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Mr T

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Posts posted by Mr T


  1. G5 may not have gone over it with microscopy however...

    As Declan says Above, G5 was a coinie which i'm sure those at the mint knew, so you'd think they'd be on the ball when minting a new or variant of coinage considering the crap they had been pushing out in the earlier years of his reign

    True but I don't think it's that noticeable - I didn't give it a second glance until it was mentioned here, and I was looking at the coin at twice normal size.

    Maybe it was made to get the new portrait rather than the new reverse approved - the old portrait had been giving the mint grief for some time so I can understand them wanting to get the new design approved as soon as possible, so maybe they cut corners.

    Anyway, hopefully Mr Freeman can shed some light on the matter.


  2. I can buy your Theory to a certain degree David, so to further convince me, how many other die Trail strikes would have been struck in the Same way? Surely if they were going to Trail strike they would strike what they were exactly wanting instead of striking over another number or letter etc?

    I was under the impression die production was somewhat expensive so if it's only a test, why not reuse an existing die? But then again, why bother redoing the date if it's just a test.


  3. The 1922 with genuine 1927 reverse does exist and with Modified Effigy obverse !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    The 1927 reverse differs from the hybrid reverse on the Freeman 192A variety principally in that the latter has 181 border teeth whereas the 1927 reverse has 184 teeth (the standard 1922 reverse has 180 teeth). There are other minor differences.

    See pictures.

    Thanks for doing the hard work and counting the beads!


  4. Is S-4054A the book reference or something else? And any provenance?

    Michael Freeman has asked me to bring this to your attention.

    "Could you mention that Heritage are auctioning next month the only known 1926 penny with Modified Effigy AND the 1927-36 reverseS. 4054A.In Long Beach auction no. 3042.I am sure lots of British penny collectors don't know this, and would be very interested in it."

    Here's a link: http://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/world-coins/george-v-modified-effigy-penny-1926-au-details-altered-surfaces-pcgs-/p/3042-31060.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

    Does Michael know who the owner of the coin is? btw...I can't see that the index finger is any shorter than the regular coin. Is there another identifier?

    Coppers just posted a helpful link but I was going to say the trident points at a bead on reverse C but between beads on reverse B.


  5. Buy from somewhere with a good reputation for selling sovereigns - there are fakes out there that are quite passable and when you buy from someone on ebay who's never handled a sovereign in their life it can be a real gamble.

    No idea if it's the right thing to invest in though, but I think in the main that a sovereign's value is highly related to the price of gold.


  6. Sorry - not from the UK so I don't know what the best option is there, but I usually go for a dealer's junk box at a coin show (no postage!). It depends what you're looking for but I do okay looking for low value circulated Commonwealth stuff. If the dealer is lazy you can find some half decent stuff too (VF-EF early 20th century, UNC late 20th century). There will almost certainly be no rare dates of any value but a rare variety isn't out of the question.


  7. Were any shipped to Australia?

    Maybe, though my assumption would be no as the Sydney Mint opened in 1855 with the purpose of producing sovereigns and half sovereigns. Presumably any 1854 half sovereigns would have been made late in the year and with a three month trip to Australia at worst they would have arrived a few months before the Sydney Mint started production.

    Still, New Zealand or South Africa might have had use for them, and I think British gold circulated in India too, so there are a lot possibilities.


  8. The mint almost certainly doesn't have one as there is only an 1853 listed in Hocking. Searching the BM site is a bit more problematic, so maybe someone else can help here as I can't seem to search for items reproducibly.

    Yes it's not great is it. Turned up some interesting contemporary coverage of Una and the Lion (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=1469654001&objectId=3545742&partId=1) and the new coinage of 1893 (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=1469654001&objectId=3545742&partId=1) which were interesting though).

    VickySilver what were the prices for the listings you could find? Were they what you'd expect for something so rare?


  9. Mr. T, I'm going to have to disagree with you there! I have to exclude the word 'Australia' from any searches I do purely because of the sheer quantity of Australian error coins that are listed. Having said that, I'm not 100% whether this is just due to the lack of popularity in England because they are very aware of the errors down under.

    It does keep them cheap for the meantime, although there are some out there that command some serious premiums already so will be nice to see if there is an increase of decrease in value over the coming years.

    Ha! I can understand that! I suppose the point I was trying to make is that when it comes to the more spectacular errors (i.e. not just a die crack, die fill, cud etc) they're not overly common in Australia as there's just less coin production.

    Our local coin magazine has a regular column of errors though which tend to focus heavily on dies cracks, cuds and the like, and this coverage translates to ebay as you have found out - everyone is trying to wring a few extra dollars out of some pretty insignificant (and common) errors.


  10. Errors aren't my cup of tea - trying to complete a set of coins is difficult enough without getting into errors.

    Regarding the price of UK errors - it seems to be they aren't popular which keeps the prices low, but I get the impression that they're more common than say, Australian errors because the Royal Mint has (and has had since the beginning probably) a greater overall output of coins.


  11. Sorry to drag this up without a concrete answer but it seems there have been a few major sovereign collections sell in the last few years - I don't suppose any of them had corresponding half sovereign collections?

    Have you tried asking the Royal Mint or British Museum if they have any examples too? Not sure whether either collection is complete enough for their answer to give any closure but it can't hurt to ask.


  12. It seems that they aren't that rare - I've seen two or three for sale on ebay Australia in the last year or so I think.

    All 1911 rupees are pig rupees, so called because the elephant hanging on George V's robes has a snout-like trunk. The design is more elephant-like for all coins dated 1912 and later.


  13. As numismatics is concerned decimal coins will never be scarce or show a great profit

    Too true. The mints generally make the even modern rarities in enough numbers to satisfy their markets. I think the real potential is in the unintentional coins/mistakes like the undated 20p but even then they need to be reasonably rare to start with.


  14. Just curious if there are any other British West African collectors out there, how you're going with it and what you're using as a reference.

    I've chosen only to worry about threepences, sixpences, shillings and two shillings - I have a few but not many: there doesn't always seem to be a lot for sale and it's uncommon to come across anything from between 1920 and 1936. I've been using Remick's book on Commonwealth coins but it says there are perhaps still undiscovered dates out there. David Vice's book is more comprehensive I'm sure but it seems a little more difficult to get a hold of.


  15. I suppose the war medals had a different enough reverse design to not cause many issues, and the portrait at least seems a little smaller than that used on currency.

    Just as an aside all WW1 silver medals in Australia were inscribed around the edge with the recipients

    name rank etc. whereas in the UK they were not unless requested for at a charge.

    As a little aside, someone took advantage of this in Australia a few decades ago and had some uninscribed British war medals engraved with the names of some noteworthy Australian soldiers: they sold them at auction but ended up in quite a bit of trouble when they were found out.

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