Peckris 2

Welcome to the forums VR It will be good to hear your collecting experiences and see what treasures you locate. The book on grading English coins in the banner ad above is well worth it as a starting point.

If the 1938 is in high grade it's quite scarce. But still only a few £. There's also a couple of scarce varieties of the 1953, but you need to know your onions to spot them.

Ouch!!

I'm going back quite a way - before Chris took over and they were still the A5 glossy landscape mode blue and white covers..

You want hard evidence?

The mintages used to be in CCGB, weren't they? IIRC they were in the upper tens of thousands?

My thought is that ?most? of them were caused by excessive rubbing by over-enthusiastic owners. Grade wasn't a major issue back then anyway. The one you illustrate may have been carried around in ignorance in someone's wallet or pocket. Perhaps there was the odd shopkeeper who would take one? Though considering the total mintage was a few thousand most people wouldn't have seen one.

Think of a number...

Beautiful token.

not Yet..

I'd see no reason to strike proofs - the 1927 was a proof and popular, which was why they struck 1928-36 as limited edition specimens for collectors in lower numbers by far than the 27 proofs. In other words, they'd done the proof already and in a quantity that nearly amounted to the total subsequent issue of wreaths. There were no currency wreath crowns.

Not a hard bid?

It's like the TARDIS in reverse.

Nice work, Chris

It does appear from the big difference in colour (picture 3) that it's been struck on the wrong planchet. I would say it's a curio worth keeping, but there are collectors for such things. A letter from the Mint confirming it's a genuine 20p but struck on the wrong blank, would help a lot if you decided to risk it on eBay.

Register as a member and we'll say "hello"

At least they have a sensayuma!

It's 1911 !!

That's fascinating - I didn't know of all those 3d trials. Does illustration 5 show a brass or silver 3d? If silver, the thrift plant was ditched in favour of the 'ring pull' design which can be seen on the proofs (the 6d had the same motif). It's quite telling the pressure on the Mint designers - even after continuing with the GeoV coins dated 1936, they still seem to have been forced by deadlines to recycle many of the Edward designs for Geo VI - the bronze, florin and shillings; and even the halfcrown was only modified.

Good luck - it appears to be the "squashed-in-a-vice school of bad photography"

Really? It looks ok to me.

Probably - no, certainly - why trade tokens were struck so widely.

One of the reasons for those fakes & evasions was the drastic shortage of small change - it wasn't all about making a fast buck. (Though I'm sure some of it was).

The best part is the "3 available" !!!

Agreed - the portrait looks too big and Britannia too small for a genuine one.