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Publishing Strategy

Jeff Shevlin · January 20, 2022

Bill Hyder and Jeff Shevlin’s Publishing Strategy. With our next book due out soon, many collectors are asking what will it cover. The best way to answer that is to explain our publishing strategy. Bill and I entered into a partnership almost 15 years ago. We love to research numismatic items, discover previously unrelated facts, tie them together and tell a story. Together we have given dozens of presentations, written dozens of articles, written several books, been on the TV show Pawn Stars, incorporated So-Called Dollars into the Whitman Mega Red Book, and done countless other outreach efforts to promote this hobby we both love.

We believe that for a collector to develop an interest in a particular numismatic series, like So-Called Dollars, they are more likely to do so if they know why the medals are so interesting, they need to know the history of the medals, a collector needs to hear the stories the medals have to tell. We tell those stories.

Our first two books “Discover the World of Charbneau So-Called Dollars” and “So-Called Dollars from the Pacific Coast Expositions” were story books. A story book goes into detail educating the collector, developing an interest, explaining why these medals are so interesting. Not just the wonderful various designs, but why was it struck, what event or person does it commemorate, when was it struck, who struck it and what motivated them to produce it, the politics, economics, the people involved all come together and tell a story about the medal. It is holding history in your hand. If you listen, the medals have a story to tell you.

In addition to knowing the stories, collectors need to know, what does this series encompass? What are the different types of medals that make up this collecting series? They need information so they can create their own colleting goals, decide what specifically interests them the most, then they can start their own individual collecting journey, the specific path they will follow to accomplish their unique goals. Volume I is a catalog book, which catalogs hundreds of medals, but there is limited room to tell stories. But collectors also need catalog books, without them there would be no focus, they are like the yellow brick road, it allows you to proceed in an organized fashion to progressively meet your collecting goals.

There are so many So-Called Dollars to be included in the future reference that we are publishing two volumes. Volume I covers all of the So-Called Dollars from the Expositions, about half of the medals from the So-Called Dollar series. The other half will be in Volume II which will cover all of the other commemorative medals.

Our latest book “So-Called Dollars Volume I: United States Expositions” which we worked on for almost five years is done and was published in 2023.

For each book we have printed a deluxe leather bound edition limited to 100 copies. Our Pacific Coast book embedded a medal into the cover that was struck using a die that was engraved by George Morgan for the official U.S. Mint medal from the 1909 Alaskan-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Our Volume I book has the official so-called dollar from the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair embedded in the cover, it was also struck by the U.S. Mint.

The next edition of the “Pocket Price Guide” will have updated values for all of the So-Called Dollars from the Pacific Coast Expositions, it will also be expanded to include all of the so-called dollars that were cataloged in Volume I.

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So-Called Dollars