Sylvester

You know it could turn out to be quite ironic, as people will actively choose to scrap the 1967s over all other dates. They could actually become scarcer in 200 years time. The same with 1964 US silver, it's always the first choice to go to the melting pot. Whereas scarcer dates will generally be kept, regardless of their condition.

I can imagine Gary, proofs must be even worse to crack out, one mark on the surface and it's all over.

Ha cracking out coins from slabs is always a nerve racking experience. I have successfully liberated a few using the g-clamp method where you apply pressure until the slab cracks. The practice go with the Lincoln cent was a walk in the park, cracking out an Joseph II 2 ducat coin was not so pleasant, but it came out unscathed.

This is an interesting discussion because as noted demand is everything. Take the 1934 crown (around 900 were struck) and because of their high demand they will cost you several thousand each. Take 1737 half guineas, about 10 survive and yet they're a few hundred cheaper. One is truly rarer than the other but collector demand makes the difference.

I agree.

I toyed with putting 1972 but went against it, I always presumed (and maybe wrongly since i've never seen mintage figures and i'm thinking common sense here, which doesn't always prevail) that the 1972 proof sets would have been produced in greater quantity than other 70s proof sets (1970 excepted!) due to the fact that no 1972 coins were struck for circulation, thus more demand for the sets? Birthdays and whatnot... just a thought.

This has happened quite a lot actually over the years, unknown varieties turning up out of the midsts of time only to be recognised and then swiftly disappearing back into the ether never to see the light of day again. It could be that many are in low grade and simply misattributed and the error isn't corrected for sometime and thus you don't get any articles correcting the previous one. Then again there have been rare coins identified and only to gone walkies and never be seen again. Several early milled and an Anglo-Saxon spring to mind. In more modern times however, you would hope that accidental misattributing is corrected.

Not necessarily, it may be the case that dies were prepared but in the event were not used. This makes overdates more likely, why throw away perfectly good unused dies just because the year is wrong? Simple solution... change the year.

Sorry Scott, I should have said, of the list of coins I gave above those are all dates when those coins were NOT released into circulation, they ONLY exist in the mint sets (you may find an escapee in circulation if you're lucky). My point was, if you want rarer modern issues (ignoring commemoratives like fivers etc.) then years where that denomination was only released in a mint set is a good place to start. e.g 1992 20p (either variety) total in mint sets + total in proof sets + total in circulation = total mintage however; 1993 5p total in mint sets + total in proof sets = total mintage better still; 1974 5p total in proof sets = total mintage (because there were no mint sets and none released for circulation, so the mintage is very much smaller, comparatively speaking).

Ah but what you have to consider with Edward I's era, okay so they didn't have as much use of credit and no physical forms of money as we're used to today, so coins in the physical form were required. On the other hand though the population was a lot smaller than it was in later centuries (admittedly it soon got much, much smaller after the winter plague outbreak of 1348/9), but futhermore of that smaller population, very few of them probably dealt first hand with money (or so historians and numismatists have been arguing for years), England in the middle ages was mostly a bartering society (at least in the lower orders, peasants, farming hands etc.) especially in rural areas (hence why the church taxes were call 'first fruits and tenths'... because they were paided in farmed produce, animals or fruits, vegetables, wheat, bread etc.) In the cities with guilds that's where the money was mostly used, trade with Flanders/Antwerp. Hence the many, many continental imitation pieces of English silver pennies (and later gold nobles too). All I can say is we did a lot of trade! (English coins left England readily and were accepted abroad gladly because they were of high grade silver, unlike much of Europe where debasement was an ongoing issue).

I presume so. Of course I was just considering coins that could be found in circulation (excluding mint sets). If you did want to included mint set coins, then it's pretty obvious that years where coins were only issued in the mint sets are automatically scarcer. The 'silver' of the 1982, 1983, 1984 years and all the 10ps and 50ps from the 1986-1991 era. Some individual coins that spring to mind; 1984 halfpennies 1986 20p 1992 2p bronze 1992 1p bronze 1993 10p 1993 5p 1999 pound 1999 10p Also look out for bronze or copper plated steel versions of 1998 twopences (1999 proofs are bronze too).

I think there is a lot of truth in this. I'm always amazed when it's gold coins minted in such huge numbers though. It's a heck of a lot of staters indeed! But you also have to consider that there was no credit or paper currency alongside them. In the 17th and 18th centuries though the credit system and paper currency was far more organised and developed than many people think, Mayhew in his book on the History of Sterling said that only about 25% of the country's money (as memory suggests to me) was in coin form in the mid-1700s. When it comes to silver coinage though there's always been a very large output because afterall until 1816 Britain wasn't officially on the gold standard, we relied more on silver for most of the period before 1750, it was only the mass silver shortage of the late 1700s that drove us towards pinning everything on gold. Look at Edward I's reign how many million silver pennies were produced? How many tens or maybe hundreds of thousands still survive?

