oldcopper

Yes, that's definitely bronzed, and easier for the pre-1853 Wyon proofs as there aren't many copper ones around.

To me the best way to tell is to look at the brown colouration in incidental light, not reflected light. This removes most of any colourful aspects like blues, greens etc. If it is chocolatey brown, milk to plain, then it's bronzed, if a paler sort of "wan" brown then it's toned copper. There are examples that could be either, sometimes it's very hard or impossible to tell. I'm talking about the traditional bronzed colouration of the official issues, Soho or Royal mint, not the often golden brown of Taylor's restrikes.

Talking of 1839 halfcrowns, I presume you got the Heritage Auctions 1839 proof halfcrown PF66+ at a very reasonable $38,400 and perhaps also the "pure silver" 1847 Gothic crown at $186,000. Maybe not! That was a nice result for the halfcrown vendor as it sold 10 years ago for $10,500 at HA, so a nearly 300% increase. I hate to think what the Gothic crown vendor made. And telling the difference between pure silver and sterling silver might be difficult - the specific gravities of both would be close, and for that price increment you'd hope some test would be pretty clear-cut! Otherwise it's only a PF64 1847 Gothic crown, of which there must be loads around. Perhaps there's some spectroscopic method.

Thinking about it, the Baldwins coin might have been 1857.

Is that top one ex-Baldwins (which they sold as a proof) then ex-Roland Harris, but looked artificially bronzed? Nice looking coin. And presume you mean that the 1839 IOM halfpenny shares the same obverse, as there was no 1839 Jersey halfpenny and they have an ornamented fillet in the headband?

There have been a few 56 OT's in high grade over the last 2 decades - Pywell-Phillips SCA 2018 (ex somewhere else but I've forgotten where), Baldwins 47 (Gregory II) - later sold London Coins, fantastic coin, nearly full lustre, Mark Rasmussen list 15 ( Old British Collection) - ditto almost BU, Dave Craddock also had a nice one in his tray several years ago.

Heritage say there's a graze on her cheek. Might be that. Baldwin's did list it as the proof, just strange they implied the obverse was less certain to be from a proof die than the reverse, and gave it a low estimate of £3-400. Perhaps the graze, if it was that, put them off. If anything I'd have thought the obverse would be easier to tell proof-wise based on the sharpness of the hair.

I saw it at the LCA auction where it was brown, it went to pink pre-slabbing, a great process whatever their secret recipe, as it turned a nothing special coin (still sold at ~£1K though) into a $6.4K one a few years later.

Having seen a few coins proofed up, I wouldn't go for one either. Peck didn't know of one, that's not definitive as he did miss things, but it's evidence that in his 30 plus years of researching he never saw one that jumped out at him as a proof. One example I would like to look at was sold as "full lustre" in a very early 2000's SNC. It was listed as the colon proof, but I couldn't make out the usually bold colon from the photo, in black and white back then. Perhaps it just didn't show up on the photo, though whether colon or no colon, a "full lustre" one would be quite something to behold

I saw the 1841 "proof" penny at DNW just out of interest of course as I was there. Better than their recent "Dr Reddy's patented 1859 facsimile proof penny", but not by much! There was no way it was a proof from the worn dies on either side from the photograph for starters. It must be artificially bronzed. There's an 1859 proof coming up at HA which came from BA 44 in 2006 - where they put "impaired obverse, but reverse definitely struck from a proof die." Estimate at the Gregory sale £3-400, but two people must have thought it a bona fide proof as it went for £1200. Baldwins didn't say why the obverse was impaired or why they weren't certain that side was a proof. Interesting to see it in the hand but i'm not going to risk several thousand for that privilege!

Wow! HA PR64 no colon 1841 with gorgeous pink toning - went for nearly $6.5K in 2017. Oh wait, it's the same coin!

Ummmm...not convincing: London coins 1841 no colon "proof" Roland Harris collection 2009, before that I think Baldwins.

it would be worth even more than a copper one if it really was 60/59!

