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Mr T

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Posts posted by Mr T

  1. Posted

    Freeman's survey results are published in his first book The Victorian Bronze Penny (1860-1901). The was privately published by Freeman in 1964 (and again in 1966 as a second edition, which was essentially the same). The survey covered some 50,000 circulated Victorian bronze pennies, of which 15,653 were bun pennies with readable dates. These were mostly acquired via an arrangement where Freeman went through coins collected by a Scottish bus company. This helped insure that they were a fairly random sample of coins that were in circulation before the great interest in pre-decimal pennies that started with decimalization. This is by far the largest survey conducted that I know of, and can never be repeated.

    So besides Freeman and V.R. Court there aren't any other penny surveys of interest?

    Mr T let's start our own :)

    Excellent idea.

  6. Posted

    Freeman's survey results are published in his first book The Victorian Bronze Penny (1860-1901). The was privately published by Freeman in 1964 (and again in 1966 as a second edition, which was essentially the same). The survey covered some 50,000 circulated Victorian bronze pennies, of which 15,653 were bun pennies with readable dates. These were mostly acquired via an arrangement where Freeman went through coins collected by a Scottish bus company. This helped insure that they were a fairly random sample of coins that were in circulation before the great interest in pre-decimal pennies that started with decimalization. This is by far the largest survey conducted that I know of, and can never be repeated.

    So besides Freeman and V.R. Court there aren't any other penny surveys of interest?

  9. Posted

    Mr T,

    Freeman's survey results are published in his first book The Victorian Bronze Penny (1860-1901). The was privately published by Freeman in 1964 (and again in 1966 as a second edition, which was essentially the same). The survey covered some 50,000 circulated Victorian bronze pennies, of which 15,653 were bun pennies with readable dates. These were mostly acquired via an arrangement where Freeman went through coins collected by a Scottish bus company. This helped insure that they were a fairly random sample of coins that were in circulation before the great interest in pre-decimal pennies that started with decimalization. This is by far the largest survey conducted that I know of, and can never be repeated. This became the basis for Freeman's rarity ratings in his later books. These slim books with only about 38 pages, are scarce today. You might be able to find a copy in a library.

    Best Regards,

    InforaPenny

    Ah thanks. Too bad that information didn't make it into his later publications - I always thought number surviving was an inferior metric to frequency.

    The reason for the question mark for 1881 9+M was because the only one recorded at that time was very worn and it was at that time not known whether there was or was not originally an "H" below the date. It was probably known at that time that a proof example 9+M existed without an "H" below the date. For those readers who may not know... The currency 9+M does in fact have an "H" below the date.

    The 1882 pennies without "H" were probably struck to test the dies in 1881.

    Yes okay - I see some more have since been discovered now.

  10. Posted

    Freeman's survey included 433 1882-H pennies, none from the known 11+N 1882 no-H die pairing. In my own reference collection I have another 65 1882-H pennies, same story...

    Best Regards,

    InforaPenny

    Where can Freeman's survey results be found?

    Obverse 11 was used at Tower Hill in 1881 and 1883, so would presumably be also used in 1882.

    Obverse 12 was used at Tower Hill in 1883, so there is no reason why it would not be used in 1882 if required as it was certainly in existence by then as it was used at Heaton that year.

    Obverse 11 was used at Heatons in 1881 and 1882, so do we see any evidence of suspect 1882 11+N coins where the H may have been removed? As we must surely be looking at a single die pair for Tower Hill struck 11+N, it is likely that all coins would show or not show any definitive evidence.

    Obverse 9 started out as the main Tower die in 1881, and the presumably rare 9+M Heaton coins used a residual die or dies(?) when production ceased at Tower Hill for the refurbishment. What happened to obverse 10 in 1881?

    Reverse N presumably appeared later in 1882 as there are a good number of 1882H with rev.N.

    If die manufacture was retained at Tower Hill which can be assumed, it is likely that they would have struck a few coins with the new reverse N prior to sending them to Heaton. These could use either obverse 11 or quite probably 12 given it was already in use at Heaton. Production didn't stop in 1882 at Tower Hill because they continued to strike silver there, so die manufacture is unlikely to have been significantly affected.

