JLS

50 pence collecting is very new, but I think it's a fashion which will last, so I would expect some of these other sets to get more attention, and it's great for the hobby - I think past waves of coin collecting have sprung out of people being able to find rarities in their change - think of US collecting in the immediate post-war period (when you could get things like 1932 D quarters in your change), or the British market in the 1960s around decimalization. Whether it will make the 1970s sets worth £50 each is another matter. I hope not, but then on the other side the wholesale price being around £5 a set at auction is a little silly, especially given the difficulty of finding some of the sets with red lustrous copper - I went through a whole dealer's stock of them recently and found none I wanted to purchase. Probably the value for all of these will settle somewhere in between.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203081740668 Not an Edward VII penny. You can see Liverpool in the distance though !

The reality is that supply of all of these is somewhat "thin", even if they're not scarce in any meaningful sense. There may have been 100,000 issued e.g. for 1974 but some of these will have been split up/damaged/ugly toned, and the vast majority of the others will be owned by collectors and other people who bought them close to the release date. The number immediately accessible to the market is going to be in the low thousands, and that's the sort of supply which can be overwhelmed by sudden demand. Unlike the Kew Gardens 50 pence pieces, I don't think this is a case of someone stashing these away with an expectation of profit (yet !); there really are enough customers to exhaust demand at least temporarily.

Out of stock already. I'm tempted to buy up some sets for the other years with no currency 50 pences...if a few people go for it, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If sovereigns are legal tender in Australia to today, what is their nominal value ?

Not sure if I have enough expertise in the series to be a "penny person" but I've consigned some decent pennies recently - all to BSJ though. The ones in the last sale did alright; it may well quickly become a good market to sell in if people don't consign.

Well, a repro sold as genuine is as good as a fake to me on eBay. If you're not familiar with the type the style might be convincing, especially from photographs. This is one of the only relatively good copies of a common 18th century token which comes up with frequency; previously published in TCSB among other places. But whether the original intent was to deceive is unclear.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Exeter-Halfpenny-token-1792/402352651395 A notorious modern fake - pretty obvious if you compare closely to the original, but we token collectors don't normally have to worry about such things too much....

I wouldn't give up hope on it being delivered or safely returned by the postal service...an item I sent to Singapore in February landed in my post box a few weeks ago, envelope was covered in stickers from Germany, who ended up receiving it in error - I assume it got stuck to something on the way...

You'd have to have really quite precise equipment to distinguish between minor differences in volume. Callipers may be quicker !

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Palau-Big-Pirate-Skull-25-2018-Antique-Finish-Silver-Pirate-Skull/174312522767 The Pirates of...Palau ? It weighs half a kilo of pure silver so I guess it might make a (rather morbid) paper weight...

As the owner of this piece...I'm still tempted to do this but the rest of the metal looks OK... I think anodized copper wire treatment is the next step; if I can't get all of it off mechanically I'll consider chemical cleaning. Don't think it will ever be problem free though.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Masonic-Penny-unpolished/133390637391 I didn't know that the Queen was a freemason ! Or that 1967 pennies get more valuable if you polish them...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274326733979 Someone actually thinks a cartwheel penny is a farthing...were the 1790s an age of giants ?!

That 1807 is a well known and relatively common contemporary forgery with the casting flaw across the reverse, I think I paid a good £20 for my example... Curiously the pound coin also appears to be fake !

8/6 ? Nice !

A very rare token I noticed in a bulk lot last week, paid £15 and there was an EF 1901 halfpenny and some other odds and sods as well.

As a keen collector of the Birmingham series....WOW ! Diameter ? White's 1849 Directory of Birmingham, p. 182, "Holland, Henry, gun and pistol maker, 21 Steelhouse Lane". The Henry Holland of Holland and Holland was, according to Wikipedia, only apprenticed in 1861, so possibly this piece is unrelated.

As far as I know, yes, no reducing machines anywhere until the 1830s, and none at British mints until the 1850s or 1860s. Definitely not used at Soho in Boulton's day !

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.