Coming Soon: A Book about Collecting Battered and Corroded Coins

I am working on a manuscript about collecting battered and corroded coins. It was something I had to do for reasons that I will explain later. In fact, I have been agitating to move ahead with this project for some time now.
   The manuscript is full of colorful photos depicting corroded coins in full bloom. These are evocative pieces, coins that hit you in the gut.
   There have been tentative stabs at this topic from conservative numismatists (e.g., G. Welter and W. White). But their efforts have largely focused on the nature of corrosion itself -- namely, the electrochemical cell, redox reactions, and so on. This is all fine, but these authors are not necromancer coin collectors; rather, they are like meteorologists warning of a destructive storm. Hence, they miss the big picture and leave out the best parts.
 
   As a way of introduction, I will share a few paragraphs of the manuscript's Preface.

A large cent caked with verdigris is not typically found on a collector's want list, but it should be. It is a relic, and like a rusty hand-wrought nail dug from a flowerbed, it has a story. Relic coins prompt questions: who lost it; when did it happen; and how did this lowly cent survive the onslaught of Mother Nature? It is a mystery -- one worth holding in your hand.

Yet, most collectors find relic coins disgusting and are surprised that anyone would want them. Those that do are branded as rebels or as just ignorant. Either way, loving the unloved raises eyebrows and invites misunderstanding.

... . 

This book is about corrosion: the death knell of coins. We celebrate it, not because we are rebels, or because we are in denial, but because we are true collectors who have stumbled on to something engaging. Loving the unloved is not meant to be a declaration boldly shouted to rile our fellows; rather, it is just collecting.

We develop story-lines with objects because we are meaning-makers. In our heads, we are historians; in our hearts, we are post-modernists creating history. We are artists, too. And art often involves seeking out the "awful beauty" that Charles Dickens described when he first set eyes on the ruins of Rome. This beauty finds its energy within the darker emotions evoked by loss, decay, and death. Herein lies the allure of battered and corroded coins.

Stay tuned. It will be a coin book like no other.