JLS

I don't think so...I think it's just a surface lamination or even a gouge...it's so totally unconvincing it's hard to imagine anyone considering a successful "doctoring" ! The "3" is not even in the right place. But the price is shocking; let's hope it's the vendor bidding against himself (he can do that without scrutiny because it's a private listing sadly).

He's not that bad actually, he sold a real die letter halfpenny a while back, went for a very reasonable £50 (although only Poor or so) given that some people were a bit overly cautious. I buy a fair bit from him, but you have to ignore the description and just look at the pictures, which are normally clear enough to understand exactly what's on offer. It's nice when he beats you to a bulk lot at auction because you know ~ everything will end up on eBay so you get a second chance to snag anything you particularly liked...

Usual Lukasz nonsense. Definitely not a die 3 penny, just a reasonably nice circulated 1863. If bidders are sensible it will go somewhere between £15-40.

While I'm here, picked up this 1709 shilling last week...

Nice ! Was this unidentified by the vendor ? It's a tough coin to find and I've never seen a well circulated one like that.

I would agree with this. The copper tokens of the 1790s must have made it harder to spend the illegitimate copper coinage of the 1780s, which was widely refused as documented by social historians of the day. The quick production of the copper tokens of the early 19th century when the official coinage began to run dry probably prevented a similar imitation series being created. The struck copper forgeries are rare; the casts are much more common but usually are from moulds based on a very worn coin; I generally think these are probably early Victorian in nature, along with the somewhat scarcer forgeries of the pennies of George IV and occasionally Victoria.

Nice - is this struck or cast ? I've only ever seen cast examples of the 1806-7 type, must have handled a few in the last year or two dealing.

I'm pretty sure any one of the major auctioneers in London would take it with a reserve at the £200 mark or so. What it would actually sell for is quite another matter; penny rarities are desirable but the market is fickle, and people will be turned off by the patina/reverse corrosion.

Hello all, Anyone have a copy of the Spink Numismatic Circular, February 2001? I am curious as to what Spink priced the William III GVLIELMVS DEI GRATIA halfpenny at, as I am thinking about selling my own example which is in very similar grade ! As far as I know, the Shuttlewood piece hasn't been on the market since it was sold by Colin Cooke as part of the Nicholson collection: #78 (http://www.colincooke.com/collections/nicholson_part2.html) Thanks ! JLS

That would make sense of there being so few of them - pretty much any individual die combination for William and Mary or William III copper is extremely rare, and they put much worse dies into service than this.

St. James 3: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=249167 This one got around !

Thank you all for all the information, fascinating ! It's curious if it was the first issue that no high grade examples/proofs exist. I guess after the 1694 coinage there was no need to do so for technical reasons and the transition to the new obverse design may have been relatively simple.

Please do - would be very interested !

Nice ! Here are photographs of my specimen. Maybe Poor + ? Yours is actually dated 1696 right ? I haven't seen the Cowley piece.

! For what it's worth I paid a derisory sum for mine. Maybe I should be in touch with Mark.

Excellent, thanks Rob. Will be interesting to see what I'll achieve for one in today's market !

It's the same type. Most of these issues haven't had good die studies done on them so there will be variations in location of lettering etc. under the same reference number. Just compare the obverses of the two pieces you've linked to; the C of CAESAR is much closer to Nero's bust on the second one. In the end the dies were hand made so every die pairing arguably represents a variety.

Looks like corrosion from exposure to water or moisture to me. On worn coins there are often good (albeit time consuming) ways to remedy this sort of damage, but on anything uncirculated with original lustre, you would end up with a toned coin at best. Really nice decimal coins ex-circulation (as opposed to out of mint sets) can be quite hard to find. 0

This is usual; it is rarer to see examples struck on virgin flans (you can tell by the edge, different graining). I've owned a couple of overstruck ones but not the virgin flan type, although they do come up occasionally. Yours is a nice example; like most 19th century penny tokens these were very heavily circulated and not terribly well made in the first place, so anything VF or better is scarce.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1714-Qeen-Anne-Farthing/293776074386 Ol' Qeen Anne, she look'd like a man...

I don't have one but I would recommend buying one in a slab if without auction provenance, because there are some unpleasantly convincing fakes of these.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164311038725 Not brass, just Brasso'd !

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164366913368 It is like a proof...a proof which has been polished beyond recognition !

"Worn only for these photographs"...perhaps that's how the stretching was discovered...

What is "holy" about it has none, so it must be a protestant shilling....