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Very pleased with this 1874 penny - F65 in top UNC grade with probably 90% lustre, ever so lightly toning. Just £250 as a BIN. These are obviously not desperately rare, but they don't turn up every 5 minutes, and definitely not in this grade. Looking back at other sales of similar grade, the price compares very favourably.

1959 Gillick Sovereign

Talking of 8+I, keep looking out for the very rare 1873 (sic) 8+I too. Unrecorded originally in Freeman, it is now mentioned in Appendix 4 of the reprinted version. Dracott records 3 specimens seen, and here's a fourth: (obverse to follow)

1877 Young Victoria Sovereign

1957 Gillick Sovereign

Obverse: @secret santa Richard, if you want to use these for your rare halfpennies website, be my guest!

Completed listings shows it last closed at £155 so I suspect, whatever the seller ID, she's now so familiar people are happy to have a bit of fun at her expense. Who here remembers the slightly faulty decimal coin she asked a million for because she wanted to buy a chippy?

Yeah, these holes you know, they tend to wear their way right through the metal, naturally.

A purely selfish move to take images and catalogue the few hundred I have and the hard task to identify these crazy characters has motivated me to start a thread so that some others could join in on my confusion with these illegal entities which now have their own fan club, admittedly mostly the American Market. But I know many of you have some, if not a lot, and thought you might help me out. The Only reference I have are some past papers from the BNS and a book by R Coleman and I am in need of help finding a book??/ by Atkins that the americans are always referring to . Hope it's OK to press on ?

You don't have to listen to his Twitter feed , there is a disconect button like the off button on a tv , he never said anything on live tv about politics , much as i resent his large wage and think there are other equally tallented presenters he is entitled to his own opinions

1976 Machin Sovereign Taken with a mixture of incident and axial lighting, this time.

This was a surprise find in a lot picked up in auction last week - same obverse die mentioned in last post but with model half dollar reverse. Rogers 2467.

And the obverse.

Transfer to small dipping bowls. Garnish with chopped parsley and dill. Serves 4-6 people.

Get an ice cream container, place a couple of tablespoons of flowers of sulphur in the bottom, place tissue over and the coin to be toned on top; replace the lid and place in a warm place. The coin tones very gently, more rapidly the higher the temperature. Check every day or two. Natural toning largely relates to atmospheric sulphur compounds, this just accelerates the process. Jerry

I only have experience of toning bronze, but an important factor must be common to silver, namely that of temperature. I have a lamp that's on a lot, with a compact fluorescent lamp in it, mounted base down. If you slide a penny that someone has 'cleaned' in between the glass coils, it's supported by its edges, and sits at a nice temperature, and re-toning is surprisingly fast, and even on both sides of the coin. Acetone first is a good idea.

My 1915 florin a reasonable example.

Very nice. I think my AU58 just the common variety.

And the more common one OBV 2 with the better struck obverse ,just back from NGC MS64.

1918 George V Sovereign The new item isn't the coin, but some lights that facilitate taking pics showing the coin's lustre better. Here are a few pics taken of sovs with the rig.

Must admit, I was relieved to see that the envelope contained the coin that I purchased.

There's only one response to "one up her chimney"...

Very nice. The old fashioned "Manks", rather than "Manx".