That's the thing - if a government person explained to Parliament why the information given by Bridgen, Chope was wrong, or put out some official rebuttal with stronger counter-evidence, that would be that. Yet their approach, followed slavishly by the media, is to pretend that this subject does not exist. It's as if they think - if we ignore it, it'll go away. To many of us it seems the politicians have backed themselves into a corner, which is why they're now in full la-la land, as of course they can't admit what a humungous cock-up they've made of it all. I can see them doing the same with Net Zero in years to come. Are they under instruction or have nearly all of them completely lost their marbles?

Yes, back in 2004 DNW had nice examples of all 3 main early proof sets in one catalogue, and all went for £11-20/25K'ish. Where's that time machine!!

Interesting, but calm down. As you advertise it, it's open to enquiry, and my questions are perfectly sensible. I find it strange that the unpaid Chief Executive Officer of a charity lives half a world away, not a normal arrangement, but you've explained it so there we go - questions answered. No problem!

Everyone's tribal to a certain extent, it's part of human nature, the professed exception being certain left-wing white people. I say "professed" because when you see their actions they almost invariably live in other majority white communities. But as an internationalist who says he isn't keen on England, why didn't you choose to stay in the rainbow nation of South Africa as you'd been there for 10 years already? And being an unpaid Chief Executive of a SA charity, wouldn't you have been better to have stayed where you would be most needed, as who is going to pay for your flights over there and back - not a cheap option and hopefully not the charity.

Considering the average age of death from Covid is and always was 82, and the victims almost invariably had various co-morbidities such as obesity, the authorities initial idea of vaccinating the at risk elderly seemed reasonable. The rolling it out to other age groups is incomprehensible though, based on spurious transmission/infection theories for which there has never been any evidence. Pfizer for one never claimed their vaccine had any effect on either transmission or infection, it just mitigated the symptoms. But you wouldn't go and see your granny if you had flu-like symptoms anyway. It's worth seeing Andrew Bridgen (available on his YT channel) empty the Commons last Friday before making some damning observations from the government's own data about the current risk/benefit of continuing the booster programme. An eye opener, but no one debates or debunks what he is saying, which tells the story really.

The weekly Public Health Agency reports were shelved about a year ago, but they were showing the increasing trend that vaccinated people were becoming far more likely to be infected than unvaccinated. The PHA authors were at pains to suggest this might be down to behavioural differences between the two groups, but that was pure speculation, as they couldn't of course admit the other explanation. Perhaps the shelving and the observed trend were connected?

Weren't we told the vaxes were "safe and effective". Wrong on both counts. as soon as Omicron appeared they were of little and rapidly diminishing effectiveness. And I'd love someone to tell me what a "climate change denialist" is and why are they "mad"? It's a flip phrase but I think it means that you question any, and not necessarily all, of the following three points: (1) Is climate change/warming happening? I'll answer that - probably from measurements, but at a much slower rate than all the forecasts from all those experts over the last few decades. And why are we not told of any beneficial effects if it is, like increasing vegetation in colder climes? (2) Is it directly due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 0.031% of the atmosphere to 0.038%? Man produces 3% of CO2 produced annually - the other 97% is produced naturally. And is there any proof for this correlation of increased CO2 to global warming? (3) Is the solution of changing from a reliable, controllable, storable and concentrated energy supply to a weather-dependent, intermittent, uncontrollable and non-storable energy supply the correct one? Especially as the energy use and size of an economy are pretty strongly related? And at present wind and solar contribute from less that 1% to circa 10% of our total energy consumption (ie between <5 and 50% of our electricity consumption). So when the wind doesn't blow in Winter we'll need nuclear provision for all our transport, all our central heating and hot water, all our manufacturing industry and construction industries (which we won't have by then due to too little reliable energy) etc etc. How many nuclear power stations will we need for that, small modular ones or otherwise. And how's that construction plan going at the moment? And after 15-20 years most of these wind and solar devices will need replacing, but we can't recycle them very easily because guess what - that'll require a humungus amount of energy!! So the people who worry about this last point are the mad ones? if you believe in all of the above, shouldn't you be losing sleep over China? - it burnt 300 million extra tons of coal (the biggest CO2 emitter of any fossil fuel to amount of energy produced) last year to bring it's annual consumption to over 3 billion tons of coal. But no one seems to blink an eyelid about that.

