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Thanks for all the input everyone. I actually made a mistake in my table of figures when adding £31.29 to £12. It should of course have been £43.29 not £41.29. This figure of £43.29 is what Fedex has invoiced me for. I may use that letter to challenge the £12 advancement fee Mike. There was no reference to VAT on the SB invoice, it did say 'Tax $0.00'. There seems to be a consensus that the VAT rate should be 5%, not 20%. May I ask if anyone can point me at a government webpage which says this please? I could then perhaps dispute the advancement fee and the VAT rate within the same letter to Fedex, If not successful there then I can try Customs and Excise. Sorry if a bit incoherent, been in the garden drinking wine!

Thanks very much Pete. I did also wonder whether they should be charging Vat on Shipping and Insurance, rather than just the item itself.

Thanks Pete / Jerry, I haven't paid the invoice yet, so if you think VAT should be 5% should I tell Fedex to re-invoice me, or should I pay the 20% and then try to reclaim the 15% difference afterwards? If the latter, then do you happen to have a link to the page where I can get a form printed, or the actual form itself please Pete? As for the transfer 'wire' fee they invoiced me for that without me advising how I was going to pay, so the $35 appeared to be their standard amount regardless of payment method. I actually paid using paypal so I think their actual costs would have been way less than $35. By the way if anyone reading this ever pays in $ using paypal then it's quite a bit cheaper if you use a credit card with no foreign transaction fees (e.g. Santander) rather than accepting paypal's own exchange rate. You get that option when settling whilst logged onto paypal. It saved me about £8 on this particular transaction.

We used to live in St. John's Road, Boscombe. Many of the locals now call it Bos Vegas😎

There was an 1890Aa (dropped 90) sold on ebay in February 2013 as a Buy it Now, for around £30 from memory. Wasn't listed as that type though. I actually advised someone else about it and think he purchased as a result. I wasn't into the date width variations at that time...….still not really...unless very peculiar. I bet that Rob is enjoying this thread 🤣

Thought this 1890 at auction today looked a bit different to any I have seen before, with higher rotated numeral 9. Was a bit tempted to have a bid but then realised it was Stacks Bowers and last item I bought from them (for $110) I had to pay an additional $60 shipping + $35 Wire Fee

Thanks Pete, no coins for me, but unexpectedly they have a banknote I want.

Hi Mike, Wish I had known you wanted one. I have a spare copy in better condition than the one which was on ebay which I could have let you have for not much more. Looking for £100 inc. postage for mine, but would have done for a little less for you

Actual answers and spelling in a 6th form history test Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus." Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard Shaw. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah." It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. Sir Fransis Drake circumsized the world with a 100-foot clipper. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

I was also watching that one Pete. Seller made me an offer through ebay because I was watching. He asked for £75, but I don't need as have better example. May be a useful purchase for someone for that price, or perhaps even a few £ less.

Looks like it's got that tiny protrusion top left as well Richard

Here's my F111 example, Gouby Kb for comparison. Clearly much easier to spot than the F114 (Ma)

Hi Mike, the F114 is sometimes seen with 2/1, but it is less obvious than on the F111. On Gouby Page 79, his 1882Ma, he says "The only part of the 1 that can be seen, on this example, is the small portion that sticks, centrally, half way up the 2" On more than one occasion I have also seen a tiny additional protrusion to the top left hand side of the numeral 2, which I think is most likely the top left corner of the top bar of the underneath numeral 1. I feel that this may be an even better indicator of this variety than the protrusion on the inner curve.....which always seems to be weak to the point of doubting the variety. When one considers the combination of these two tiny protrusions I think that gives increased confidence in confirming type. Here is a picture of my own specimen for illustration

Here's two dates on F25's, neither quite as weird as Terry's example.

Excellent example Terry, and agree with you that this is extreme enough to be interesting and more desirable to collectors than most date width varieties. The 1889 Wide Date, pictured below, is another more extreme example. It is also rarer and more desirable than the 1889 Gouby B Narrow Date, which is itself quite sought after.

True, but the 1898 Old Head is probably worthy of a bit more discussion as the final 8 is sometimes seen with the 'bisect' font which was NEVER used on any other OH year, and ALWAYS used on Victorian BUN Head pennies...……..so to see multiple 'bisect' dies, i.e. Gouby's 1898B, and the suggested new type 1898Ba (both with this much rarer font) I think is of interest. Also, MG thought that date width variations warranted more general recording in his 2009 book, and many collectors now use that as their main point of reference.

Bought this one on ebay in 2006, marked it up as unusual 8 and put in storage. When MG's book came out in 2009 I re-categorised as his type B and made a note that date wasn't as wide as in his book, and that I should write to him to advise. I then forgot about that until now...…………..brain's going, thank goodness for Pete!

okey dokey, no rush

I have a spare Bramah; it has the flysheet page saying first published in 1929. I believe the first edition does not have this page, but all other pages are exactly the same. I can send pictures if interested, but I would want to post recorded and can't do that until after the lockdown. I had been looking for £100, but would do for less for a member, say £85 inc. postage Ian

You got some nice pieces there Jerry. Think I was the under bidder on this 1875H, which was being sold as a likely forgery...…….but it looked bona fide to me too!

I see that you sold your 1861 F33 1/1 on ebay yesterday for what looks like a good price to me...………….and I think more than you would have achieved had it not been an overdate. Were you pleased? I found this F33 proof with similar, but not same, overdate to yours.