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Sword
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Content Count
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Joined
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Last visited
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Days Won
104
Posts posted by Sword
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8 hours ago, copper123 said:Do you mean "The brittannia" its a £2 coin that weighs an ounce?
Not the Britannia. It is this one:
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2 hours ago, copper123 said:I bought the new crown its a pretty handsome coin even if its not very adventurous the kings head with the crown seals it though..
Glad you like it. The crown will always be one of the popular denominations to collect. I went for the less traditional "£2 ounce" only because I like the reverse design.
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I think the line between "errors" and RM "sloppiness" is a bit blur. Even proof coins are not very carefully made these days as illustrated by the thread on the Flying Scotsman.
Hence, my opinion is that minting quality issues should be classified as sloppiness and errors have to be much more in your face.
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It's six weeks since I sent it back for a replacement which has arrived today. It looks OK this time but I had to use a blower to remove the fine (white) hairs trapped inside the capsule.
I do like the crowned portrait of the King and the reverse of the £2 and so this is my souvenir of the coronation.
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It's (very) difficult to know why someone has stamped those letters on your coin or when it was done. Coins / banknotes do get defaced very occasionally when they were currency and often for not very good reasons.
Since it is passed down, I think it is best to treat it as a sentimental item and a little piece of family history.
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I totally agree that since the Royal Mint is government owned, it should therefore serve the national and shouldn't sell coins at rip off prices. However, auctions will have hammered prices closer to the market prices (in contrast to some of the stuff they are currently selling in their shop).
Hence, if there is a conflict of interest, it has already occurred before the introduction of auctions.
Their own article highlights their profit has rocketed from 12.4 millions to 18 millions.
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I don't think there is any conflict of interest TBH. The royal mint is obliged to supply the public with circulating coins which they do. Their other interest is just to make as much money as possible. I don't imagine they would care where that money comes from.
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True. If you spend £10k on gold commemoratives, you might end up with around 5k worth when you sell. However, spending 10k on silver commemoratives might leave you with just 2k worth.
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But the price up from bullion value is so high that one might need to wait for decades to break even. True, a few do well but most won't. I would say just don't buy random commemoratives for "investment". Investing in coins is like investing in shares - you need to know what you are doing.
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I didn't like the idea at first. But all major auction houses guarantee the genuineness of their lots and most have probably made mistakes in the past. Perhaps we shouldn't expect any different from the RM auctions.
But in my view, they have already sink low enough trying to sell past coins for totally ridiculous prices. This made me laugh: https://www.royalmint.com/shop/monarch/queen-elizabeth-ii/1953-Elizabeth-II-Commemorative-Crown/
They are selling jewellery now https://886.royalmint.com/ Just have a look at those prices.
Since their coins are now just commemoratives, do they not resemble a souvenir store? Would they consider using the motto "Souvenirs for the nation. Souvenirs for any occasion."
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Mostly their own offerings produced in the last couple of decades.
https://www.royalmint.com/collect/auction/auction-archive/
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On 6/4/2023 at 12:22 PM, david.bordeaux said:I wanted to pick your collective brains on the “onc tenth” florins of 1853-1860, and possible theories on how the error came about.
1. Is it a “c” or an “e” with the oblique bar missing? A comparison of the “e” and “c” on the obverse seems to show a slight difference in the width of the letters.
cdetail.jpg.b743ac818cd8b65d1b39b0a8c8d8d009.jpg)
edetail.jpg.9b6867f70615c4422b4d67691d00078c.jpg)
2. If it’s an “e” with the bar missing, is this due to die fill? The oblique bar is very fine, so this could be a possible explanation. But if so, why does it only affect the “e” in “one” and not that in “tenth” (or the “e” in “One florin”, for that matter)?
3. Whether it’s a “c” or an “e” with a missing bar, could it be that a wrong or faulty puncheon was chosen when sinking the die? But again, why only the “e” in “one”?
4. Is it possible that there were puncheons for the entire word “one”, one of them was faulty, and that this was occasionally used over the course of 7 years when sinking new reverse dies? Each pair of dies produced only around 25,000 coins at the time, so the 1853 florin alone (mintage nearly 4 million) would have required upwards of 150 dies.
