oldcopper

It's Edward VII's first pattern penny. His only young head! There was a 1901 similarly tooled also smoking which was ex Peck (Feb 1972 SNC).

I heard a good joke on Classic FM a few years back. Yes I know, an unlikely source: Two friends, an Englishman and a Frenchman both own cats. The Englishman's is call "One Two Three" and the Frenchman's "Un Deux Trois". One day, they decide to race their cats against each other over the English Channel - One Two Three starting from Dover, Un Deux Trois from Calais. Whoever's cat gets across the channel first wins. Come the big day, both cats set off, a few hours later One Two Three reached France, but even by the next day there's no sign of Un Deux Trois. The Englishman phones up his friend to find out what happened. Well, Un Deux Trois cat sank.....

I saw this the other day - well done and appreciate them doing it, but as usual the key drawback of slabs (to me) is not mentioned - it's not so much whether you can handle the coin in question, but that you can't enjoy the coin in directly reflected light. So it's much harder to appreciate the brilliance or beautiful multi-coloured toning, say, of an old proof, as you're mostly seeing the light reflection off the plastic which drowns much of that out.

I noticed DNW or the seller didn't bother much with putting the coins the right way up or even in their right pockets. But they did show the empty boxes which must be a first. Still, it obviously worked as each set went for about £200 each - and they're both missing the crown's ribbon shock horror. Strangely, the owner must have had a problem with these. https://www.dnw.co.uk/auctions/catalogue/lot.php?auction_id=598&lot_uid=389951

Never heard of that to be honest - like their search a coin archive from the sound of it, you key in any general info about a type of coin and it comes up with "No lots found". Complete waste of time.

SNC's final issue staggered out at the start of 2014, and it had been getting more infrequent in the couple of years before that. It used to be 6 a year (and every month long ago). The bloke in charge unfortunately had a serious car accident at the time which was the final blow. It's not on Spink's website.

I notice some of these W.W's, including mine (which is better condition than this, say Fine), have a weakly struck FID: It's very unusual for a Royal Mint 19th century copper coin to have such noticeable weakness in the legend like that.

I take it this die got re-used in 1844. Presumably you've got one of those.

I have to say it's a lovely coin, it cost me quite a bit more than £850.

Here's a price rise in that sale: Anne pattern halfpenny P726: £1,800. I sold it in their March 2020 sale for £850. Aaagh..... Someone made a few hundred quid on it.

..as usually found.

Or if you prefer farthings,

Perhaps there's something like a Dulux chart available for slabbers?

Still on the penny thread, anyone interested in the load of completely naturally toned (sarcasm) 1937 proof bronze coming up for auction in Heritage? Someone's chancing their arm....do you want one in bright blue or luridly efflorescent blue, sir?

There's a 1934 lustrous example coming up in the LCA auction. Hard to tell from a photo I suppose but the colour looks reasonably honest:

The 1799 and 1806 copper are known for occasional flat areas in the legends, Peck mentions it. He says the currency proofs don't suffer from it so it must be a facet of production "en masse".

Five? - was there a tokens one as well?

Sorry - it got sent before I'd written anything. I sold a Bramah 25c through Spink last year - nice one, quite lustrous - £440 I think. You don't see many of them around, but not a very exciting coin for me as no-one's worked out the under-figure yet as far as I know.

They've got an Edward VIII 1937 £5 coming up in a month or two - might go for a bit.

Hey, I hope you're not referring to me saying "finest ever" about the 1696 6d! But you are right about slabbing grades being used to spin the line of "finest known", whereas they mean - "the highest numerical grade assigned to the small cross-section of a certain variety that has been slabbed, as judged, in possibly only a few seconds, by a grader or graders of unknown experience and ability". As often noted, slabbing works better for more modern coins (19th and 20th century coins), but certainly for even modern copper and bronze proofs especially, I suspect or know a fair degree of "enhancement" ie colourisation, that goes on. Though I suppose if you keep it in the slab, it will retain its value, so long as the slabbers don't allow too many through. Absolutely agree that people should look at as many examples of a coin they're interested in; go back through old catalogues with lots of illustrations or on the internet (HA, Noble numismatics, DNW, London Coins, Mark Rasmussen, Sixbid archives etc), see how they're graded and priced (for the time), then compare it to the example you're interested in. This also shows how rare or common it is, as in how many comparable or better ones you can find.

I thought that 1696 2nd bust sixpence in the Spink auction was possibly the finest known for the earlier date.

Some of these coins were one-offs to be fair, the last James II plume shilling on the market that I know of was Spink SNC in the early 80's - £2,500 for a coin in only fair condition if I remember rightly. There might have been another sale since but none I know of. "Conceivably the finest known" is not the case for the 1700 plumes 6d - perhaps "finest known in commerce" might be more accurate, as being a duplicate of the BM's, the BM 's retained one would be better and the Ashmolean has a better one as well:

The lack of overheads for Spink is a factor as well - they don't produce a catalogue, unless it's a special collection, so they can bang out anything on the Internet without much effort. The Viles stuff would never have made it in the catalogue only days. It was more akin to DNW's multiple lots section or "Collector's Corner" in the old SNC; often single figure prices, and mainly lower-grade.

Nothing for me. That Churchill satin crown at $9,500 (= about £9,500 after extras) - not bad for 10 minutes work on the surfaces with some blue tinge. Oh, what a cynic - not that that is my area of expertise! Even that Soviet medal from the late 80's which looked like something out of a toy box circa 1960 made $15,000 hammer. That James II halfcrown also caught my eye - an excellent example of the type, almost full detail. Needless to say, I dropped out very early in the bidding. The fact that Greg Edmonds spent an eternity on many of the lots unfortunately seemed to work in his favour. 45-50 lots/hour is excruciating and some fingers unfortunately must have lost patience, anything to move him on!