Sylvester

I bought a 20p mule off ebay back in Jan 2009 for about £20, I kind of kick myself because the week before they were only £15! I looked two weeks later to buy another and by that time they were £80+ so I thought, no chance. I want a few more of the mules, but there's no way i'd pay any more than £20 for one!

Ah now there's an idea, next time i'm on the 2p machines I might slip a few halfpennies in, you never know it might just be a nice hook to start off a new collector! Some might think it dishonest to offload an old coin in place of a 2p, but at the end of the day I always walk into those arcades with a bag full of 2ps and I leave without one to my name, so I suppose it all works out!

Ha, I was wondering about that just the other day. The Queen is well into her 80s, so it's not exactly an outside bet that there might be a monarch change on the cards within the next 10 years. What happens with the coin designs I was wondering? Will we just get new obverses? Or will we (like tradition before) have a sweeping change in designs? Will we ever get the rest of Series F banknotes before this happens? If it's going to be five years between each denomination, it could be touch and go! Indeed as the last denomination arrives the £20 will be nearing retirement age!

It may well be something as simple as that, there's no wayto know for sure though!

Exactly, the thrill of the chase. Agreed.

Lower relief coins wear faster? May be that's the reason why coins since 2008 look so bad? Coins with some relief wear on the high points first and foremost, coins with very little wear across everything. Only speculation of course.

I joined briefly in 2005 before rediscovering these joys in 2009, and back then Master JMD was one of the leading lights here (quite a youngster wasn't he?). Whatever happened to the young fellow? Yes he was a lot younger. About 11 or so I think (IIRC) when he joined (about 2003/4), I haven't seen or heard anything from him for a long time. He was here until around 2005/6, maybe longer, but I left for while when I was busy with university and work (+ lost my internet connection for several months), by the time I came back he'd left. As have many others.

Is that so surprising? The redeeming feature that makes the small 10p more interesting is simple, you can get them from change. Whereas the old 10p you're going to actually have to go out and buy them. Since no one actually deals with decimals really on such a die variety basis (certainly no where near the extent as predecimal copper/bronze) it means you have to buy bulk loads of the things off of places like Ebay! The problem here is the vast majority of what you buy will be the commoner types that you won't need, so then you've got to try and get rid of them afterwards. Who is going to want to spend loads and loads of money on decimal coins anyhow? Maybe this will change, but whilst ever the coin collecting community is dominated by generations who have fond memories of the predecimal era (or like myself were born after decimalisation but were brought into the hobby and informed/educated about what to collect by someone who grew up with predecimal) then i'm afriad to say decimal coins will never be appreciated. Only two things will get decimal coins into the foreground, one reaching 2071 when there's no one left who really remembers using predecimal coins or switching to the euro. The beauty of the small 10ps therefore is simply, the wheat costs you very little out put, just 10p here and 10p there and there's a constant supply without having to buy a single thing and you can just spend the chaff.

Which is I think one of the redeeming features of the new designs. Many may not agree with me, but I like the novelty value of having a traditional hereldic design presented in such a modern an innovative way, I also like the fact that if you have one of each denomination you can sit and arrange them to make the full design. Must be the OCD tendencies within, the need to create order out of chaos? Sure maybe they don't live up to some of the great predecimal designs of the past (nothing will beat the work of the Roetiers & Thomas Simon in my opinion anyhow), but they way I see it there's probably little point coming up with great artistic detailed designs for modern circulating coins (sure it'd be great to see!) but the technicalities of modern minting would undermine them completely. Back in the days of gold, silver and copper, you had three metals that were 'soft' and thus they would take designs with relief and detail well, the excellent lustre of all three metals would help to add extra definition to the designs. Today with huge mintages and minting in much harder metals which wear out the dies quicker, the relief has had to be significantly reduced and steel and nickel alloys being much harder mean that smaller finer details are so hard to strike up properly, not to mention the drab greyish lustre. Try minting several thousand George II Young Head crowns in steel and give it a nickel plating, I bet half of the higher details (like his eye) would be missing! This is before we move to classics such as Una and the Lion in Cupronickel anyone?

Ha I remember those days Chris! What ever happened to Oli I wonder? To my mind a few others came later William, Master JMD etc. There may have been others, it was a while ago. Well I always try to keep topics ticking along, in my own unique way.

