JLS

A good diagnostic for a proof of this issue is whether St. George's belt is sharp all the way across his chest. It's very rare to see a currency piece with this feature as they generally were not well struck enough.

Unless it was a US coin where dipping is "market acceptable" for some reason, I'd be pretty annoyed to be sold a dipped coin as problem-free. Last year I bought a nice looking Edward VII florin out of DNW at the reserve on an opportunistic bid. It was in a MS61 holder and described as EF+, bright... In hand, blank, lifeless surfaces, no real mint brilliance. Luckily I didn't pay too much for it and found someone at Bloomsbury who took it off me for what I purchased it for...

He also seems to have never seen a proof George IV shilling: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1821-GEORGE-IV-Laur-Head-Shilling-Bought-as-GEM-UNC-Superb-but-I-believe-PROOF/233569315655?hash=item3661d0eb47:g:UyQAAOSw9uxeouVR https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1825-George-IV-Bare-Head-Shilling-PROOF-coin-and-RARE-for-this-date/233568803807?hash=item3661c91bdf:g:swQAAOSwtANeoh0O plus, as a bonus, PCGS LOVES his cleaning technique... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1739-George-II-Shilling-Slabbed-graded-by-PCGS-as-MS62-UNCIRCULATED/233298622265?hash=item3651ae7739:g:27kAAOSwJWddQhiF

Pretty sure you can buy these out of China for around two pounds each...AliExpress might be worth checking....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1794-Halfpenny-Token-The-Lancashire-Unc/303594651936 Not "Unc."...and the seller unfortunately has a whole group of common 18th century token given the same treatment

Well, it sort of was a live sale, as there were a few phone lines open, and so lots had a defined closing time. You had to pre-register which lots you wanted to bid on, as they skipped lots which no-one wanted to phone bid on and just decided them on commission. Most of the time I was just bidding against commission bids though.

Yes and it was relatively straightforward, I won 6 lots !

Given my collecting (and dealing) interests, the chance that anything I bid on is popular on what is likely a poorly attended auction seems rather remote ! But we'll see.

Hello and welcome to the forum ! Have you tried John Boardman at Whitmore Coins, Tokens and Medals ? He typically has a large number of toy coins in stock...current listing here, but there may well be more unlisted: https://www.whitmorectm.com/toycoins If you let me know which ones you're missing, I'd be happy to watch out for them. J

Well, I've inquired by return e-mail about how to do it, and heard back nothing, so I'll probably just give them a call tomorrow. If possible it would rather nice to find out what other people have bid before making up my mind !

Semra confirmed this morning that they're offering phone bidding.

I think the facility is more useful to e.g. general antique dealers who don't want the hassle of having to register to bid on various sales independently if they're only planning to bid on one or two low value items.

Maundy coins are still legal tender, having been redenominated to their value in decimal pence by the Coinage Act 1971 s. 2(2). It's not really clear to me what the earliest legal tender maundy money is though; can we go back to the undated Charles II milled issues, or can only "modern" Maundy money post-1822 be spent ?

Interesting. I don't own any similar British pieces but I have a French matt pattern, presumably for photographic purposes, from the turn of the last century and the quality of the strike is superlative.

Interesting ! Were these produced for photography purposes ? The obverse strike looks very soft from the images above.

With the 1953 farthings various die combinations have been ascribed as VIP proofs...I've seen 2+B coins (same as regular sets), as well as 2+A coins (very rare), and 1 +A coins (excessively rare). Presumably the latter are truly VIP proofs, the 2+A pieces are just an error, and the 2+B coins are most likely just nice examples of the ordinary strike (cf. the example in the London Coins archive ex-Norweb which despite some fingerprints looks better than most of the supposed "VIP" pieces in my opinion).

True, that hadn't occurred to me.

But AFAIK he's going to have to pay 10% of the current bids as a final value fee ? The cost of withdrawing a listing with a £600 bid on it like the W&M halfpenny he had listed is substantial. I'm not sure what sort of aspirations he had for those pieces, because they seemed to have generated a lot of interest - if he wants the sort of prices a top auction house could generate he should be prepared to pay more than an effective ~12.5% fee !

I think this may be a case of "market grading" in the sense that the obverse is a bit weaker than the ascribed grade, and the reverse is a bit better. It's very attractive with all the lustre in the devices, well done.

If I were a consignor I wouldn't be happy, I imagine prices will be somewhat depressed. Also the paucity of photographs is going to be an issue for a lot of the larger lots etc.

When were you calling them ? I organized a return shipping of a submission a month or two back and they always answered the phone - try between 9:30 and 12 pm or 2 to 4 pm in my experience.

Presumably a contemporary forgery, though ? I'd be interested to see photographs, not something I've come across before.

Ooh, interesting ! I'm going to have to weigh all of mine now to see where they stand...

The more I look at this coin the more seems wrong with it ! What's up the with the apparently raised marks to the right of Britannia (and the S shaped mark after BRITAN) - die damage ?

Definitely for the currency issues, and the Wreath crowns, but I've never seen this problem with 1927 proof issues, weren't they struck from polished planchets ? It would seem pretty odd for the mint to polish the dies to death but use any old planchets !