Chris Perkins

Thanks very much SWANNY. Am just about to post it out (from Germany).

No idea, but you know what, I think a forum sortware update is due. Let's see what new tricks and repaired old tricks that brings!

Bit rude, crashing a topic to advertise a website that does appear to have some nice coins on offer, but also seems to use a bit too much marketing speak (akin to those well known peddlers of modern amazing limited edition rubbish) for my liking. Today I changed the security questions and have banned a couple of IP address ranges in an attempt to stop the current increased (mostly Polish) spam account registrations.

Alles gute zum Geburtstag Dr K.

That's choked me up Peter. We heard so much about Mrs Peter over the years. Really sorry to hear that

No Peter, that was another Oliver.

I sent some scrap pre 1920 off to Ollie and got back 4 bars of sterling, each containing an ounce of Ag. Larger chunks like that seem to be more popular than pre 20 silver coins!

What on earth is all this about???! It seems to have come out of nowhere. Are you ok PWA? I do think you may have initially over-reacted and fired the gun that seems to have started this avalanche.....then it was all ok again and Dave went off on a bit of a tangent. What happened there Dave? Seems to be a storm in a tea cup, we're all friends here. I won't delete anything, but I will go through altering some of the language, including things partially obscured by dashes etc.

Yes, good old JMD eh. If you ever see this JMD, and have forgotten your password, my email address is the same. Log in, say hello.

Topic title changed. Michael-Roo is right I'd say.

