There was not a great call for coins in the Carson City, NV area, as Virginia City was the only sizable settlement.

Whitman Publishing has announced details of its release of A Guide Book of Hard Times Tokens, by Q. David Bowers.

Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase favored a Mint in Nevada and the Act of March 3, 1863, authorized it. The Carson City Mint was about to be born.

Today, coins of the Carson City Mint are, as a class, more appreciated than are issues from any other of the Mints in operation in the past two centuries.

In the 1860s, two U.S. Mint production facilities were in operation — one in Philadelphia and one in San Francisco.

Silver and gold coins minted at the San Francisco Mint in the 1860s are on average much more worn than those made at the Philadelphia Mint.

By the time of the Civil War the field of numismatics was dynamic. The expected return of silver and gold coins in 1865 did not happen.

The next two volumes in the Whitman Encyclopedia of Obsolete Paper Money, by Q. David Bowers, will be available Dec. 1, 2014, according to the publisher.

Numismatics had been the hobby of relatively few until the discontinuation of the copper cent and the advent of the Flying Eagle cent in 1857.

The American Numismatic Society, founded in March 1858, was dynamic through 1859, when it simply disappeared — for reasons unknown - but it thrives today.