As soon as the government message is globalist and not a party political divergence, the BBC are eagerly complicit. Climate change being due to man-made CO2 for instance, all the lunacy of Net Zero, and no debate was allowed on anything that questioned the government narrative on Covid, lockdowns or vaccines. Furthermore the BBC actively got Facebook to close down forums for the vaccine injured as "disinformation". Of which my mother nearly died.

For anyone who thinks the Rwanda deal is doing anything in our favour, it is of course not. So in return for sending healthy young men to Rwanda, in exchange we will get unhealthy, sick, old and young parentless refugees, many emotionally and psychologically damaged, from other African wars that Rwanda now wants to get rid of. So Africans don't want the burden of looking after other Africans - offload them onto Britain then, and get paid handsomely for it. And where are all the Albanians etc are going to go when their obviously spurious asylum claims are rejected in Rwanda? - straight back to their mainly peaceful home countries of course. They aren't going to want to stay in Rwanda! No need for Rwanda to sort them out then. As HD says in the video - no one tells us this. The whole of the media stay quiet. Once again we're only given one side of the story. So why are the Left all up in arms about this? Wouldn't this news show how humanitarian and compassionate the government are, and why doesn't the government parade their virtue over this? Well, because the general public are stupid but not that stupid. I wonder what Michael Rosen thinks. Is he prepared to make a financial contribution to the further burden the NHS is going to be under for this charade?

In my limited experience, "people of difference" also form closed communities. I know of three examples that my and other friends' children would never be invited round to ethnic schoolfriend's houses, despite it happening the other way round of course. A shame.

Where do you start on this? It is straight out of the Communist playbook. That wonderful ideology that killed more people in the 20th century than any other ideology. But it will be different next time, honest! These illegal migrants are granted asylum because our system is broken, and the political will is not there to deport them, hence all that is needed is the "asylum seeker's" word, often given to him by the human rights lawyer. They'll now have a form to fill in, given several weeks to fill it in (so someone else can help them) and it'll be in English, so no pesky interview with an interviewer expecting the person to speak the language from where they claim to be from. It's a farce - no Albanians should be given asylum for instance. They're living in a democratic country not at war. This is written by a Marxist, so it is manifestly dishonest - for example the Jews were German citizens who had lived there for generations and centuries when the plan to send them to Madagascar was made. There is no comparison. They weren't illegally entering Germany, knowing they'd be looked after far better than where they came from. And they were targeted specifically for their race - it's laughable that anyone can take this far Left garbage seriously. And would the Germans have agreed to and obeyed a Madagascan tribunal to rule on whether these people had a right to live in Germany? - if so they'd all have been returned of course as they had every right to live in Germany! As it turned out the Jews would undoubtedly have given their eye tooth to go to Madagascar - because the Nazis were infinitely more terrible than that. Another reason for Gary not to make flip comparisons. Where's Braveman building the death camps then? The Left need to grow up if this is their political weapon. So if police chiefs say the drug supply is now connected to the people who have come here illegally, then they presumably know what they're talking about. How does anyone get faux-outraged by that? But Michael Rosen knows differently - where does he get his inside information that the police chiefs are making it up. It's nonsense. Sweden now has the highest rates of gang crime, violent crime and gun crime in Europe having previously had one of the lowest. But should anyone dare to put their finger on what's causing it, there will be Michael Rosen calling them out as a Nazi. There is always complete denial of reality from the Left.

Meander away - but don't take offense when someone points out that what you are saying is not relevant to the thread. You carry on firing away with your definitions of "conflating" though.