Surely anything else is purely decoration, so deserves to be included with medals? Yeah! As a part-time hammered coin collector though my biases are well known.

Without looking I believe some of the old 50ps had fairly low mintages. 1985?

Since you mention survival rates of predecimal coins Here's a little fact that always totally staggers me; the 1774 mintage of guineas and half guineas was supplied by melting down 20 million worn William III and Anne coins, yes 20 million! That's just a staggering amount, I mean if we were talking copper or lower silver like tanners and bobs I could believe it, but high value gold coins were not exactly minted in huge numbers. 20 million probably was the majority of William and Anne gold coins struck throughout their entire reigns. In 1774 of course silver was very hard to come by so gold and copper had to fill to void, hence the high mintage. But just consider that 20 million Anne/William gold coins went in 1774, how many more got melted in the coin shortages of the 1780s-1810s? And how many more were lost in the great recoinage of 1816? How few must survive? And yet comparably Queen Anne gold isn't greatly more expensive than George III gold of the 1770s as one might expect it to be. Although the Victorians' penchant for vandalism of George III gold might have something to do with this, and may go some way to levelling the playing field so to speak.

Well my rule was always; 'if it was made with the purpose of spending first and foremost in mind then collect it'. Which rules out pretty much everything (lol ), no proofs, no commems, heck no BU sets... (okay so i occasionally break my number one rule and buy BU sets) but for the most part the rule has served me well for the past ten years. Can't beat proper circ. coins in my book, they've got far more character.

Well as a test I decided to send some of my coins off for slabbing at CGS (I'm not usually a big slabbing fan, but I like the idea of their archival photo service and I was considering whether or not to send some of my rarer and more expensive pieces off for slabbing for that reason). So the test pieces, which also nicely deals with rarer current coins that need some protection from the environment. I'm delighted with this one (I don't have it in hand yet but from the tracking system, it's been given an EF65, I had graded the piece as EF myself, so it's nice to know they grade in the same ball park as me!) A dot to dot '92.

Actually the bottom serifs on the '1's look quite different. Look at the one on the left, the serif appears to slope up on the left to meet the 1, whereas on the other one the lower serif is flat and at right angles to the 1.

It's pretty straight forward actually, simply register a membership (free), print off a submission form and fill in the details required, coin, date, type, remarks, value etc. Pick from a number of possible service types. The cheapest if 9.99, archival with photos is about 11.50 (forgive my lack of pound signs, cos that button's broke on my keyboard!), obviously it's kinda useful to send coins that have a value that's higher than 9.99! For the purposes of this though I decided I'd rather risk losing or being dissatisfied with a more 'common' and cheaper coin than say an Early Milled coin in the post. I haven't received the slab in hand yet so I can comment upon the quality of that just yet.

Well here's a complex discussion indeed! First gold coins, from half sovereign up to 5 pound, all are still legal tender for their original value. Crowns as far as I'm aware were never demonetised. Some other denominations, according to the Coincraft Catalogue, in 1971 the following coins were ratified as having legal tender status after decimalisation day; Double Florin - as 20p Florin - as 10p Shilling - as 5p Sixpence - as 2 1/2p Silver Threepences - as 3p (yes 3p). Maundy - all revalued to decimal pence I'm not sure if the groat was included or not, if it was ever actually demonetised. With regards to the silver threepences, it was simply the inability to distinguish between maundy types and currency issues that led to all threepences after c.1845 being legal tender. Maundy currency is only legal tender as far back as George IV I believe. The obvious question for me though is does this 'legal' tender status only refer to wreath reverse threepences, or do the acorn and shield types of Geo V and VI count also? Since sixpences, shillings and florins have all been demonetised it means that the following coins are all that are left of the pre-decimal era; Five Pounds, Two Pounds, Sovereign, Half Sovereign, Crown, Double Florin, Silver Threepences and Maundy. One can't help noticing the irony in the fact that the double florin has managed to outlast most of it's stablemates. I suspect groats may be legal tender too.

It's the usual problem with these coins; either the portrait is strong but the legends are badly struck or worse still clipped, or the legends are strong but the portrait is weak. Finding coins with good portrait, good legends that haven't been clipped is the Holy Grail of the Tudor era.

I'm seeing a lot of 1997s for most denominations actually. I know they've always been pretty well represented but there's a lot of only lightly circulated 1997s turning up.

Don't clean it! Cleaning it will reduce the value. Gradewise, well there's still a bit of detail left in the dress, the legends are on the whole fairly crisp, especially the reverse. Taking the scratches into account, i'd be tempted to go for a GF.

I've had about a dozen of the old style 2008 10ps, maybe there's a localised element to how the coins are distributed! There seems to be quite a few round these parts. But I haven't seen any old style 2008 50ps though.

Off centre? Errors really isn't my area. I've seen a handful exhibiting this.