JLS

A new acquisition - I've always loved the legends on this token. The story is that Bladud, decendent of Aeneas' companion Brutus, was a leper who kept a herd of leprous pigs, and could not become king of the Britons because of his leprosy. However, the pigs were miraculously cured by bathing in the waters of the Bath spring, as was Bladud, who returned to found the city after his coronation. To me, the token is conservatively VF+ but with a big patch on lustre on the bottom half of the obverse which I haven't captured very successfully in my photos.

Provenance is pretty important to me as I collect the unofficial farthing series. In particular, I'm prepared to pay a lot more for examples in the Scottish series if its a plate coin in D&H, and in the English series happy to pay a premium for pieces from the Cokayne, Allen, Brodie collections etc. With very common tokens it can be more fun to own a mediocre piece with provenance going back to 1905 than an overpriced minty one. Many of the rare tokens in the series only exist in poor grade, think VG or Fine at best, so when selecting an example for a collection often there's little choice with respect to condition, and therefore an example with good provenance is preferable to me. I like buying 18th century tokens with inked in collector's numbers, because I don't really consider this "damage" even the provenance is untraceable at the moment. They may hold interesting provenance information accessible in the future, if only to future generations of collectors.

Not listed in D&H, Withers etc. In lead - of Scottish origin, likely from the NW. Obverse: JENNAT FRUIT SHOP in two curved lines Reverse: TEA DEALER

Not a detector find as far as I know. No tell-tale marks on the edge either, although I imagine the manufacture was similar to that of a cloth seal - squeezed rather than struck ! Would be interested to see photos of your bag seals if you've taken any; I have a few 18th century English ones but nothing with this style of lettering which is fairly distinctive for Scottish tokens of the late 18th century/early 19th century.

PM'd.

Someone has to have an odd 200,000 Kew gardens 50 pences somewhere....

Box...hedge ?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321547961434 What's up with this chancer ? Not a rare coin in mint state, even with the silly slabbed grade I can't imagine it's worth more than around £100. The odd thing about the seller is that they have some reasonably good quality coins, including an uncirculated George II halfpenny, although all in slabs with silly prices.

The thing about early hammered prices is that they were a lot higher relative to milled issues and later hammered coins back in the 1970s. If you look at the Seaby prices for the rarer Norman issues they’ve not gone up much since then once inflation is figured in. Definitely more expensive now than ten years ago but playing catch-up.

Yeah - for early milled, Fine coins have done perfectly well. I have a good group of pre-1816 coins I bought as a teenager (c. 2005 - 10) at retail prices, all in the best grade I could afford at the time (mostly VG to aVF), and most would be a steal in today's market, with the exception of the 1689/1690 halfcrown varieties which were probably overpriced in lower grades back then. The price rises for some of the copper seems absurd - doesn't seem to be possible to get a decent Charles II halfpenny for less than around £200 now-days, despite what the Spink prices suggest. The token market is also different. Common 18th century halfpennies which were only worth a few quid in low grades ten years ago now go for £5 - 10 on eBay easily. With my current collections I try not to settle for anything less than VF+ coins/tokens for common issues. With rarities, anything goes.

I have a bit of a sideline collection right now of commercial countermarks on 19th century coinage. As well as all the usual Pears Soap and Lloyd's newspaper ones there are quite a few which are hard to identify. Anyone got any clues on this one ? The B-B in a triangle is pretty distinctive but I'm struggling to place it myself.

I'd expect the Royal Mint Museum and the British museum will end up with some... Given how common mint sports etc. are I imagine there are also quite a few in the possession of mint workers...

Probably - the question is from where ! The lettering style looks late 18th century or early 19th century to me but otherwise there don't seem to be many clues...

I think longer auction times (a month ?) would be essential in an eBay competitor site in the early days in order to drive up viewership. Another thing which could be really advantageous to let everyone know about a new site would be if listings were indexed by Numisbids - they do include some auctions with lots of low value lots (e.g. WCN's weekly auctions), so it may be possible without compromising too much on seller fees. A really good category tree to allow easy sorting of lots could then be available through the Numisbids interface. I do think something an alternative wouldn't be able to beat eBay on is the attractiveness of the £1 fixed fee listings for valuable items - especially with gold coins of relatively low numismatic value, there are few better sales options. Having said that, this isn't available to business sellers and so if the focus was attracting dealers who wanted to part with excess stock etc. this wouldn't necessarily be an issue.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1877-Victoria-penny-Nice-Condition/254187797915 The rare 1877 old head penny in "nice" condition.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Very-Old-Coin-Looks-Like-It-Could-Be-Julia-Ceasar/113926075513? "Could be Julia Ceasar". The Swedish actress notorious for playing crusty old crones ? Vendor will be in for surprise if they ever see the Shakespeare...

Yes, I was comparing to my uncirculated 1913 penny; strike on Britannia is generally much better except for the head which is much stronger on the 1913 piece ? Not sure how much wartime affected production standards on these though, no expert on the series.

Not normally one for penny varieties, but this was so nice I couldn't resist...

I'm pretty sure anyone who buys these in quantity and holds them rather than flipping is going to be burnt pretty badly at some point. The mintage figures are just too high for collector demand alone to be causing the prices we see. A lot of the proof sets have mintages of 5,000 or below, but they haven't seen the crazy demand and price increases the 50 pences have - which to me suggests that the actual number of serious decimal collectors is pretty low, as you'd only need a relatively small number of people to make these expensive.

Similarly, this is why Ouagadougou is pronounced more like "Wagadagu" or "Wegadagu" rather than "Oogadoogoo" as an English native speaker might expect...

Is there a die break on the top of the reverse ?

John Clarke & Co. wasn't just advertising on tokens, but also in cookbooks ! From Soyer's "A Shilling Cookbook for the People", 1855, a full page advert. If I have a free afternoon I might go over to the British Library and see if it really was patented.

I recently picked up this, John Clark & Co.'s penny token, 1854. Same size and weight as a pre-1860 copper penny. What I find surprising about this issue is the "PAYABLE AT JOHN CLARK & CO" legend - this was presumably still illegal as of 1854 under the 1818 act banning private coinage ? In any case, this piece is rather rare, so perhaps it was not issued in enough quantity for anyone to care particularly about it. The "Professor Holloway" issue of 1857 and 1858 was much larger in quantity, and saw circulation in London, but had no indication that it was a payable token.

You can put vague numerical grades though - I sometimes list US coins as e.g. "MS60 - 62" and I've never had any problems. The French dealer Numiscorner does this on basically all of their listings.

In a sales catalog I like photographs of which show all the defects of a piece, not which hide them using clever lighting. Having said that the grader will have viewed the coin under multiple lighting conditions. You’re right that it’s hard to judge the condition of this piece based on one set of photos.