Building the Hobbies Future With NumisMaster

NumisMaster is now a live system . All our new issue entry, descriptive updates, variety listings and of course price changes are going into NumisMaster directly. Our updates are happening live online. I enter a price change and you can see it on NumisMaster, no time delay, no week to synchronize databases, no weeks for information to traverse the mails, no months for book production. It's now a live system and we can work from that point to ensure that new improvements are built into the system to satisfy your needs.

As we embark on phase two we will be looking at better ways for users and editors to maintain good communication. Along these lines, I would encourage all subscribers to use the suggestion system to offer specific new or updated information to the editors. At the moment it is half automated and half manual, so we're all making an extra effort to keep it fluid. In the not too distant future we plan on adding some additional automation to speed the suggestion system up a bit. The two big things to keep in mind are; be Patient and Participate. We want NumisMaster to be a lively knowledge exchange. If you've noticed something that we haven't yet, please let us know. Everyone can be a part of NumisMaster.

On the catalog front we are through the early portions of the 4th edition updates to the Standard Catalog of World Coins 1701-1800. There have been some exciting additions to the German States listings instituted by Doug Nicol, some serious price changes to France brought about by Serge Huard and Wade Hinderling, and lots of major and minor adjustments to many other national listings derived through internet observation and extensive work from our host of expert contributors. We have a few months yet to work on this catalog before it goes out to the printer. Books should be available in the market by early October, barring any problems.

As we work through the 18th Century catalog, we are also beginning our update and expansion of Unusual World Coins. This will be UWC's 5th edition and Colin Bruce, George Cuhaj and I are all adding in new listings, new images and price updates. At the moment we each have other chores taking the lions share of our time, but by the end of July I would hope to be into UWC full tilt.

June brought us a few new catalogs. The 35th edition of The Standard Catalog of World Coins 1901-2000 was released several weeks ago, while the 2nd edition of the SCWC 2001-Date just hit my desk June 29th. This 2nd edition grew the title by about 70 pages and included some dazzling work regarding mintages, new issues and pricing from contributors Melvin Kassenoff and Dr. Kerry A Rodgers. Finally we saw the release of an especially timely and useful new title: The Standard Catalog of Modern World Gold Coins 1801-Present. This new edition houses all gold, platinum and palladium coins for the time period and has brought all prices for these coins up to current market levels for the burgeoning precious metals escalation. Heavily illustrated, with 772 pages of listings, this book is a great addition to the line and one, which should help many collectors as well as novices to successfully navigate, profit from and enjoy the current gold coin market.