Free companion card · Error Coin Values Book

The Sixty‑Second Checklist

The six questions from Chapter 1, in order, on a card that fits in your wallet — with the U.S. coin specifications table on the back.

Download the card — free PDF

No email. No account. Nothing to buy. Two pages, 97 KB — it opens straight on your phone.

The front of the card: six numbered questions on a dark teal background, ending with the rule never clean it, hold it by the edge.
The front of the card, at roughly the size it prints.

What’s on it

One card, two sides. The front decides. The back weighs.

Card front: six numbered questions, with keep going in gold and PMD stop here in red.
Front — the six questions. Light and loupe, raised or cut in, does the mark follow the design, weigh it, check the date and mintmark, and only then look the number up live. Plus the two rules that never change: never clean it, hold it by the edge.
Card back: a table of ten U.S. coins with weight in grams, diameter in millimeters and composition, plus the magnet test and the coin turn.
Back — the numbers. Weight, diameter and composition for ten U.S. coins, so a scale can settle an argument your eye can’t. Plus the magnet test and the coin turn.

It prints legibly in black and white too — nothing on the card is told by color alone.

How to print it

  1. Print page 1 at 100%, single sided. Not “fit to page” — that shrinks it and the card comes out the wrong size.
  2. One cut, one fold. Each card is its front and its back side by side, joined by a dashed line. Cut once, fold once, and you have a two‑sided card without ever fighting a duplex printer.
  3. Two cards per sheet. Keep one, give one away. A strip of packing tape or a card sleeve and it survives a pocket.
Page one of the PDF: two identical cards on a US Letter sheet, each with a cut line and a fold line.
Page 1 of the PDF. Page 2 is the same card printed large, for the bench — nothing to cut.
Download the card — free PDF

Optional — you already have the card

Want the photo guide too?

There is a second free guide on the way: How to Get a Real Answer on a Coin (Without Getting Laughed At).

Sooner or later the card sends you to ask someone. This one is about that part: the four photographs that are always needed, how to light a coin with a desk lamp and a sheet of paper, the loupe‑in‑front‑of‑the‑lens trick, how to word the question — and how to tell a reply that knows from a reply that’s guessing.

It’s being finished now. Leave your address and it lands in your inbox the day it’s done.

The card above is already yours — this box has nothing to do with it. A couple of emails, then it stops. One‑click unsubscribe on every one. Your address is never sold or shared. How email works here.

Vera Holcomb at a work bench with a lamp, a loupe and a dark cloth.

Vera Holcomb

Vera Holcomb writes identification guides for ordinary collectors: people going through a jar, a drawer, or a box out of an attic, trying to tell a genuine piece from something merely old and damaged.

She works from what can be checked: a test you can run yourself, a photograph to compare against, and a value you look up today rather than read off an old table.

Here, that means U.S. coins, and the line between a true mint error and ordinary damage.

More about Vera Holcomb →

Where this card comes from

Cover of Error Coin Values Book by Vera Holcomb.

The card is the short version of Chapter 1 of Error Coin Values Book — a field guide to telling a genuine mint error from ordinary post‑mint damage, with close‑up photographs and technical diagrams, printed in full color.

The card is a free gift to readers, and to anyone who finds this page. You don’t need the book to use it.