5. If 4 is the correct explanation, it could also explain the sudden disappearance of the error in 1860 – the faulty puncheon was detected and destroyed, or it wore out and was discarded.
6. A quick survey of auction archives would suggest that the error is more common than might be inferred from Bull.
ESC 7th edition
Heritage
London Coin Auctions
Noonans
Spink
1853
“scarce”
2
3
1
1
1854
“4 seen”
1
9
1
1
1855
“5 seen”
1
1856
“7 seen”
1
1857
“6 seen”
1
1858
“4 seen”
1859
Not recorded
1860
“5 seen”
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Number of examples of “onc tenth” florins offered at four auction houses between 2010 and 2023. With the exception of London Coins, most were not catalogued as “onc”.
Any thoughts or insight on this would be much appreciated.
I think London Coins / CGS are more inclined to count die filled as "varieties".
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I gave up testing for perhaps a year now. Like many people, I used to test twice weekly for a long time but have never tested positive. This helped to convince me that perhaps I am one of those people immune to covid. (The four jabs are enough reassurance even if I am not.)
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I haven't given a second thought for Covid for quite a while now. However, my understanding is that we might never reach herd immunity for the disease. The vaccinations greatly reduce the symptoms of the covid but are not able to prevent many people from catching it due to variants. It will probably linger in the background as a mild inconvenience for a long time. I am more worried about catching flu.
14 hours ago, Rob said:My son went to a gig in Manchester 2 weeks ago and presumably got it there (second case). He had all the same symptoms at the same intensity as a couple years ago, but these cleared up inside 3 days.
Did he actually test positive for Covid?
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Every hammered coin is in fact unique...
Hence, the strike, wear and eye appeal are even more significant than type rarity for the hammered series IMHO.
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For me, rarity could refer to the total number of pieces available, condition rarity, or "rare" eye appeal such as excellent toning. I personally prefer collecting the later two categories. A relatively common coin in rare UNC grade is more exciting to me than a very low grade coin with only a few examples known.
I am not a serious enough collector to have anything particularly valuable but do have a few pieces which think would be hard to upgrade.
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On 5/11/2023 at 3:16 PM, Lotad said:The returns process is automated and free, but requires you to print off your own label. Quite frankly its the most efficient part of the RM now. Today I received a reply to an email I sent over 2 months ago, now they ask me for my order number, luckily I included it in the email title, shame they didn't read that bit.
I have just printed off the label asking for an exchange. I also managed to get to them on the phone and the chap said they will check before posting a replacement. Can't say I am convinced. Let's see what happens this time.
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Rather sadly, I don't have any doubt now that shabbiness is the norm of the Royal mint. No respectable business would tell you that there is a two month wait for an email to be answered.
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I have sent them an email and got an automated response. They are currently answering emails received over two months ago and so there is a long queue! Luckily it wasn't a high value item.
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Sorry to hear that. Whenever I missed out on something in an auction because I forgot to leave a bid, I always console myself by saying that the winner might have gone a lot higher and, so I might not have got it anyway. And in this case you already have two MS already ...
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I have just received my coronation coin. It supposed to be signed for but the postie just left it on my doorstep.
When I opened the box, I was surprised by the lack of quality control. The plastic case is quite badly scratched where the date is. But the coin itself is scratched on the letter Y of May.
This really killed the excitement of getting a coronation coin. Is this the normal standard of the RM these days?
I suppose I would want to have it replaced (or a refund if this is the norm of the RM). What do you think? I don't want to pay for the insured postage back though.
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It reminds me of the saying that "you don't need to be an expert if you can compare like with like".
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There are raised lumps and holes which I think are also characteristics of cast pieces.
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Sad to see such vandalism. Might be it looks better if the black stuff can be removed.
Royal Mint quality control (or the lack of)
in Decimal Coins
Posted
It would have been better if the reverse design is more deeply engraved and the shield is convex. But the RM only do flat designs nowadays unfortunately.