Rob

10 days old, but another gem from Darth Putin Day 250 of my 3 day war. My army advances backwards and I'm losing all my warships in a land war to a country that doesn't have a navy while my air force fires at Europe's largest country and misses it, hitting one next door. I remain a master strategist.

Putin wanted to know if Zelensky was still alive... Zelensky himself decided to send Putin a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game. Putin opened the letter which appeared to contain a single line of a coded message. 370HSSV-0773H Putin was baffled, so he emailed it to Lukashenko, and his aides had no idea either, so they sent it to the KGB. No one could solve it at the KGB, so it went to the CIA, then to NSA. With no clue as to the meaning. The FBI finally asked the Australian Military for help. Within a few seconds they called back with this message: “Tell that Neanderthal Putin he’s holding the message upside down." .

Just went to the post office to send out an order and used stamps as close to the value as I could get. Special delivery is £6.85, so I used 7x1st and paid the extra 20p. This has added at least 1/2 a minute to the processing time because the guy has to count them, get the calculator and then work out how much more is due. Total waste of time. Given I have hundreds of stamps here, at least I can use them up in fairly short order as it's also 10x2nd for a special delivery and only 5p short. But it still takes the guy behind the counter the same time to process it, meaning I am going to waste approximately 13 minutes of his and my time in the coming days.

It'll probably be Murdoch 213 which was given as ex Capt. Parr, Marshall, Addington and Montagu. It's not the Duveen coin (P1111), ex Wertheimer and Farouk that's listed by Peck, as that was VF and a bit worn from the images. Picture of the reverse would have helped, but there's only 3 types likely based on Peck - KP14, KP15 & R56

There is a trade-off here. Saves heating the room.

Just spent the week walking in the Lakes. To put things into context, the owner of the B&B we stayed said he is going to shut up shop shortly for the winter and not reopen until March so that he doesn't have to heat the house. His heating bill is increasing 4-fold to £22K on a turnover of 60K, so it may be cost effective for them to move into rented accommodation for the winter months. In contrast, my supplier has just realised that we spend less than average on energy and reduced the monthly payments. We have always turned off the lights when not required, done full washing loads, used the clothes line rather than the dryer wherever possible, only heated the rooms we use, turned off things rather than leaving on standby etc. Judging by the claims of some people, I suspect there hasn't been a lot of attention to consumption in the past.

Not as bad as the programmes that spend the first minute or two after every advert break summarising what happened 10 minutes previously. Useful content of an hour long programme? 25-30 minutes, if you're lucky.

Posted on twitter by someone calling themselves Darth Putin, with the caption met to discuss attack on Crimean bridge.

He was at Birmingham at the weekend and Huddersfield a fortnight earlier, so yes he is.

He hasn't stopped since the 24th Feb. Maybe the bridge strike was a reprisal for the 11 killed in the missile strikes on Zaporizhzhia the day before............or maybe today was just another day demonstrating Russian SOP. The most effective solution remains shipping body bags back to Moscow and St. Petersburg - in industrial quantities. It's the only thing that is going to make the general populace revolt. Hopefully they will deploy the recent conscripts in time for winter, as the system won't provide them with essentials.

Methinks you should have attended

That's only good if it is the full story. 105% might leave them with 15% of the buyers premium, but in the case of Heritage at least you have to get the coins slabbed. Offset that against the 105% and it will reduce. If the slabbing is arranged by Heritage, then I wouldn't be surprised if palms are greased somewhere along the lines. It might turn out to be no better than a sale where the consignor is given or negotiates zero commission, which happens on occasion with the right material.

Is the toning greenish? Someone bought me a box of mainly G5 silver that was was packed in lamb's wool and hadn't been looked at for many years. The result was a beautifully toned selection of coins, all of which had a green tone - presumably from the oils in the wool. Green is not a particularly common colour IMO, so wonder if the same applies.

Latest Heritage sale has a 65 with an opening price of $1K. Silly prices, but if someone is prepared to spend that, it isn't up to the vendor to dampen the market. At the end of the day, it might feel like a night out at the Comedy Store, but does provide a substantial amount of free entertainment - the price of which can't go any lower.

The writing at the top of the envelope says specimens known to us

Hello stranger. CDC is Colin Cooke's initials.

Another popular reference is British Commonwealth Coins by Remick, James, Dowle & Finn if you can find one. 3rd edition was published in 1971. I don't think you will find anything to cover the modern stuff apart from Krause due to the diarrhoeic output of modern commemoratives. You are unlikely to find cheap useful reference books as the specialist volumes are usually out of print and were never produced in great numbers anyway. A few pounds if really fortunate, but frequently tens of pounds or even hundreds.

Enforced dieting due to rationing is a good bet. O/w I was going to say the onset of wholesale indulgence in fast food in the 70s and 80s following an explosion of outlets, as it coincided with a large uptick in general affluence leading to more car use, i.e. less exercise by the general public. An increasingly academic curriculum in schools resulted in less physical activity across all age ranges, and by the end of the 80s, computers and games were becoming mainstream which compounded the inactivity.

This Commonwealth halfpenny has quite a distinctive profile which might lend itself to 3 equal cuts with a curved profile, plus a bit extra, except there is no spur at 12 o'clock on the English side. The mm.1 has 2 short and 2 longer sections with a bigger discrepancy than those above.

Verdigris - environmental damage, no grade assigned

They already do - it comes up R or B and lands on an arbitrary number. Pf. Who would have thought it?

The copper Wiener was a case of this. Slabbed 66 despite a rim nick and a couple spots. My copper example is as struck and vastly superior to that.

The Weyl pattern, lot 249

Not guilty