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Adulterous desires being compared to false coining, whatever next? - a false coyner in natures mint. Who'd have thought our humble coins conjured up so much sexual imagery in bygone days. Love it.

I stopped by Michael's shop in Notting Hill (before he moved), to deliver a 1877 Narrow Date Penny I had sold to another collector from Great Britain (Cardiff, Wales). It was a real pleasure to meet him in person. My wife and I were touring Great Britain at the time. You have a beautiful country.

A little while ago I posted a tip in response to another thread, which proved very useful to some people here and turned out to be something many were not aware of. It occurred to me that there are other useful tips that can make life easier for coin collectors on here, so I thought I would start a thread. Here is one that is very useful in dealing with photographs, whether your own or ones found doing research on other sites: At any point you can create a screen shot of a portion of the screen (as opposed to the whole screen) by pressing the Windows button (the one with squashed window shape usually between "Alt" and "FN" on the bottom row of the keyboard) along with Shift and S. The screen will dull and you can then draw out a rectangle covering whatever are of the screen you want. As soon as you release the mouse button, it copies a screen shot of the area to your clipboard, ready for pasting wherever you want. If you want to get this screenshot into a .jpg for further use, you can paste it into any picture handling app, or as a second tip into a Word document. If you then "Save As" the Word document as a webpage (.htm, .html) it creates a folder with any images in the document as .jpgs - from where you can copy or edit them wherever you like. Or, if you have Notifications on, you will see a message pop up in the bottom right of your screen. If you click on this it will open the image in the Microsoft picture editor and you can save it from there. (Default is to save as .png, which is larger and not generally what is used on the web, but you can save as .jpg instead.) I hope that is useful. Also works as a way of dealing with uncropped pictures on your own machine.

That's a truly wonderful example. High grade and beautiful tone. And almost no contact marks! Can look at this all day!

I would go for blocked die, the lower limb of the ‘E‘ looks too attenuated to be the serif of an ‘F’, and why would he have an ‘F’ punch in his hand anyway? Jerry

I have checked my 1992 edition and it has got the same information. I am also disappointed that the rarities have not been updated going from the fifth to the sixth edition.

Yes, I think they did and always irritated me just a bit as it was nonsense.

...and of course, Bob, the "I" in BRITT pointing to a tooth, being the definitive hallmark of a Gouby X....

The difference in head size is quite dramatic, and you get a feel for it. However, 3 quick ways of spotting it: 1. the point where the chins meet the neck is well over halfway down on the 2d, about halfway on the penny 2. the back of the head is vertically over the back edge of the lower bust on the 2d, but WELL to the right of it on the penny 3. On the 2d, the chin is vertically above the front of the lower bust, on the penny it's the tip of the nose It does make you wonder why the same bust wasn't used on both denominations.

A new unlisted unofficial farthing variety which landed today. I believe it relates to the famous gun makers Holland & Holland but I'm yet to research properly. Thoughts and comments welcome

Another test is to measure the distance from the top of the R in REG to the top of the T in VICTORIA. This is done with vernier callipers (for more reliable results take an average of 10 readings). Most of the proofs measure 33.6mm Other coins vary a good deal up to 34.6mm. This was a test introduced to me by Peter Davies of British Silver Coins. And no it is not a proof though the tone is rather pleasing on the obv.