which will hopefully translate to valuable in the future. To consider them as bullion coins seems very shortsighted to me. My two cents.