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

Posts posted by JLS


  1. 22 minutes ago, Peckris 2 said:

    This one is at least (genuine) VF:

    https://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/lot-archive/lot.php?lot_uid=366284

    and it sold for £400, which seems right!

    VF for portrait details, fair enough - but look at the reverse ! I also don't like the bright metal (dipped?) or the way there are so many little scratches at the bottom of the reverse. Hard to say even from the blow-up photos but I think it might have been tooled. 


  2. 12 minutes ago, Peckris 2 said:

    I think that was just sloppiness on DNW's part - note that it sold for much less than estimate.

    Also, I think the grades listed in the Spink Standard Catalogue are 'old school', especially when you compare the values listed with average sale prices or with other price guides.

    I don't know, have a look through their lot archives of 1679 crowns. They sell a lot, and the grading is punchy. As is that of a lot of dealers online ! 

    Agreed re. Spink prices. Generally I am happy to buy coins of popular series before Anne @ Spink cat. if they really are in the "old school" grade. In particular, £150-200 is not much for a Charles II crown or half-crown with bold, clear legends and the basic portrait details. You would be able to make a healthy profit just by consigning to auction in bulk. Try buying these coins in today's market...even at twice that price level you get few of them. 


  3. For what it's worth, I graded the subject coin about VF too - Wayne bought it via me, although it was being sold by someone else - who graded it as VF ! The reverse is sharper than the obverse to be fair, maybe the portrait is only a Fine+ or a "bold Fine". Of course, under the old strict British grading, this coin is only Fine - and if you went back far enough, it would be Fair to Fine, or just Fair to the Victorians. 

    But modern grade-to-market is a lot more generous. Here is a coin DNW graded aVF a couple of years back.  It seems similar or worse to Wayne's coin. 

    Also worth noting the obverse die on Wayne's coin is very worn - look at the die break from the portrait to the rim, the extensive signs of die-clashing. Even if the coin was FDC you wouldn't get full portrait detail with these sorts of die states. Having seen the coin in hand, it looks better from the surfaces etc. than it does for surviving detail. 

    • Like 1

  4. Just now, Zo Arms said:

    Thanks for the Heritage info. I'd go along with your identification using the die break. Some excellent realised prices even on the lower grades like mine.

    I'm a stone's throw from Portsmouth and Southampton so it could possibly have entered the country through one of those docks.

    I'll post the others on this thread just in case there's anything else worthy of note.

    I like the idea of it coming in through the docks. These turn up a surprising amount in Britain, a lot of people crossing the Atlantic for reasons good and bad in the period. 


  5. On 12/22/2021 at 9:26 PM, ozjohn said:

    It would help if Ebay followed their own guidelines on fakes, reproductions etc. ie they should be marked as such.  Anything else is a deliberate attempt to defraud 

    Well, given that eBay tolerates sellers, who only sell fakes, knowingly sell fakes as a business and lie about selling fakes explicitly...there's not much chance of that. 

    I'm not sure all reproductions should be marked as such...fair enough maybe on fake gothic crowns or something, but there are ancient and medieval coins which people have thought to be fake for a long time and then changed their mind on...would be a bit awkward to have stamped something on it ! Better to have a photo-database of fakes which eBay staff could be referred to and use to remove listings of the most common fakes. 


  6. On 12/27/2021 at 11:56 AM, Diaconis said:

    After looking on their website one can see that the die crack, early though it is, has succumbed to the usual contemporary tooling.

    The leaves on the wreath and high points on hair are flattened. The reverse shows wear concomitant with that exhibited on obverse, lion’s breast and ribs in escutcheon, jewels in crown, Irish harp etc. Peripheral residual lustre is present so I’d give it a generous Sheldon of EF45, so in that context it is “extremely fine” though only equating to VF in ‘real money’.

    I’ve seen worse examples go for more than £6,750* and better examples go for less. 

