Madness

Ah - I'm an idiot! They are three separate variants: a. dot/no-hearts; b. no-dot/no-hearts and c. dot/hearts. How many manufacturers of this coin were there? Would this account for the differences? If only one manufacturer, did they mix and match obverse and reverse dies randomly? For example, might one expect to find a coin with the obverse of b (above) and the reverse of (c)? Thanks!

A thought that before learning to spot a fake I'd start to carefully examine the characteristics of the real deal. Found an auction house website and examined images of VF & EF 1787 shillings. Here are images of the obverse of the first three examples I saw: Yep - There are two variants: The dot over the wreath and the dot not over the wreath. However, the position of the text is slightly different between all three. Check out where the last "I" of "III" ends and the "D" of "Dei" begins. Is one of these non-genuine? Were there different dies with different text positions? Similarly, I examined the reverse of each of the coins: The dot between "F" and "D" at the top of the coin in example two is lower than in the other two. Incidentally, this is the non-dot coin. Is this typical of this variant? Furthermore, re text "A.T.ET.E.", there is no evidence of the dot before and after "ET" in the first example. Is this wear? A variant? It's going to be hard to try and spot fakes without knowing everything that's within the range of acknowledged, acceptable variation and their acceptable combinations! I have much learning to do.

Thanks all for your words of welcome! @copper123 "The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins" is next on my to-buy list. Thanks for the suggestion. @PWA 1967 I'm an Australian living about five hours drive away from Brisbane and six hours drive away from Sydney, the two closest capitals. The rural town I live in unfortunately doesn't have any coin fairs. For fun, most people here drink beer, drive utes in a manner-unbecoming-a-gentleman and shoot pigs, often at the same time. @DrLarry Well deduced! BTW - great to be in the company of fellow loonies. I'll certainly be looking into the fake-coin shenanigans. Being in Australia, I don't think eBay and PP users have the same protections as in the UK. Will certainly look into it if the coin happens to be a dud (or duddish). Here's the eBay listing. The coin seems unnaturally shiny. Will have to wait for it to arrive to see what's going on. Will post photos when they arrive. Without a doubt they will be grainy and out of focus. How do you chaps take such cool photos, out of interest?