RECOMMENDED HALF CENT BOOKS

There really are four books and one series that are worth owning.

The first book is Walter Breen's Encyclopedia of United States Half Cents, 1793-1857 by, obviously, Walter Breen. Published in 1983, it has a LOT of information about coinage deliveries and a pretty good emission sequence. Most of the photos are grayscale, but there are color plates of beautiful examples of each year in the back. Also, lots about errors and how they came about. It offers interesting but limited insight on grading. However, some of the information is out of date.

Next is Ron Manley's 1998 Half Cent Die State Book. It is exactly what it says it is, and most dealers and auction companies use Manley die state information.

The Grading Guide for Early American Coppers, by Bill Eckberg, Bob Fagaly, Dennis Fuoss and Ray Williams, was published by Early American Coppers in 2014. It uses full color images of each of the different types in all grades from AG-MS-67, where such coins are known. The book, which received the Numismatic Literary Guild Book of the Year award, covers half cents, large cents and the collectible federal and state coinages produced under the Articles of Confederation. It remains the bible for EAC-style grading.

The fourth is my The Half Cent, 1793-1857: America's Greatest Little Coin, published in 2019. It shows the products of each obverse and reverse die as well as all of the edge dies and provides the most up to date emission sequence. It was the first half cent book to illustrate everything in full color with large photos, mostly by the author. It uses line drawings to illustrate the amount of detail required at each grade level. It also focuses on how and when each variety was created.

The above books are all out of print and available from booksellers on the secondary market.

More recently, Ed Fuhrman has produced a series of books on each of the half cent types, with a separate volume on errors, another on attribution and a third on grading. The set gives Ed's views on cherrypicking. The cost of the set of six books is over $500. To the best of my knowledge, these are still available from the author.

A mention needs to be made of Roger Cohen's American Half Cents: the Little Half Sisters, published in two editions, the second in 1983. It was the book that popularized half cent collecting. We still collect half cents by Cohen (C) number, although Cohen's emission sequence has been shown to be wrong in several cases. The book is only of historic interest, as all of the books listed above have rendered it obsolete.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JULY 6, 2025 : Best Modern Books on Certain Coins? (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n27a09.html)

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