    The question then arises whether any 1882 pennies from Tower Hill were trials, or a genuine production run. A few trials would likely be retained at the mint and so you would expect the survivors to be predominantly high grade. A proper production run for circulation would give rise to survivors in varying grades comparable to any other die combination. Does anyone have figures giving a rough estimate of the surviving numbers of these various die combinations and do these broadly agree with the data for 11+N no H pennies? Using theoretical survival rates based on known populations vs production totals, what output level does the number of 1882 Tower coins represent?

    This is problem that will probably rumble on for eternity unless we can find documentary evidence that pennies were struck at Tower Hill in 1882. We struggle to deduce anything from the known die use to answer the question.

    I think what you've said about die production is correct - the mint would likely have wanted to test die N in a more substantial way than the handful of

    proofs of the previous year: evidently the new reverse N die was paired an older obverse 11 die (assuming one pair) for this small test run.

    Whether it was a trial or production run is a bit hazy - it seems likely that it was a trial of sorts but the end result was perfectly acceptable coins that

    could be released into circulation? Why let that work go to waste?

    Was the H added to each die individually?

    As for estimates - Freeman found no London pennies in

    As for estimates, Freeman found no 11+N coin

    As for estimates, Freeman found no 11+N coins from 433 1882-dated pennies; InforaPenny found none in 65 1882-dated pennies - we can estimate

    an upper bound on the number of 11+N coins: they can occur at most once every 499 1882-dated coins which equates to 0.2% of 7,526,400 or ~15,000 coins.

    Also, what is the story with the 1881 9+M? I see there is a question mark after it in Freeman.

  15. Posted

    Is there somewhere online that I can see how many of what coin the Royal Mint has produced in recent years? I'd expect this sort of thing in an annual report but I couldn't see any of that sort of information in them.

    I'm more interested in the work they've done for other countries but I assume if I can find the mintages for Britain the other mintages should be nearby.

  19. Posted

    I had never noticed this either but I read about it in one of Michael Gouby's books recently. I don't think the reason was given but the point he made was that pennies with the weight you'd expect were definitely tested (the so-called heavy flan pennies mentioned in Freeman) at some point to overcome whatever minting issues they were having at the time.

  20. Posted

    The 1939 is comparatively low mintage and I think the 1893 (or somewhere in the early 1890s) is fairly low mintage too. I don't think the 1920 or 1921 are exceptionally expensive though.

    There are 60 or more different varieties of the 1862 of which some are quite rare.

  21. Posted · Edited by Mr T

    Is there anyone here with better legal knowledge on the current coins that actually are legal tender, because I'm quite sure the process is a fairly complicated one.

    The Coinage Act 1971 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/24) is heavy reading but section 3 (a), ( B) and © say that pretty much anything goes if the Queen says so. I don't know how that works in reality but I assume some committee agrees to what the Royal Mint suggests and the Queen just agrees with what the committee says.

    edit: ignore the previous post - the forum stripped off most of what I said.

  23. Posted

    Those shown in "English Paper Money" only have 6 digits, but I suppose it's possible that they went over 1000000 with the serials. Unless it's 100,000? Be interesting to see a picture. Obviously if they only went up to 1m then started again with C40C then 7 digits is literally one in a million. I can ask Pam West if you like Mike? I was emailing her over the last week about something else.

    In Australia at least 1000000 were "one in a million" with all other notes having 6 digits. The 1000000 notes were created from an extra sheet with serial number 100000 which was guillotined and then each note had an extra zero added with a small manual press.

    The reason was so that there would be an even number of notes, and, when it came to bundling, the number of notes could quickly and easily be counted by looking at the serials of the first and last notes and subtracting.

    I assume a similar thing happened in England.

  24. Posted

    1. 60% surface preservation

    2. 15% strike

    3. 15% luster

    4. 10% eye appeal

    I'd be interested to know of those 4 components, what respective percentages would UK collectors assign?

    For me as an Australian collector strike is a huge factor - plenty of Perth Mint pennies and halfpennies have indistinct rim beads and ill-defined high points on the portrait. I know coins with such poor strike can be technically uncirculated, but I can't come to considering them uncirculated, let alone paying good money for them because PCGS doesn't mind terrible strike.

  25. Posted

    Yes, looks like Beale, having gone through EPM for the other cashiers. I think the OP should speak to Pam West about it. Condition will obviously play a big part, but I really don't know what premium a 1000000 serial has over higher or lower, less round numbers.

    Do these notes normally have six digit serial numbers? 1000000 is seven digits which would surely make a bit more special than any other serial number (except maybe solid 0's).

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