Here's something from Michael Freeman: I was lucky enough to be alive when Victorian pennies and halfpennies were in circulation, and in 1946, at the age of 6, encouraged by my teacher, I started collecting them. All and every one - even those with illegible dates! The first thing I noticed was that there were both a young-looking and an old-looking head on pennies of 1874. This made me want to find out when other changes occurred, and sometimes I noted that 2 or more types occurred in the same year, 1881 being a good example. With no book available on the subject, I learnt more and more simply from collecting them, and the next fact which I remember learning was that 1 in every 12 pennies in circulation was Victorian. This was around 1950. In the 1950s, at school, I used to play at guessing the date of any penny by looking only at the obverse. I could tell either exactly or within 2-3 years, from subtle differences, such as in colour, caused by variations in the alloy, by the rim height, and very minor flaws which appeared in certain periods - such as the mis-strike of the upper leaf of the garland on pennies of obverse 6 in 1873. On Bun pennies, the silhouette, or only part of it, can indicate exactly what obverse or reverse it is - such as on the many early 1860s pennies. By the time they were withdrawn in 1966, I had over 3,000 halfpennies and 62,000 pennies , with the Veiled Bust pennies of 1895-1901 running into a few thousand each date. I had discovered 27 major types not in Peck's book on Copper Tin and Bronze, which was published in 1964. In the Introduction to 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain', I wrote how difficult it was for me to decide what to catalogue as a type and what not to. An example was the 1874 obverse 7 with a distinctly hooked nose found only paired with one of the reverses, which one I forget now. I rejected it as too confusing. Reverse I (1874 only) was a toss-up which I opted to include even though it does resemble reverse J. I decided that the Victorian series was complicated enough without sub-dividing it into all the minor touched-up dies. The 1922 penny with an early version of reverse C was a case in point. Even by the 1980s, few people cared, so It was simpler for people to know it simply as a variant of reverse C, which it is. Nowadays things are different. Many minor and a few major omissions from my book are now known to lots of collectors, and, for them, this is an entirely separate reverse. The 1926 penny with Heritage, with reverse C has the proper adopted reverse used from 1927 to 1936. It is either a proof or first striking, with all details bold, struck from new dies of both sides. The letters 'ONE PENNY' are in high relief and double-struck (indicative of proof strikings), which can be seen best in the hand, although Heritage's excellent photos show this quite well. 1927 pennies have much softer details on both sides, as expected from dies which had to be used on millions of blanks. The 1922 penny with reverse C (variant) was quite a surprise when first discovered - after all, all known1926 pennies had reverse B, and reverse C first appeared only in 1927. The 1926 penny with this reverse, on the other hand, was perfectly likely, being the year prior to its use in full production. Moreover, the halfpenny and farthing of 1926 both have a reduced version of it. Logic strongly suggests there must have been a reverse die prepared for the penny, as well; and this coin is evidence that it was. My view is that the intended new reverse was designed and tested in 1922, then shelved until 1924 or 1925, when the die was refined to what became reverse C, but not used until 1926 when this coin, with a '6' punched over a partially-erased 4 or 5, was struck as a trial piece. Found to be satisfactory, but not used for production until 1927. As for the date numerals, first note the tiny dot above the '6', which does not appear on any other penny. Similar dots are known to have been used as a guide to where a character should be punched on a die. There is a faint trace of an exergual line lower than the intended base of the design. This could indicate a die alteration from the level it had been on reverse B. This coin had been examined under high magnification and no sign of a numeral '7' was found. (Modified Effigy, obverse 4 + reverse C, + modified reverse, pennies were struck for circulation only dated '1927'). Everyone can see the '6' has traces of other numerals, which have been partially erased. But on the DIE, not the coin. To resolve doubts, knowing the latest technology would be applied to examining it, I submitted the coin to Heritage, who had it at both NGC and PCGS before cataloguing it. All three institutions are experts and confirm what I concluded. Below is the full text of the description I sent Heritage, but which they did not use. I write too much! *1926 penny, OBV.4 + REV.C - the Modified bust AND Modified reverse. UNIQUE. S. 4054A. Ex M.J. Freeman. After many years of striking pennies which had ghosting (A faint unintentional impression of the king's head showing through on the reverse around Britannia), the Royal Mint found the solution. The high relief of the head had caused 'suction' of metal from the reverse, so, in 1922, a new reverse was re-engraved. A few specimens were struck that year, and circulated. These still bore the old obverse; but there is also a so-far unique penny of 1922 with a completely re-engraved OBVERSE, in low relief, paired with the new reverse. Both seem then to have been shelved for 3 years. No penny was struck in 1923, 1924, or 1925. The halfpenny and farthing were struck during these years, and in 1925 coins with both the old style and the new, modified, dies are found; but it was not until 1926, when penny striking resumed, that the new, modified head, was introduced on this denomination. Both the high relief (Freeman obverse 3) and the low relief obverse 4 - usually referred to as the 'Modified Effigy' - occur for 1926, although the latter is much the scarcer. On 1926 pennies, both types of obverse are paired with the same, earlier-style, reverse - B - with the exception of THIS coin. The 1922 modified reverse has been revised in slight detail, with Britannia's head a little larger. This reverse - C - remained, unaltered, on all pennies from 1927 until the end of the reign in 1936. From 1928, the modified effigy was significantly reduced in size, so the original, larger, modified effigy is found only on a small number of 1926, and ALL of 1927. On this coin there are traces of another numeral inside the '6'; but 1927 was the ONLY year known to have obverse 4 + reverse C, and it is definitely not a '7'; so the alteration was to the DIE, not the coin. This conclusion is reinforced by traces of an exergual line below the level found on reverse C, in fact where it used to occur on reverse B. My guess is that the reverse was engraved with the date '1925' but, as it was not used until this coin was struck, the '5' was overstruck with a '6'. The same '6' punch appeared on a reverse B 1926 Modified Effigy in another Heritage auction earlier this year (2015). SEE http://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/great-britain-george-v-penny-1926-ms65-red-and-brown-ngc-/a/3037-29783.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-071515 The designs on both sides are far sharper than usually found for these dies, and the reverse letters are double-struck, a feature which occurs on proofs and trial strikes although the surfaces are not prooflike. It is clearly a first strike for both the dies. The coin appears to have been dipped in 'hypo', which gives it its dark color, and some other pennies of later years had the same treatment before release into circulation. There are, however, small areas which are bright. The coin is about uncirculated, but has a small spot of verdigris on the lettering on the top of the obverse. It may well have had other areas where this was removed, along with the surface; hence the bright patches. An important link in British bronze. (Michael Freeman) I used to receive a lot of emails, but do not want to devote my waking moments to answering them, as I could do; hence my not wanting my email publicised. I am really pleased that lots of people share my former enthusiasm, but don't want to discuss coins. I read what was written, and, as I had previously been in touch with Chris who asked me about possibly producing a soft-back, or electronic edition of 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain, when I did this, I asked him to reply for me in the Forum. There is nothing sinister, as some comments suggest. I am selling my house and buying another 500 miles away. It is time-consuming and my health is not the best. I have taken up a lot of time in replying to try to clarify issues raised in the Forum, and hope goodwill will prevail! I can do no more. My thanks to Chris, who runs it excellently.

I'd imagine the stop in the die got filled with crud. Both look real enough to me.

He has a new email address and doesn't want to make it public. I'll ask for his input on the points raised.

Oh dear Peter, what caused it, do they know? Or did she just slip, fall and bang her head?

I've got an MGF rear bumper here somewhere (plastic part), and I think the metal part that holds on the front bumper, if you want them. Both are GEF with the odd minor edge knock.

