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Isn't spelchek annoying - you type 'intentional' and it replaces that with 'coincidental'!!!

Any resemblance between Ray Alan and Donald Trump and Lord Charles and Nigel Farage being purely coincidental - apart from puppet strings being pulled of course.

Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic imsomniac who lay awake all night pondering the existence of Dog?

I would imagine there are around 100,000 serious collectors of decimal coins , the rest end up in drawers of people who are vaguely interested or might have found a couple of interesting coins in their change. There are more than enough to go round even with a million minted the kew 50p is now I believe highly overhyped , only my opinion though

It really is a case of Caveat Emptor. Most of us 'regulars' are pretty savvy when it comes to prices. We know our fields of interest, we know when a coin is scarce or doesn't come up for sale very often, we know how to grade, we know how to check auction archives for sale prices. So we don't often overpay for a coin and, if we do, we usually have a good reason to do so. We also need to understand that a dealer has his/her costs as well and they do need to make a margin on a coin to be able to stay in business. How much that margin is will depend on the costs the dealer has. However, we all know that there is buyers premium on top of the hammer price, that there is postage and insurance to pay both in receiving the coin and in sending it out and there is the cost of capital tied up in the coin. On top of that, the dealer has to make enough profit to make it worth his/her time. All that can add a substantial premium to the hammer price.

That's a pretty good copy - you can see that it's "just" wrong enough (though only slightly) not to have been taken from a cast made from a genuine coin.

if someone says its AEF or GEF it doesn't mean it is, make your own opinion.

Very true Rob regarding your last sentence, but grading hammered is a whole different beast than milled

Grading is/was/always will be an inexact science. Consider the item below and the grades assigned. It is an Oxford 1645 F-7 halfcrown with the following provenance and the grades assigned were as follows: Mrs Street, collection bought by Marsham. R W Marsham-Townsend 563, VF H Montagu (III) 516, VF G Hamilton-Smith (1913) 95, Unusually good R C Lockett 2460, Mint State F Willis 298, VF Lloyd Bennett, gVF or better. FWIW, I would give it as not far off as struck. So aEF but a little soft in the strike, with the thin wear lines on the top of some reverse detail clearly showing how little actual wear there is, but visually you couldn't argue convincingly against any of them except the Lockett description, which gives an absolute grade. It just depends on what the focal point is. Just buy the coin as you see it, because there is no way we are going to get universal agreement on this topic.

Also bought this George 4th gaming token, I have about a half dozen in this style now but haven't seen this design before

Well kids, no update at all. I can not find either this 2002 proof set or the 1984 specimen set. However, on a related note, I got two quite rare bits in the last 6 months: 1976 Malta Franklin Mint 25c Uncirculated Matte. - I got this from a coin dealer on Malta. From looks of it, it was tossed in a bag at time and made the trip to Valetta. I have never seen another ( I got the 1976 FM 50c in Matte a couple of years ago). 1984 Franklin Mint Uncirculated (Proof Like) 50c - this I had graded at PCGS and is on their census, also the only one I have ever seen. Numismata?? site has this catalogued but doubt they have ever seen it. I bought this off Ebay for a grand total with shipping of $3.59 USD! l love finding coins like this.

ebay was fine 10 years ago, with decent coins being bid up to fair prices. Now 90% of it is tat and the other 10% is the same old stock being re-listed time & again at unrealistic prices. I'd like to see a minimum SP of £10 for coins, a listing fee even if it doesn't sell and a rule that nothing unsold could be re-listed more than twice in a 6 month period. I know it'd be impossible to implement/enforce though.

Another F175

F175

F176

I'm pretty sure anyone who buys these in quantity and holds them rather than flipping is going to be burnt pretty badly at some point. The mintage figures are just too high for collector demand alone to be causing the prices we see. A lot of the proof sets have mintages of 5,000 or below, but they haven't seen the crazy demand and price increases the 50 pences have - which to me suggests that the actual number of serious decimal collectors is pretty low, as you'd only need a relatively small number of people to make these expensive.

No you didn't win :) The changechecker site explicitly states that the Olympic 50p are omitted from the chart. Mintage figures according to ITN news: 2009 Kew Gardens: 210,000 2011 Olympic wrestling: 1,129,500 2011 Olympic football: 1,161,500 2011 Olympic judo: 1,161,500 2011 Olympic triathlon: 1,163,500 2018 Peter Rabbit: 1,400,000 2018 Flopsy Bunny: 1,400,000 2011 Olympic tennis: 1,454,000 2011 Olympic goalball: 1,615,500 2011 Olympic shooting: 1,656,500