Boomstick

Welcome to the club! I've learnt to check my change after I leave the shop - it's a bit insulting to the cashier when you rifle through your shrapnel in front of them. "it's all there!". I find myself changing notes all the time instead of using the huge amounts of of coinage on my person. Currently looking for an undated 20p, one more £2 design and about 23 Olympic 50p's. The cashier at Tesco looked at me strangely yesterday due to my big grin at him giving me the fencing one!

I also notice on their website that they bought the only Eddie 8 proof set in private hands a couple of years ago for a whopping £1.35m. Is that the record for English coins??

Will, I think you're fighting a losing battle here. All of the silver surfers here would much rather blow any spare 000's on micro varieties of bun pennies than bullion, whilst those of us below, say, 40 have no money - losing jobs, no pay rises, commuting costs going through the roof, families to feed, no pensions etc. Maybe try a hedge fund managers forum??

From what I've picked up during my limited collecting career thus far, The important things seem to be: Top grade stuff will always find a market Nice eye appeal - toning, no dents or scrapes, no verd Larger coins seem to be more popular (sorry you farthing boys) Key dates in a series (eg 1905 Halfcrown) I guess it depends on what you are prepared to spend. Scarborough siege pieces seem to be doing well if you have £50k!

Are there reliable figures for the number of siege coins in existence? If so, can anybody point me to the reference?

I'm an ex-Putneyite, now sadly exiled to the provinces down in Tunbridge Wells by unaffordable housing stock. Perhaps therein lies the reason - Londoners can't afford both somewhere to live and a coin collection?

The BBC website has a quiz on defunct coins on their magazine section, for all you fervent coin-heads. I got 3 out of 7 - the shame!

You would probably need your own oil well. Somebody above mentioned Stags. I had one late nineties/early noughties. Lovely styling and sound superb but required a bottomless pit of money. Nothing was built to last and it began to seriously erode my capital, so sadly had to sell and bought a big brute of a Riley 2 1/2 litre saloon instead. Built like a tank, weighs a ton and a half and very much made to last. Will do nearly the ton but might take 5 miles to stop and at 17 miles a gallon... Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread. I just lit the blue touchpaper and retired! Wouldn't happen to be red, would it??

So there I was last night, at the fortnightly pub quiz with my fellow NCT dads, when in the history round comes up the question "in which year did Queen Victoria die?". A confident smile flickered across my boats boat race and I confidently whispered to the chap with the pen " that'll be 1902". "Are you sure?" enquire the fellow members of The Tired Dads. "Listen" says I, "I'm a numistmatist and they didn't mint Edward VII coins until 1902 - that's a fact." well, they all looked impressed by my knowledge in these matters and we moved onto question 7. I subsequently got a right earful when the answers came out...

The problem with that of course is that you then have to go into the bank and pay back in about £748 of loose change...

I can't really see the point of investing in coins for bullion value, unless you get offered some at a price too good to refuse. Coins grades form a triangle of quality - thick base at the washer end and thin point with Unc's. These are finite and there can only be less of them as time and atrophy progresses. I'll always buy my coins as close to the thin end of the wedge as possible - that way there will hopefully be no shortage of buyers when I come to sell my collection.

Erm and are you trying to tell us something ? And there's me thinking that life was something you went through will you wait for something better to happen. And on a completely different note, I've just had this lovely letter today from Works and Pension telling me I've got to work another nine month before I can get me pension. f~@#ers Think yourself lucky Gary. By the time I get there we'll all be working till 80!

Think yourself lucky Gary. By the time I get there we'll all be working till 80! Erm and are you trying to tell us something ? And there's me thinking that life was something you went through will you wait for something better to happen. And on a completely different note, I've just had this lovely letter today from Works and Pension telling me I've got to work another nine month before I can get me pension. f~@#ers

I couldn't agree more! What you have said captures the whole spirit of it all. When I was 18 I bought an old Jaguar 420G for pennies and stripped the whole thing to pieces in my parents' back garden...lovingly dealing with every aspect of the rebuild was the thing that made that car special. I could afford one now, that is far better condition, and maybe even concours, but I wouldn't have anything like the same love and interest in owning something that has been grafted on by someone else...but many are the flashy classical car owners who go out and buy the best and don't even know what waxoyl is! They're classic car equivalents of the slab collectors, but there is no denying they are out there! Hanging around forums like this, making a few mistakes, battling out the details of a grade, is what makes it so fascinating for me! Restoring a classic car has always been a dream of mine (I even took a welding course a few years back). Unfortunately, the realities of owning a house with a garage in the south east puts it beyond my price range at the moment (that and babies, work, long commute etc.). Maybe one day! Regarding slabbing, boo! I think Toy Story 2 sums up the pros and cons of preservation vs. recreation in my humble opinion!

Interesting...got a couple of hundred quid of 20p's in a jar upstairs - will have to have a rummage! I'll send you one if I find one Coinan.