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I was only 7 at the time of decimalisation, but it was the beginning of my Interest in coins and started me collecting. At School we were being taught the new decimal systems, in measurement with coloured blocks of wood and tables/cardboard coins for monetary comparison, I still have the tables somewhere and will post it when I can find them. My most vivid memory was going to the Corner shop with my siblings and them handing over their old coppers to receive shiny new but smaller coins, I wouldn't exchange my larger coins for smaller ones and kept them, finding them out years later and building my collections from them.

Except that all of the URLs are predecimal.com. Wouldn't externally hosted pictures retain those 3rd party URLs?

i opened my gob before I engaged my brain, and couldn't think what was unusual about 1952 pennies, then I realised 🤐🤐🤐

Apparently, Philip Hammond was asked about the "wrong" date on the prototype pieces on the Andrew Marr Show. He simply replied “They could become collectors’ pieces”.

I wish I'd asked about the 1952 when I made a Freedom of Information Request in 2011. Joseph Payne, the then Assistant Curator, said with regard to the 1954, that he was unable to say for certain whether only one had survived from a trial run of several hundred (the rest of which were presumably melted down). That post is here Unfortunately, I don't think he's there any more. He supplied a very cogent reply within a few days. The last two I've sent weren't replied to for several weeks and were pretty awful - the respondents clearly didn't have a clue how to answer my questions.

BELOW FIND AN EXAMPLE OF AN 1860 FARTHING FROM MY COLLECTION. ANY COMMENTS APPRECIATED. SEE DIGITAL IMAGES. TRUST THEY MAY PROVE USEFUL. FOR REFERENCE, THE FINAL IMAGES ARE THE TOOTHED, REVERSE B(1 LARGE ROCK) AND OBVERSE 3 (5 BERRIES), OF THE 1860 FARTHING.

Well done Sherlock.

According to the official site https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/whatsinthebasketofgoods70yearsofshoppinghistory/2016-07-21 the "basket of goods" to measure inflation has been used for seven decades. It's reviewed regularly and some items taken out and new ones added as fashions change, but it's still the most reliable indicator for CPI inflation. Apparently the measurement dates from January each year, so that doesn't account for March to April. The spreadsheet I've got shows monthly inflation from 1962 to 1973. In every year bar one, the increase from March to April is the biggest; the exception being 1963 where the increase is modest, but then it begins to reduce for the rest of the year. The other possibility is that buyers (private and / or commercial) were using up their budgets and allowances before the new tax year started and that high demand generally results in higher prices. However, I can't see that applying to the sort of everyday items that would be in the 'basket of goods'. So it's a bit of a mystery. Edit: mystery solved! Traditionally the date of the Chancellor's Budget was March, so as duties would get added immediately on things like alcohol, tobacco, and fuel, those would have seen a big increase in inflation for a month.

OK, so are there a couple of bidders that will shoot for the moon, and if so how high will the bidding go?

Thanks Dave.

Does Harcourt Fenton Mudd work at the Mint now?

Tribbles might figure on a star trek inspired 50p

Teenagers will be glad to know that

I think Spink would catalogue this variety at 8/5 simply because it is the only logical way to list it. To call it 5/8 would suggest it was a coin intended for use in time travel. I think the common assumption would be, as with Rob’s GEOE coin, that no-one would intend to change a correctly entered digit/letter. It would be difficult to trace whether these things happened accidentally (as in Colin’s valid suggestion), except in die studies (if you’re lucky enough to find an identifiable feature such as a developing flan crack pre and post the error.) so, unless proven otherwise, Spink would have to sensibly call the variety 8/5

A very rational idea, as logical an explanation as any. I guess that same rationale applies to the time the die was first cut too. I think the interesting point to clear up, though, is the idea that when an error occurs, it’s assumed the highest device (the one in greatest relief) is the first entered, when in fact it’s only about which device has been struck the hardest/deepest that has it sit on top of another letter/number/device on the actual coin. Diaconis talks about 5/8 and 8/5 but they are in this example one and the same (with only how hard the punch was struck to differentiate) when all the points are explored into how the 5 happened there in the first place. The 8 could’ve been first on the die and then unintentionally recut at a later date with a deep strike of the 5 (meaning to recut the 5 but using Colin’s suggestion), putting it in higher relief on the milled coin. Or, when the die was first made, a 5 was accidentally entered where the 8 should be, and was subsequently recut/repaired with a lighter strike of an 8, still leaving the 5 in higher relief on the milled coin. A bit wordy, I’m not sure everyone is grasping the concept.

Neither is a genuine first issue. Fewer lines across the body is a giveaway.