    * here’s an example of someone blindly trusting the grade on the slab (MS63😂) and shelling out £11,500 for an example which I’d have to be put in a headlock to offer £4,000 for.

    https://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/world-coins/great-britain-cromwell-crown-1658-7-ms63-ngc-/a/3056-30267.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-Thumbnail-022817&tab=ArchiveSearchResults-012417

    Ah, good catch. Tooled I think these are barely collectable. It's not such a rare coin.

    I bet the HA coin is tooled too, it looks like the die flaw on his breast has been abrasively ground down and polished off.

    Amazing what people will pay for mediocre coins in slabs. I knew a chap who wanted £2k for a dog of a Cromwell halfcrown in a "VF30" slab...not only was it not VF, it had smoothing in the fields among other problems. I wouldn't have paid a grand; I advised to consign to auction...

    DNW got him his money though ! https://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/lot-archive/lot.php?lot_uid=393883

     

    • Like 1

  7. On 12/25/2021 at 12:20 AM, Michael-Roo said:

    Again, not eBay.

    This time Colin Cooke (not the man himself, obviously).   AEF, and delightful.

    AEF? Delightful? Er....

     

     

    Screen Shot 2021-12-25 at 00.08.57 copy.jpg

    Not AEF or delightful...but early obverse die state ! £6.75k is a bit much. I wonder what it would cost at a coin show...

    • Like 1

  8. 6 hours ago, Cliff said:

    Can't see any specific HIBE ref in M.G's volume 1 but notice many (perhaps all?) of M.B's Plume mm's are N.2205, S.2769 with a Hawkins 2a ref.  Could the two 2a refs on the ticket be more specific Hawkins refs?  Confess to not having Hawkins knowledge at all.

    Cliff

    Cheers Cliff...well Hawkins 2a is just North 2205 as far as I can see (from the 1841 edition)...he doesn't include it in the plates though. Maybe Hawkins 1876 is a bit more thorough, but I'm content it's an unpublished die if not in Bull; of course, it would have appeared in Glendening's in 1968, and probably in a lot of sales before that, but I would guess never illustrated.  


  9. Hello all, 

    Purchased this coin at Morton and Eden the week before last in a bulk lot...I note the obverse reading of HIBE which is unusual - would anyone who has a copy of Bull kindly confirm if published? 

    I like the old ticket but don't know how far back it is from, there seem to be three different hands on it ! Presumably post-1920, as "Francis" I assume refers to G. R. Francis Collection (Glendining, 24 March 1920)...but a long time before Brooker or even Lockett (?). 

    All the best, 

    J

    ch11ticket.JPG

    Ch12.JPG

    Ch11.JPG

    • Like 1

  10. Good to know you had a good experience with Teutoburger. 

    I personally put high bids into their sales for usual pieces without worrying about having to pay more than the reserve if no-one else bids; I once put €250 on a rare British token and won it at the €45 reserve which allayed any concerns. Not sure I would do the same with a big ticket item though. 


  11. 19 hours ago, richtips86 said:

    Isn’t the metal value of the 2p coin actually worth about 3.5p?

    Yes, the pre-1990s issues made of bronze, not the contemporary copper-plated steel. 

    On 1/13/2021 at 10:16 PM, Peckris 2 said:

    Yes, keep the name but apply it to something else. The original d was a denarius, a silver coin. Perhaps the 10p could become a 'penny'?

    I'd quite like to knock a zero off all our prices - it would be fun to actually buy things for pennies again. Not sure if it would cause any real inconvenience, other countries have redenominated a couple of times recently (Turkey I think is the worst offender). 


  12. 49 minutes ago, Sword said:

    The plating is actually very thick at 25 microns. Hence, at least it will never wear off from the limited circulation it is likely to get. 

