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Summary: The Best Specialized Guide
Comment: This is the best book that I have seen on a specialized group of coins, medals and tokens concerning a single topic, in this instance, George Washington. The authors not only describe, illustrate and evaluate the various items, but often provide details on the issuers and history of a particular item. They use the earlier catalog numbers of Baker supplemented by additional numbers or letters so that earlier material may be readily found. Pricing this type of material is difficult, but on the whole, Rulau and Fuld have done an excellent job.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing resource and a model for all coin references! (4 stars to non-collectors)
Comment: This book is a fantastic resource for collectors of Washington medals, exonumia, coins and Washington portrait ephemera which sets a standard for coin and medals books of any kind. It attempts to catalogue all of the known Washington medallic portrayals of the Father of our Country and, frankly, does it well. While there are such things as pillboxes, paperweights, porcelain portraits and even fantasy coins included, these are relegated to the Odds & Ends chapter at the end of the book while the majority of listings are of coins, tokens and medals struck either for events directly related to the life and times of George Washington, or which have been struck to honor his memory. The distinction is, for instance, Indian Peace Medals which were bestowed upon American Indian tribal notables that may or may not have a portrait of the Great White Father on them but may be considered of his time even if issued in 1843. On the other hand the token issued in 1892 by the League of American Wheelmen which uses a portrait of Washington for the obverse device may be considered a tribute in honor of his memory. Granted, the distinction is pretty thin, suffice it to say that this book attempts to catalogue everything remotely coin-like that pertains to, arguably, the greatest figure in American history.
The roots of this catalogue date back to 1885 when one William S. Baker published the first book of this title wherein he identified and numbered his vast collection of Washington medallic portraits. It is a testament of the strength of his cataloguing abilities that these so-called Baker numbers are still in use today. Over the years there were remarkably few attempts to improve upon Baker's work which made for an ideal situation for the present editors Russell Rulau and George Feld to gather all of the pre-existing material into a single book and then expand upon it with all of the material they could find issued since. These editors not only used the old Baker assigned numbers but also created new 'Baker' numbers to later issues and also have cross referenced to other reference numbers (HK, KM, Collins, et al). Needless to say, this was a Herculean undertaking and the amount of information the editors managed to fit into this book in approx. 316 pps. is nothing less than amazing.
If you decide to dip into Washingtonia I predict that two things will occur: First that there is so much really great stuff out there for such a low cost that you may become addicted to collecting this material and second that you will chuckle with delight when you find that it is all but impossible to find some new medal or coin that has been left out of this reference. The editors also helpfully included rarity information, previous auction results where known, and supplied a pricing guide for the material in different conditions. Obviously, with a 1995 publication date much has changed to date but the pricing material is still much appreciated and helps one to get a mental picture of what he is likely to want to pay or sell for. As a side note whilst attending the Baltimore Whitman coin expo in June, 2008 I saw a copy of this book trade hands for twice what it costs right here on Amazon as I type this review (hint: in the 20's).
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