Very good points. Most of what goes on on facebook is very low level stuff, usually relating to inexpensive modern commemorative coins or finds in change. It really is surprising how many people really like and passionately collect commens and coins from change! There are also a few people floating around that have recognised that such coins when actually sold as hyped up new items are nothing much more than a money making mint effort. And like Dave says, there are such a lot of know-it-alls that often give false information, and there are also a lot of people trying to sell old rubbish for far too much money. Posts appear and if there ever is anything interesting, it's gone in a matter of hours and you can never remember where you saw it, or ever find it again!

It's a tough one and I don't think there is a software solution for it as yet.

Sadly the popularity of forums is in decline, I think it's mainly the social networks that are taking over. People join groups on fb and ask the same questions.... where they often get wrong answers or no answers at all, but as they are already there and active they don't tend to use forums much. I've seen a lot of it lately.

I'd also be interested in publishing all of the new prices for all of the BU and proof sets from the 70s to now, but finding the info is indeed hard.

Who is that chap in the USA that does an excellent job at fixing damaged coins?

Hmm, and the links are to the Polish language ebay where the seller has zero feedback and expensive coins. Possibly a scam. Original poster, you've got until this evening to drop in again and say something nice, or I'll remove this just in case.

Someone find him one, please! He's been getting on my nerves about it for weeks.

Welcome to Antoine, he is known to me and is a good lad. Very enthusiastic about his coins and also very knowledgeable.

Michael Freeman has asked me to add the following to this thread: Everyone is entitled to opinions, but not to distort facts without having any knowledge about them. I did not 'self-publish for decades because I had to'. In 1963, I chose to publish 'The Victorian Bronze penny' myself because my friend, Stanley Langman, had a printing company in Glasgow and he gave me a reasonable price; and I had 'hands-on' involvement with everything. It seemed a good idea to try to sell them myself, which I did. This was a success, and in 1966 he printed a second edition for me. The same facts applied in 1969, when I wrote 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain'. I did not ask anyone to publish it. In 1983, living then in England, near London, I wrote another book on the subject of buying and selling coins, which Hutchinson published (in the name of Barrie and Jenkins, an offshoot company). They also published the 2nd edition of 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain' in 1985. I did not approach anyone else to do this. In 2006 Spink asked me if I wanted to write an updated 3rd edition; but settled for permission to re-print the 1985 book. I had sold my collection in 1984 and 1986, so took no interest in bronze coins from then on. The late Laurie Bamford, whom I had known for many years as an expert, offered to give me a list of what had been discovered since then, to bring me up to date, but by 2006, I did not have the same enthusiasm as I had when I was a collector. On the matter of my rarity estimates, I based these on hard statistics. In the case of post-Victorian coins, I withdrew large numbers of bags from banks, to augment what I had already noted. This was in the 1960s, when all the coins covered in this book were in circulation. There was no better way of assessing rarity - mintage figures do not give die varieties. Regarding Victorian pennies and halfpennies, by 1966, when they were withdrawn by the banks for melting, I held over 62,000 of the former and 3,000+ of the latter. A fair proportion of them were badly worn, but enough were not and I can think of no better means of assessing their rarity than this randomly assembled collection. It enabled me to compare and assume relative rarity to the point where I felt I could assign 40 different degrees of rarity. I developed a sharp eye for identifying very worn coins with only a few areas visible. An example was the 1862 obverse 2 penny. The top leaf on the bust points to a lower area than on the usual obverse 6. I wrote to Peck when I discovered it, as he had hinted at its possible existence in a footnote in his book. The same applies to many other distinguishing features, such as in identifying the rare reverse F from only parts of the silhouette of Britannia. I sold all my legible Victorian pennies at 2 1/2d each to Corbitt and Hunter of Newcastle in 1966. A crane lifted them, and the doors in my parents' house stopped swinging to the place where I had kept them! I have no doubt that my estimates are pretty accurate where I had thousands of examples, such as in the 1895-1901 Veiled Bust series. Where I had only a few, or one coin, of a type or die pairing, clearly there was not enough to go on to be certain of assigning an accurate rarity estimate. As I stated in my Introduction to the book (which is important and often not fully read), I knew some were likely to be wrong, and I think this applies to the very rarest, some of which, judging from auctions at the excellent London Coin Auctions, are less rare than I assessed them to be in 1969. I considered that melting down millions of coins would increase rarity; and I also took into account the fact that some types had become unidentifiable as a result of having suffered heavy wear from over 100 years of circulation, making the rare ones moreso. I am fortunate enough still to be alive at almost 75, so able to correct the unfounded criticism I have read on this forum. And flattered and happy to see that, worldwide, my book on bronze is used by top dealers and auction houses as the standard reference work." Michael Freeman

Thanks! I couldn't find those old emails with the 1849 penny Bob, try as I might!