Jump to content
British Coin Forum - Predecimal.com

50 Years of RotographicCoinpublications.com A Rotographic Imprint. Price guide reference book publishers since 1959. Lots of books on coins, banknotes and medals. Please visit and like Coin Publications on Facebook for offers and updates.

Coin Publications on Facebook

   Rotographic    

The current range of books. Click the image above to see them on Amazon (printed and Kindle format). More info on coinpublications.com

predecimal.comPredecimal.com. One of the most popular websites on British pre-decimal coins, with hundreds of coins for sale, advice for beginners and interesting information.

JLS

Members
  • Content Count

    476
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    10

Everything posted by JLS

  1. Looks like a coin of Aragon, Barcelona mint (the central B on the reverse cross and the alternating three pellets/annulets in quarters suggests this). 1g weight would make it a quarter croat (full croat is roughly 4 grams), which accords with the size. Not sure of the monarch but from the obverse legend and portrait I'd guess John II ? Next step to identify would be to find a decent catalog of these issues. This is a rare denomination and rather an exciting little find! (If I'm right of course...I've little experience with Spanish coinage).
  2. JLS

    1845/3 Half Crown

    Interesting. That's obviously a different die to either coin showed here - the 4 has a rightmost serif. There's a coin for sale at the moment as a 1845/3 which has an unserifed 4; date looks fairly similar to the two coins above although the picture is not the best. http://www.jncoins.co.uk/Shop/half-crowns/465-victoria-silver-half-crown-1840.html
  3. JLS

    1845/3 Half Crown

    Here's my "example" - been sitting on the fence on this one for a while. Like to think it's the variety !
  4. On this 1673 crown, it looks very much like the I on the edge die (?) was punched over an O. Would you agree, or do you think this effect is caused by fatigue ? I don't really know how the edge inscription was applied to these coins - information would be much appreciated as a casual Google hasn't lead me anywhere.
  5. JLS

    Ebay's Worst Offerings

    To me this looks like the front part of a Victorian button...I have sometimes found similar in bulk lots of coins bought from eBay or auction. £10 is not so ridiculous an asking price...but I like "the Romans left us with a legal system" !!
  6. JLS

    Royal Mint Circulation figures

    Interesting to look through. Note that the 1981 10p has a mintage of 3,487,000... this is a much more difficult coin to get in mint state than those numbers suggest ! I wonder if most of the mintage were dated 1980.
  7. JLS

    Ebay's Worst Offerings

    I've just filed a report to Action Fraud, let's see what happens.
  8. JLS

    Commendable Künker

    Yes, exactly what I was referring to. I like the bulkiness of the packaging because it hides the potential value of the contents ! I always cringe a bit when I buy a higher value coin off eBay and they send it special delivery yet you can feel it through the bubble mailer.
  9. JLS

    Commendable Künker

    I concur - particularly like the custom large card boxes they ship multiple purchases in. The last one I got had a huge photo of a German New Guinea coin - almost more beautiful than what was inside !
  10. Hello all. I picked up this farthing recently. It looks like an unambiguous 3/7 overdate on the last numeral, with the same reverse die as Colin Cooke #364 (look at the open topped B in BRITANNIA). However, the obverse die has a stop after Rex, unlike Colin Cooke's example. Is this die pairing known ? Any information would be much appreciated - I've looked through recent auction results without any success.
  11. Weight is 4.56 grams, which seems a bit heavy for a fake farthing in my experience. But the lips do look a bit "fishy" so I'm questioning it myself.
  12. Yes - you're right. I'm still something of a novice with these varieties - didn't notice the displacement of the legend on mine. On my coin, it does look like a 3 over 7 to me in hand. At least I think I can see the top left serif of the 7 on the top left of the 3 of the date.
  13. JLS

    Medieval coin?

