Bad Metal Book. Quick Update - Good and Ok

The last 2 weeks have been busy and productive. The draft book has been fine-tuned, re-read with a few things fixed. I received (as anticipated) a handful of new half dollar varieties to add to the overall content, including some really cool hand-made die varieties, and I even cherrypicked a new transfer die seated half dollar variety (shown here) off eBay which has also been added to the book - just in time! By my count, we now have 519 (and counting) die struck counterfeit half dollar and silver dollar varieties in this book - it is seriously packed with images and info. The book is creeping forward in progress to 99.5% complete and 75% formatted to printer specifications (to the best I understand them).

This past week I received a book printing quote from the same printing company I've used in the past, Sheridan (located in Michigan). Timing of course was fortuitous given the effect the U.S. tariffs have had on this printing company (and industry as a whole) and their supply chain. The quote I received was about 15-20% higher than I planned, and I've been told (or warned) that this is subject to change...hopefully to go down. In any event, I'm planning to proceed with getting this book printed sooner rather than wait and take the chance that costs potentially go up. With that said, from the economics side of where I sit in all this, I do want to lower the 'unit price' (average cost to print each book) for you, the consumer. To do this I've been selling some coins from my collection to offset this higher than anticipated cost. This is a sacrifice, but a worthwhile sacrifice, and I can always buy those coins again in the future.

Once I submit this book to the printer, I will begin advertising and taking pre-orders. Like the last book, I anticipate the printing company may take 2 or 3 months to complete this order and get it delivered - so your pre-order will be on hold for a bit.

On the house-keeping side of other updates, in the last Bad Metal Silver 3cS to 25c book, the standing liberty quarter 1920 Z1-A actually has an S-mintmark that I missed. So, this should now be labeled 1920-S Z1-A. In addition, this variety is no longer a 'singleton' but has a related big brother, a 1920 Walking Liberty half dollar hand-made die variety. This family is called the Guatemala family - more info about this family will be in this next Bad Metal book, but you can probably guess from the family name that there is an association with Guatemala! This is one of the coolest counterfeit U.S. coin families I've documented, and probably the coolest dated to the 20th century!

Good stuff. I'm always having a lot of fun with this subject. And I never know when something new, interesting, and exciting will come my way.

Hope you had a great Easter if you celebrate that holiday, but just a fantastic weekend all around.

Best,

Winston