Entirely, that would be the most practical solution. There is one other point which I think may be overlooked, and it certainly has by the euro and that is the problem of nickel and allergic reactions. See here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel#Toxicity It so happens that the euro coins (or some of them) exceed this safe amount (as probably do our coins, but our coins were issued long before such things were thought about). The case for nickel may not prove a problem as far as alloys go, the nickel being bound in. If you think about cupro-nickel it's 75% Cu and 25% Ni. The problem could be that if the mint use pure nickel to plate the new coins that's got to be in excess of the legal European amount? Anyone with a nickel allergy would probably have issues here. Would the Royal Mint be liable if it did cause a wave of reactions? Just a thought, afterall I am no chemist. The only alternative would be to plate them with cupro-nickel (if possible).

Check the patina on the 1998+ issues it is different to the earlier issues. I hadn't noticed until someone pointed out that was the reason for the complete difference in field wear between the two types. The later coins seem to have their shine almost painted on in a thin layer which is soon impaired. I wonder if they polish the hubs for the dies more on these issues to give them a shiner and more easily destroyed field? It's really annoying, excellent for the mint though because if you want a true BU you've got to buy the set cos you ain't gonna get one in circulation, unless you recieve it straight out of the mint bag it went into. It doesn't seem to affect the copper issues though!

A fortunate accident? Certainly gone in their favour, you'd have to agree. Not so sure any mess up with the new steel 5p, 10p will go in their favour though, especially if it causes headaches to the vending machine industry.

I think i'll just buy the BU set. I can't bear collecting the post-1998 issues from change (particularly the 10p & 50p) because the finish the mint use on the coins becomes scratched and scuffed so quickly, they just don't have nice clean unmarked fields. None of the coins pulled from circulation within their first few days / week could truly be designated UNC anymore (never had that problem with the Maklouf and earlier obverses).

Actually I've had a thought, or rather a prediction, the strike on the 2009s (especially the obverse) is so soft that I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a fair few turning up sans punctuation marks.

I am inclined to think this myself, but when I look at if from another perspective I'm not so sure I am entirely sure what to think. You may well be right, it may well have been an excellent opportunity to garner great interest. However, when you think the mint isn't actually making any profit out of such 'errors' since they aren't packaging them, nor selling them. And their reputation is based upon the final product they deliver, lots of errors are surely bad for business? In reply to Scott, I have to say that it goes back further than 2008, quality seems to have been on the decline (at least on the 20p front) since 2004. The designs still aren't striking up properly, I do wonder how much of this is due to having more detailed designs or whether it's to do with the lower relief. If you note both the obverse and reverse relief of all the denominations have been reduced. Our designs roughly resemble where the USA designs found themselves in c.1994. Spaghetti hair. Look at a 2007 2p and a 2009 2p, note how the design's depth is brought across to the viewer. In 2007 it was through relief (not a lot to be sure, much less than the Machin portrait), look at the 2009 and you'll see the details of depth are brought out more by a lot of extra lines and less by relief, the Queen's portrait is flatter, especially the cheek. Dies can last longer with lower relief, but I also think dies are being used to a much more advanced state of wear, looking at all the stress marks, missing punctuation (caused by blocked dies) and unclear lettering evident on some issues.

I've just looked through a pile of them, appears to be a very slight difference but it is noticeable on all dates. One type has the first 'T' touching the outer edge of the coin, the other has it away from the edge. I'm not so sure if this is an actual die difference though or merely a rotation difference on each blank. Being the shape the coins are any fraction of a mm off to the left or right when the die strikes will affect how the legend is percieved and how close to the edge it is. What makes me think this more than anything is of all the 2008s I've just looked through with the 'T' touching or within a fraction of touching the edge of the coin, on each on it is a different part of the 'T' that is nearest the edge. Some it's the top of the left corner of the T, others it's the left hand side of that corner, Some are exactly on the corner, some are further along the top of the crossbar going towards the middle of the letter. This makes me think it is a rotation difference rather than a die difference. Although I may be wrong!

