About the Author

John West Dannreuther was born on May 5, 1948 in Canton, Mississippi. His father introduced him to coin collecting very early in life, persuading him to move from stamp collecting by giving him 100 U.S. silver dollars to start a coin collection. Soon after, together they bought a shoebox full of Indian Head cents and his numismatic career began in earnest. Their mail order company, V.J. Dannreuther and Sons, introduced him to the commercial side of numismatics, as they advertised in coin weeklies.

After graduating college, John played for three years as a professional musician. In 1973, he became a full-time coin dealer and began traveling the numismatic show circuit. He joined New England Rare Coin Galleries of Boston in 1976 as Director of Wholesale. He became the head trader for Numismatic Investments of Florida in 1977 and held that position until he reestablished John Dannreuther Rare Coins (JDRC) in January 1979. That year he moved to Memphis, Tennessee and has maintained JDRC since that time. In late 2017, JDRC relocated to Fullerton, California.

In 1985, John was a founder of the Professional Coin Grading Service in Newport Beach, California along with David Hall, Bruce Amspacher, and Gordon Wrubel. He worked for ten years as a grader for PCGS and continues as a consultant and working on special projects. He also was instrumental in the forming of the trading arm of PCGS, called the American Numismatic Exchange or ANE. Although no longer in business, this was the first electronic trading mechanism for “slabbed” coins and pioneered sight unseen and sight seen bidding.

Mr. Dannreuther is a member of most numismatic organizations, including the ANA, ANS, PNG, NLG, ICTA, FUN, CSNS, and numerous other groups.

In addition to numerous articles, Mr. Dannreuther wrote the text for the award winning 1997 Random House publication, The Official Guide to Coin Grading and Counterfeit Detection. A second edition of this work appeared in 2004. He received the Numismatic Literary Guild’s “Book of the Year” award, as well as their “Best U.S. Coin Book” award. The Professional Numismatist Guild also presented the author their Robert Freidberg award for the grading book. In 2007, the second full-length work by Mr. Dannreuther, Early U.S. Gold Coin Varieties, also won the Numismatic Literary Guild’s “Best U.S. Coin Book.” In 2008, the Professional Numismatist Guild’s “Lifetime Achievement” award was presented to Mr. Dannreuther. He also received the “Olga and Wayte Raymond” award from the American Numismatic Association in 2003 for an article in the Numismatist. In 2013, the Numismatic Literary Guild awarded the “Best Article: award for “Two Gold Half Unions” that appeared in the March issue of The Numismatist.

Mr. Dannreuther is currently working on several writing projects, including a four-volume work on United States master-coin and Proof issues. The gold volume (IV) is the first to appear and is slated to be printed in March 2018 with a delivery date soon afterwards.