Rob

The Nicholson P565 went through LCA in both Nov. 2004 and June 2005 @ £2K and £2500 hammer respectively. It went to Japan on the second occasion, which is where I remember that from, and the previous November's sale had Stone's collection. I now remember why I didn't go for the W&M at both sales. Stone's sale in 2004 had a lot of rarities that commanded my attention including the 1719 grained edge 1st issue 1/2d (Peter Jackson had bought Nicholson's, but still bid against me in the room) and I picked up my 1734/3 halfpenny, which despite only a bit better than VF-gVF is still a full grade higher than the few others I've seen. It was a case of being spoilt for choice. Included in a few purchases at the second sale there were a couple of 1947 proof shillings which I wanted, and a 1673 halfpenny slabbed NGC MS65, which was obviously a 1675/3 in hand without magnification and would be a sensible replacement for my previously PCGS MS64 slabbed 1673 (also 5/3). Having waited for the 1673, I picked it up at opening bid , so sold the 1675/3 and replaced it with the new one, only to discover later that the new 1675/3 was in fact 1675/3/2. I never got round to replacing the 5/3. In addition to these three, I eventually ended up with a proof 1957 halfpenny, Nicholson's P607 and half a dozen others from the collection, a Weyl 1887 tin halfpenny, a few Vicky shillings and halfpennies and several hammered shillings in the space of a few days. Given sufficient liquidity I could have happily spent 10 or 20 times the amount considering the rarities on offer at that time, with both the LCA sale and Goldberg's Cheshire Collection up for grabs on successive weekends. Prices then look so much more affordable from today's perspective.

In that case I was thinking of something else going to Japan.

I remember that. I made a point of not bidding. I should have gone for the Nicholson coin, but I vaguely recall that went to Japan in Stone's LCA sale. Might be wrong though.

I think it is safe to say I couldn't live with that. It's like virtually every other rarity when it comes to regular currency coins. Once the variety is documented, a handful appear in reasonably quick time.

no, yours is the 2006 reprint

I've got a couple copies of Freeman available. 1970 1st ed. and 1985 2nd ed., both good clean copies with minimal marks to the dust jackets. £15 & £20 delivered respectively if anyone is interested.

I just get a message saying this page is reserved for future use.

Eeee. That's a bargain. Cheaper than the £1-£6 they were selling for in Cuff (1854)

Vat is payable on the total cost of the imported package, i.e cost of item plus postage as well. I presume that makes up the difference, as £1.50-1.60 x 5 is £7.50-£8 which could be about right for a package depending on the service used. The exchange rate used will depend on the prevailing rate on the day, which might be the post office's own for currency, or could be the financial market's rate, or could be the buy or sell rate for someone else. It's not going to be a million miles away, so not really an issue. There is a cheaper solution to these clearance fees which is to book the import VAT at the point of purchase using an integrated ordering system, just as ebay adds a tax charge onto sales to certain US states. Once that's done, there is no hassle with having to clear a parcel manually. As a business, it's far preferential to have a system which eliminates human involvement wherever possible because the cost of putting bums on seats is significant.

They were producing DEI GRATIA obverses for all the silver in 1695. Probably just a case of someone forgetting the denomination they were engraving. A date of 1695 could mean as late as March, in which case you were only 5 months prior to the start of the recoinage. The decision to do this was made in 1695, so were they making dies in advance of the new mints opening as soon as the law was passed? Again, just forgetting what you were making.

£450

Collecting a specific series,date run, or anything that the coin in question ticked a box and I would be unlikely to find another would mean I wouldn't sell it, though might sell separately to a different person than the whole collection was consigned to when sold. This only really affects collections that are specialist in nature, because a generalist collection could always find an alternative to fill the gap.

I think the main problem they had in 1859 was flan lamination when using bronze blanks, with several varieties of 1859 decimal patterns suffering from this. The 1/20th shilling P1981 (F686) is only known with a laminating flan according to Freeman. My own example is laminated as expected and so is the F689 in my possession, albeit with a known corpus of 1. The list is not exhaustive, as I have seen others with this problem too. Whether this is down to alloy ratios, force used in striking, blank preparation or flan thickness, or a combination of all these things is uncertain, but lamination was certainly an issue on the thinner flans. The thicker flans such as the P2000 (F706A) or P2002 (F710) do not appear to suffer from this problem.

So how many die pairs for the 1860/59? If only the one, I doubt it is possible to infer much at all as you have no means of comparing possible variables.