    1997245971_copper-plated-image-Copy.jpg.5e4cadca12a7ae273b10d7d5b5bcbaa6.jpg

    I'm sure it will on some examples...as the decimal coinage becomes older, unless the size of the coins changes again, these denominations will be worn out. There were a lot of old round pound coins in Poor or Fair circulating ten years ago; and if you look at the contents of your wallet regularly, even the late 1990s Maklouf cupronickel can turn up pretty rough. If we keep these smaller denominations I imagine they will continue to circulate for a long while before anyone thinks to remove them from circulation. I've received 19th century base metal coins in change in Switzerland before. 


  13. 23 hours ago, mrbadexample said:

    The 48th shilling isn't too hard to obtain in decent grade - I think he's looking for about twice what it's worth. I paid £17 for this one:

     

    Jersey 48th shilling 1877 (3).jpg

    It's a common coin. The problem is Krause I think, they price at $95 in XF, and $285 (!) in MS. 

    Of course, really choice examples are only around the £100 mark: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1945140; for a circulated one £20-30 sounds plenty. 

    Sure, only 38,400 pieces survived from the mintage...but that's actually quite a large number for a Channel Islands coin !


  14. Hello and hope you've had a Happy Xmas ! 

    I recently found this thing in a bulk lot of coins off eBay. It looks like a modern fantasy to me, but it's curious. Struck, nearly 15 grams on a 28 mm flan, obverse looks like a die transfer from a 20 cash, the reverse is a triskeles motif as per the coinage of the Isle of Man. Whoever made it has done a very decent job of making it look circulated. I can't find it listed anywhere. Has anyone seen one of these before ?  

    I'm aware of the rare Soho mule Isle of Man/EIC pieces but this is about as far from a Boulton issue as you can get in terms of quality !

    EIC Manx rev.JPG

    EIC Manx obv.JPG


  15. 12 hours ago, copper123 said:

    In my opinion its only a good one if VF and above but i have still not come across a nice enough one to call it a keeper - strange thing is there is no example in the colin cooke collection so it might be rarer than I think - depends on what someone will pay for one I surpose.

     

    I've had several die varieties in this series which Colin Cooke didn't have examples of; I don't think he was greatly interested in the series. There's a prejudice going back all the way to Bramah that these die variations are so numerous that they are not of interest to collectors; of course, if you applied the same thinking to the bun pennies, there would be no Freeman, Gouby etc. The reality is that this series is notoriously underexplored; you can get £50 or £100 for the more interesting die varieties in nice crisp grade, but not many people appear to be after them in circulated condition right now. 

    • Like 1

  16. On 11/22/2020 at 8:37 AM, alfnail said:

    I have a few 0.925 silver commemorative pieces, one or two of which have good detail but marks like the one on this picture. Has anyone any experience as to whether it is worth trying to

    improve such pieces please? i.e. removing marks, without degrading the detail.

      1267235188_1970GambiaObverse.jpg.79248f5131247066da861e6cd53dbbb9.jpg 

    Use silver dip, just wash the coin immediately afterwards in cold water; you need to dip for less than a second to achieve desirable results; if you leave the coin in the dip for any appreciable amount of time it becomes very obvious that it has been dipped with the flat surfaces Paddy mentions. 

    Do it outside and wear gloves though because the chemicals (thiourea) are carcinogenic. 


  17. 15 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

    Although the price is a bit of a giveaway. If it were truly an 1863 die no 3 under date in that higher grade condition, it would already be a lot higher as more experienced collectors realised what it was. In auction it would almost certainly go for probably > £6k, as it would easily be the best of the very small cohort.   

    Maybe, although I think experienced collectors tend to snipe things on eBay. When there was an 1860 TB/BB mule on eBay last, it went from £250 to £1k in the last 5 seconds if I recall rightly. 


  18. 4 minutes ago, Michael-Roo said:

     

    Now £255, with eight days still to run.

    People are mental.

    If I didn't often buy things from Lucas, I'd be tempted to put £1k on it or something and then just not pay when I won, on the grounds that it is not as described. But I'm afraid I'd probably end up on his blocked bidder list. 

     

×