    I've replied to your other thread in the World Coins Forum, but in case anyone's watching this, this coin is an "Angel Penny" (Engelspfennig) of Strasbourg, c. 1300; Bonhoff 1750.
  14. JLS

    TWO MYSTERY COINS

    This coin is an Engelspfennig of the Bishopric of Strasbourg, circa 1300. It's listed in "German Coins" by Bonhoff as number 1750.
  15. JLS

    Ebay's Worst Offerings

    There are indeed fingerprints and fingerprints. I have a pattern 100 francs in silver from Monaco (1950), graded MS65 by NGC. It has a minor fingerprint on the reverse which doesn't really affect eye appeal; giving it a top grade in a slab seems fair. The bun penny I'm talking about had a subdued finger print on Victoria's face which was clear enough that you could probably use it in a criminal investigation; you had to hold it to the light in order to see the portrait properly at all. I think a coin like that would be better off toned brown than "fully lustrous" with such ugly contact marks. But the grading company didn't care. Regarding the MS65 criteria...all that PCGS says is "Above average strike with minor marks or hairlines, mostly out of focal areas". I think a fingerprint is treated as a minor handling mark...irrespective of the actual effect on the eye appeal of the coin.
  16. JLS

    Ebay's Worst Offerings

    There honestly is. I know collectors stateside who will pay hundreds of dollars for common date George V coins slabbed at MS65 or above, when they only book £20 in Spinks in BU. I think most of these people collect the numbers on the slab rather than the actual coin because a lot of these "MS65" coins have serious issues e.g. dipped, artificial toning and are really not gem specimens compared to what you could pick up at a UK coin fair. I've even seen a "MS65" bun penny with a noticeable finger print on Victoria's face ! People get pretty defensive though when you point it out, there's a lot of faith in the slabbing companies to pick up cleaning etc. despite the fact that both PCGS and NGC run cleaning ahem...conservation companies themselves. I don't mind TPGs too much, as they're really valuable in fields where there is a lot of forgery going on - it would be difficult to collect rare early 20th century Chinese coins without them, for example. But you know there's something going wrong when coins with mintages in the millions, and thousands of pristine examples available to collectors are going for top dollar.
  17. I picked this coin up for a pound or two the other weekend and noticed afterwards that the reverse legend appears to have A/I in BRITANNIA. The 4 of the date is also unbarred despite being very bold. Caveat is that the coin's in poor condition. What do you think ? Photographs: https://imgur.com/a/WAxBjXA
  18. Yeah - I doubt there are two "BRITAN-IA" dies out there somewhere...although I guess you can never know with the poor quality of the copper coinage at the time. Thank you for the thorough analysis. I'm very happy to have picked up the 1694 without paying much for it.
  19. Here you go - just can't resize pictures on my phone.
  20. https://imgur.com/a/pRH1zi7 Here's my suspect 1699 BRITAN IA halfpenny - was very dubious to me before due to the wear but it does seem to have a "flaw on the right hand sight of the upright of the T" so let me know what you think !
  21. That's interesting to know. I wonder if there is a decent one in a museum collection other than the BM...there are trays and trays of 17th century halfpennies in the Ashmolean.
  22. While we're on this topic, do either of you possess the elusive 1699 halfpenny with the BRITANIA legend error ? I have an extremely worn 1699 halfpenny with no trace of the second N, but I'm a bit dubious because Britannia's head isn't in great shape either. It would be interesting to compare location of the dots in the legend. The only supposed example I can find online is at https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/52753 and this appears to be a misattribution.
  23. https://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/special-collections/lot.php?specialcollection_id=790&lot_id=321787 This is the example sold at DNW recently, ex George Bates. Surprised it didn't sell for more with that portrait ! Would personally grade better than VF-...
  24. That looks like an exact die match ! Now I see that all of the reverse As are unbarred...not clear from my terrible example. Do you think this is just a later die state of coin 052 in the Basil Nicholson collection ? (http://www.colincooke.com/collections/nicholson_part1.html) The legend looks pretty much identical but the 4 of the date has a partial bar. If so this is indeed an extremely rare coin...Peck knew of two, so we're looking at 5+ examples now ?
×