No and I don't think you'll find one either, I don't think they exist.* From what I remember myself about these arriving in 1992/3. The first that arrived were the wire edge type, I remember putting these to one side, sometime in very late 1992, early 1993 I remember noticing different edge types, so the flat edge ones must have arrived around this time and I put a few of those aside. Both types were undoubtely the between/at type. Later in 1993 the at/betweens arrived (all dated 1992), but who would have put these aside, as the die differences were unknown at the time, I know I didn't! Worse still I later spent all of the other 1992s I'd cherry picked, most were ditched by around 1993 / 1994 I guess, after the novelty had worn off. So I had to buy coins of this type from Chris last year! *Ignore this, I'll leave the above paragraphn because it might come useful for ordering which came first. Looking at the 1992 BU set on ebay, the 10p reverse there shows that it's a 'between' reverse, therefore, I'm presuming the obverse is an 'at'. Although i'd be really funny if the 1992 set contained 'between/between' coins! lol [it shouldn't!]

Here's a link to the full listings for the current 10p varieties, a list I supplied to Tony Clayton some time ago. http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/dec10.html The 2006 type A is actually rarer that 1/200, I've since searched at least another 100 10p coins over the last year in change and i've still not found another, so you're looking at 1/300 and going. Which in my book makes it rarer than the 'dot to dot' 10p. Currently I have found 9 'dot to dot' 1992s which is about 1 per year on average, i found my quota for this year last week. Got an EF one slabbed by CGS UK. I've got 8 others, but quite a few have spots of verdigris i'm afraid. I haven't been finding any 'between/between' 10ps of late. The joys of living in a house with a leaking roof for the past year (now fixed), but it's wiped out most of my base metal holdings. Another reason for me to stick with silver and gold, never had a problem with them going green on me. I actually think that an overlooked rarity (at least in higher grades) is the at/between 1992. Find one in EF if you can!

Well I don't know about you guys but I think these post 2008 issues sure are making modern coins more interesting by far, and i'm not even an error collector, but I shall be on the look out for one of these!

Ha now there's the thing. When I first joined this forum I was 19... I'm now 26, I don't know quite where those years went mind but the strange thing is I now feel younger than I did back then!

Oh, but it has! The standing Britannia is a feature of the "Britannia' series of coins since the late 80s - check out Spink S4281 and S4500 for example. Whether it is as remarkable as the Edward florin would be the subject of a big debate here I'm sure, but I think it is an excellent design. One of the best of the recent designs. I had actually forgotten all about those (as you'd probably surmised ) I actually do really like the design but I don't class any of the Britannia serieses as real coins, so I tend to ignore that they exist. Same with the British trade dollars!

Or at least on a size of coin approximate to the original (where possible). Kinda screwed on the 50p though, nothing was heptagonal before that arrived. Now how about a reissue of the gold florin of Edward III on a £5 coin? You know i'd even buy one of those. Or a half noble on a bimet £2 coin.

Oh I'd love to see a reissue of the Edward VII florin, that was one design sadly cut short by Edward's death. All of his other designs had either been carried forward into Edward's reign from Victoria's (bronze, 3d, 6d & gold), or were carried forward into George V's reign (1/-, 2/6d albeit modified, and the new 6d a beautiful adaptation of the then current shilling design). Sadly the iconic florin was the only design that hadn't been done to death (like the dull wreath 6d) that was discontinued. Actually some modern virtual copies of old coins could be welcome, I always thought the 1989 sovereign issues were very well executed (pity they're not available in bog standard BU, since I don't like proof finish coins, always look a bit like tacky 'cheap bling' to me, especially gold proofs). I'd love to see the 1911 halfcrown reverse reused, a beautiful design, especially with the slightly concave field. Gothic florin £2 coin anyone? Una and the Lion cupro-nickel £5 coin? Britannia reverse 2p? Pistrucci's Geo IV farthing design on the 1p? Quarter guinea design on the 5p?

OMG, not a 1932 or a 1925 I hope?? Actually, it must have been 1992 (not 1991), I can pin point it to that year because I remember my grandfather had just moved house and it wasn't long after he started working in a junk yard. It was on a trip there that I acquired a 1918 florin from a box full of loose coins (it was full of hundreds of predecimal pennies and florins, shillings, 6ds, 3ds etc. that had all been found here there and everywhere). As for the one I spent I can't remember the date exactly but what I do know is that it was one of the post-27 design coins, I remember that well because it was the first one of that design i'd ever seen and I wanted it for my set! I did manage to nag my mother enough that she sent me back on with a Liz II florin hoping to get it swapped, the PO owner checked through the till but it had gone by the time i'd got back. I've always suspected they actually took it out and kept it themselves, I remember them commenting that they hadn't seen one for a long time. In 1993, however, when the florins were withdrawn I stockpiled a few quids worth of old florins, most were George VI, sadly none were silver.