Rob

Prescient and well worth listening to. https://twitter.com/Nturfknbsn/status/1599865377164779521

The Lauer factory was flattened by the RAF and as far as I'm aware the records lost

Russians who want their snow cleared quickly this winter can just write "no to war" in it.

She was not amused on many occasions. The 12 jubilee head pattern halfcrowns dated 1884 bear testament to that. That bust took 3 years to be acceptable, only to be superseded 6 years later. I don't think she liked it from the beginning, as the 1888 and 1890 pattern crowns were the first incarnation of the eventually adopted veiled head bust.

Peck was definitely not mainstream literature for the masses. At the time the second edition was printed, you were looking at around a fiver for a book. The same price as Seaby's were asking for a gFine Elizabeth I milled 3d or an EF Chas.II 2d. Colin Cooke once said to me that many of his customers didn't have reference books, and a good number didn't even have a copy of Spink/Seaby. The reluctance to 'waste' money on useful books is an age old problem. If you rely on CMV or whatever, coverage of varieties is a bit varied, with some pennies and milled coinage listed, but Civil War coins and hammered coins are not. Charles I Oxford halfcrowns for example are listed as from £350 Fine and £975 VF. That's it, one line to cover all varieties for everything. 100 years ago, Morrieson listed 102 varieties of Oxford halfcrowns in his BNJ article and that number is now larger. The same applies for all hammered coinage. Before I refocused the collection in 2008 I had a list of over 2200 halfpenny varieties documented or observed and over 1500 shillings, but that is hardly mainstream interest level. At that level, any discussion rapidly leads to the eyes glazing over and the shutters coming down. I suppose these days it is the internet that has become the equal to the written word and made the information available to a wider audience as it is searchable.

Same applies. Still a recent phenomenon. A fraction of a mm difference in character size or spacing isn't an in your face thing that people who only want an example or two of a type are likely to notice. Variety collection is almost exclusively driven by literature, not from a desire to do the basic research. Nerds in every field have always been the exception to the masses, but until pen is put to paper, their research is shared only by a few interested people that bounce ideas off each other. They are the only people likely to have a big enough database of examples.

Supply and demand. He has one available and none of you need one. It's a niche product. 10 years ago there was virtually no mention or discussion of wide and narrow dates, and I would suggest that demand is determined by the number of specialists rather than the average collector. If the general references used by the masses don't include these as varieties, then people are not aware.

Doesn't look like it. 8/6 is quite obvious.

There's no reason to assume that the average punter knows what he or she is selling. Every day I am asked if I want to buy coins, but when I ask what they have, the face goes blank. Yesterday I was offered a selection of ancient coins, including a 1917 penny and an 1896 penny - both of which you could read the date according to the vendor. The truth is, that most people neither know nor care what they have over and above it must be worth something, and if it's a hundred years old it must be worth a lot. You also have to consider the number of pennies needed to be checked on average for a rarity to appear. Under duress from she who must be obeyed to reduce the amount of my crap that fills every room in the house, I've just sifted through 50kgs of bronze to weigh in and didn't find a single one. OK, I was only looking for F164A, 1903 open 3, 1922/7 and any Victoria VF or better in the case of pennies, but even that small number of dates was a pretty tedious exercise.

Although there are examples of clashed dies in all reigns for milled coinage, the numbers really seem to increase in the Victorian era (possibly due to a large increase in production). But somewhat intriguingly, they drop off significantly in the 1880s. In fact, I can't remember seeing more than the occasional piece from the last 120 years or more. I wonder if this is connected to the refurbishment of the mint in 1882? At that point, the old Soho equipment installed in 1815 was replaced. So 30 years down the line, perhaps the mechanism for introducing the blank became temperamental? It would be useful to know when Boulton stopped making coin presses, as this may have had implications for repairs and replacement parts. Quality example whatever.

thanks

The reverse has a flaw through the 1st N

The different place is noted in section 4 of Gouby's Specialist edition, the 3rd line of die pairs D+d. Whilst this isn't V over inverted A, I'd say the signature is over 50% off the base of the bust as opposed to less than 50% which I would classify as on the bust - hence the question. But I guess this could just be die wear/fill? Otherwise there doesn't look to be anything out the ordinary.

Losing the will to live here. For 1860, J & JA are given as sign on cape and JB as sign on cape away from edge. It's obviously not very important as it isn't illustrated, but please could someone give me a clue what the difference looks like given all are supposedly the same obverse D. Next question - what is special about the four repairs to Jd, Je, Jh and Jk which caused Gouby to list them? These are just a few examples amongst many of legend repairs, so what sets them apart? e.g. this thing here has repairs to CIDBRITRF&D, with the first T of BRITT partially filled, and the number of F10s produced dictates there will be many examples of repairs, to the extent that it's questionable whether they are worth recording as varieties for the general collector unless doing an in-depth die study. Ta.

More like a children's book of anatomy required, with a particularly large section on asses and elbows.