JLS

There is a general sense that quality control was low down the mint's priority. Rotated dies would have been the least concern when they were sending things like this into circulation:

Not surprised really - typical sloppy workmanship on the 1860 pieces ! I wonder if any pieces with this die pairing exist after the clash with the correct die orientation or whether they scrapped the dies...

Is the die axis correct on your piece, Terry ? Because it wasn't when the dies clashed !

It does just get worse: 1965 Great Britain UK One 1 Penny PCGS Genuine (Cleaned) UNC Detail LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL COIN.....IT IS A HIGH GRADE And Nice Color For The Year!!.....CERTAINLY A COLLECTIBLE COIN ! YOU WILL RARELY.....EVER.....FIND A COIN TONED THIS WAY.........SO NOW IS YOUR CHANCE TO 'BUY IT NOW' !! THIS COIN IS ONE OF THE MOST DESIRABLE BECAUSE OF THE TONING...... GET YOURS TODAY.......BUY IT NOW !! EVERY COLLECTOR LOVES RARE COINS.....AND EVERY COLLECTOR LOVES BEAUTIFUL COINS. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO GET ONE OF THE MOST 'DESIRABLE' COINS OF ALL TIME...AND IT'S YOURS FOR THE TAKING JUST LOOK AT THE FINISH ON THIS COIN !! YOU GET THIS ONE FOR YOUR COLLECTION.. If you insist on the highest quality coin and colors for your collection, this hand selected piece is for you. An exceptional coin in every way, as nice as the day it was minted. This is the way they are supposed to look. A wonderful coin for the toned coin collector and certain to please the fussiest buyer.

Could just be an excessively weak strike with lustrous surfaces ? There do seem to be some obvious signs of wear on the reverse. Definitely not the first sub-EF coin I've seen in a MS63 slab though. Although they slab vast numbers of pieces so some things like this are almost unavoidable.

With millions of BU 1967s though...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1965-Great-Britain-UK-One-1-Penny-PCGS-Genuine-Cleaned-UNC-Detail/283635570263 Why was this even slabbed in the first place ?!

Totally agreed - CGS might have been slapping numbers on minor Victorian and George IV farthing varieties for years, but the market hasn't noticed...

If you’re into Georgian coins I’d also recommend the evasion halfpenny and farthing series, almost infinite variety, poorly studied and plenty of bizarre types and spectacular errors. You can buy acceptable examples of the common types for as little as £10.

I’m having fun collecting early milled halfpennies by Peck variety right now...most of the VR and ER ones only have a few specimens in high grades; if you’re content with low grade examples you can get some real rarities for £100 or less. They turn up in dealers’ junk bins too occasionally ! William III halfpennies in particular were terribly badly made and you can sometimes get decent examples cheaply because people expect a VF or EF coin to have a lot more detail than they actually do. And the number of minor varieties is large, Peck is really just the start.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2004-liberia-tiffany-art-2oz-silver-coin-rare-dont-offer-ridiculous-waste-time/183870257401 Whatever the merits of this "coin", I am glad I know to dont offer ridiculous waste time

Someone obviously decided that 100 years of circulation just wasn't enough for this poor 1866 penny ! It actually feels pretty similar to an old size decimal 50 pence in the hand.

I think at £450 the price isn't extortionate given the nice matched toning. PCGS are quite strict with Edward VII florins for some reason so an AU58 is not necessarily only an EF coin, probably more a British AU if the problem is just bagmarks. I wouldn't buy this set though because the sixpence and threepence are spotty. If this came up at auction in the UK it would probably go for £250 - 300 + premium, optimistically. The 1902 coins are very common in mint state because of high mintages + first year of the reign so they were all put away. And you can get true BU examples of all of these coins without too much difficulty, except perhaps for the florin which becomes a bit tricky in top grades.

Interesting piece. I wonder if it was produced as a "general" Scottish token analogous to the anonymous Glasgow issue (W7450). Don't have an example of this myself.

Really hard to say on these without looking at an example in hand, given the existence of very high quality forgeries, but nothing stands out as fake with the style of this one. What's the origin of this piece ?

Looks like a horseman facing right. Working out specific gravity might help - not obviously silver to me.

Like so. I believe these are Kettle pieces as another one of the "Beloved and Lamented" pieces (BHM 1379) is signed KETTLE under the bust. These came from a bulk lot a while back at Lockdales.

From my junk drawer so to speak, the following two pieces with similar psuedo-Wyon busts: both by Kettle and Son, Birmingham presumably, based on style - note that they are definitely by the same manufacturer as the same defective E punch has been used in the name of GEORGE. I may well have others lying around somewhere...

Hello all, Recently picked up this hammered halfpenny. I'm pretty sure it's Henry V due to the annulets on either side of the crown; wrong portrait style for Henry IV. Can't decide if it's class A (emaciated bust, rare) or class C though. I'm leaning towards class A because the annulets don't appear to be broken, and the portrait style seems different to class C coins I've seen photographed online. Anyone know of a photographed class A specimen to confirm ? Thanks, J

Looking at it again in hand the right annulet looks broken - the left one looks closed, the apparent break in the photo seems to come from a weak strike. Do you know if this is a definite diagnostic for these ?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Very-Rare-1694-William-Mary-Gold-Half-Guinea/372830642302 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/QUEEN-ANNE-1702-1714-SHILLING-RARE-SOLID-Silver-COIN-E-Mark/372830638965 I know there are a lot of gullible bidders on eBay, but this really takes the cake...

Ignoring the delicate aspects of contract law, the problem you're going to have is that you have no damages if you immediately receive a refund. You'd have to sue for specific performance of the contract. But this is entirely up to the discretion of the court, and they almost certainly would find demanding specific performance unreasonable under the circumstances. There's a lot of precedent for specific performance as a remedy in the case of land sales where one party backs out, but in this situation, where the seller did not intend to offer the item at the price, the buyer would be treated by the court as acting in bad faith, and the "unclean hands" doctrine would prevent them from obtaining specific performance. If the seller meant to ludicrously overprice the item, then it would be more complex - but in the case of a coin obviously worth £1250 offered for £125, I think you wouldn't get anywhere at all. Which is how it should be really !

It's not a terribly well researched piece. The date is presumed to correspond to the date of actual issue, especially because it's the copper penny format. Definitely pre-1865 because it's in Neumann, Freudenthal also collected one which is now in the BM (Accession: 1870,0507.1404). John Clark personally owned the business, and a John Clark of 447 Strand received British patent GB 1860/2735, granted on 7 November 1860, for an outdoor shop lamp. He also received a further patent on the same subject matter in 1861. I haven't found details of Clark in any directories, but I haven't searched particularly exhaustively. It looks like the 450 Strand shop was closed by 1855; see the attached advertisement. Mitchener suggests that W.J. Taylor manufactured it, but that's really a guess. It's a fairly scarce piece in any condition, and may not exist in very high grades - I've never seen a true EF specimen, let alone mint state with lustre. References: Neumann 23343, Mitchener (2007) 7919

This is very useful with certain tokens in D&H - often when the plate coin is in terrible condition, there are few if any better to be found.

Is the first A of GRATIA unbarred or is that just the photograph ?