DrLarry

could anyone help me verify Warwickshire 297 Free School old front taken down in 1794 ...dalton and Hammer list it as edge COVENTRY whereas others are listed as COVENTRY TOKEN edge is this an error in the book I have quite an old edition the reprinted 1967 edition ...I guess it is an error but would like to check

I am intrigued when I hear members ask or suggest that a coin "should be sent to the royal mint for authentication" ...of course they would have all that was needed to verify the trueness of a coin , but what is it they have that any other collector might not have? Presumably they are not likely to want to spend any time or effort to authenticate a coin considering the replies recently on a point of clear information (how many of X coin were minted in X year) How difficult is it to have this information on a computer? But I am keen to know what they would do , weigh it, measure it, glance at it, I am sure they are not likely to send it away for scientific analysis. I suppose they might just have a spectrometer but if I recall when using one of these it would not come cheap. So considering they will only be doing the exact same thing any one of us could do sitting in the rectory or in your spare room.....why bother to send it? What I find difficult to accept is the statement of authority seems a little disproportionate if only minor expenditure of time and money is their duty. What else could they be doing to authenticate? any ideas ?

ok thanks for that I thought that might be the case which might be used and presumably they have a baseline composition for all coins in the collections they have

LOL no worries I have 8 kilos of 1960's pennies I am sifting through and taking pictures of to verify my work they will be useful once I have them but there is no hurry...the more you have the better. If you are in a detecting club ask around for me they always have loads.... but I think are often a little hesitant to let go of them in case it might be a rare one....I am quite interested in them after they have been "dipped" in that strange chemical that gets used LOL

Thanks ...no I have nothing to send them myself I was just intrigued to know why and what might be done. Method I suppose more than result. Yes it amuses me at times and once I even bought one of these "decimal error" coins which I think as just the result of a clever piece of laser cutting.

Thank you Paddy for the pennies they have proved invaluable ..

I suppose you could use X ray fluorescence but gain I suppose it would depend on the "potential" value of the coin ...but I assume you would then have to pay for the services ?

yes , I suppose by authorising the process to give up the right to have the coin returned. The same would happen if you sent a coin to trading standards who presumably also have some method to verify a coin. On some occasions Ebay have asked me to take a coin to trading standards when I have questioned its authenticity

well done sorry to nanny you LOL I just didn't want you to get tripped up.

A word of caution re: your refund ....I know you said the buyer offered your $200 was that an official offer of a refund or just a casual chat? Be careful that if this goes to resolution for an item not as described you may be expected to return it to get any refund and then all by the resolution team. If you sell it then you will not be able to return it and then you will end up losing the $200 offered casually. I personally think EBay are quite good with these things.

Oh well t is good to know that you confirmed it had been on a mount, it is always hard with Gold you have to be careful

Oh I see you have done sorry did not read fully your previous thread

Madness make sure you look very carefully around the top and edge and see if it has not been removed from a clasp, the last thing you need s it coming back and then losing on the return postage...It is very easy on ebay to initiate a return on the grounds of "not as described" ....

yes I know I think a variety I had from him may have been "doctored" oh well you live and learn...or not in my case... I am sure the forum would agree.

I see there is a new variety listed recently from Cheshire of a G or something over a C in an 1860 penny ..

surely you cannot doubt the Royal Mint Paddy !!!

I realise I have broken a cardinal rule..namely to involve and include, a forum must be a place of gathering information. So I will start again, after a nice week touring the Galloway coast and the lakes painting I return with renewed vigour to my favourite topic. But rather than ask you to see as I see after 3 years I will try gather your opinions and ask that you do just one thing: to look with great care before you respond. In 2015 I noticed the faces of "an animal" or two "behind" the surface design on coins. I pursued a line of investigation which has allowed me, after a great deal of work, to see clearly for myself what these patterns are. THey are complex and I would like to ask those of you with time and inclination to help understand rather than just see if these patterns exist and if so what is the purpose and most importantly how could they have been "imposed" on coins since at least the late 17thC and likely earlier. I initially saw it in Bronze pennies but they are the tip of the iceberg. I have a number of avenues ..theories but I need keen observers to add to and develop ideas. I am searching for a team of amature researchers. I have no desire other than to make sense of the medium "coin face" and better understanding of the coins we all love. My tools are simple a microscope, my collection, and a fine sable brush. Although I do have many years experience with pattern recognition I do not think this is a prerequisite for discovery. At the heart of this idea is the very essence of a coin which is wrapped up in the idea of the "state" its economy and religion and key to it is the sacred relationship between the monarch and christianity. I should be clear that I am in no way religious but I do not deny the importance of the relationship KING:STATE:GOD and have to go where the answers may lay rather than ignoring I must acknowledge this triad. Transmogrification is I think key to this idea: a design that if viewed in a particular way can be a number of different forms, in the case of coins the monarchs head as an example of head of state, primary servant of God in the state, protector and carer yet must show humility to succeed. Could anyone who has an interest in mystery; solving puzzles; love of coins; history; metallurgy; alchemy (chemistry); design and art please get involved. I am more than happy to accept that if we do not solve this in a year I will deem myself totally mad and stop looking after which apart from a book about my descent into madness you will hear nothing more from me on the subject. However if we solve this riddle (as I see it!) we may uncover a beautiful aspect of coining design and history that just might make it a bit more interesting for new collectors. I am not Dan Brown, there is no Da Vinci code but he may play a part, who knows. I do not have the answers but we might be able to get them together. Many thanks Larry

In seeing this one your mind has to be able to seek out assemblages of the same the tone, usually the tonal "discontinuities" are created which help in being able to show the points where the Lamb and the Lion merge. They rely on artistic ambiguity as I have mentioned in the past. So that at any one time there can be a "sharing" of the anatomical elements. As I have said to you structurally this makes it look like Guernica by Picasso when viewed at different angles elements are shared. In art this is something that has been used by artists for centuries to trick the eye. In the same way that you look at those magic eye pictures you must relax your eye to look through the image not at it. In that way the "ghosts" of the heads actually form a £D effect. This is I think just a phenomenon associated with diffraction and the metaphor of the diffraction grid is quite a good one as light is scattered and bent around the diffraction grating in the same way. These images employ some rather sophisticated visual trick relying on optical properties ...but the image is akin to what you would see if you viewed it through through optical calcite or a glass with faceted faces. I am not going to give up on you...or me

the only way I can get close to showing you this is to use the photo exposure to pick up areas of the same density of shade . this allows the upright seated lion to be also seen in context to the smaller "lamb" units which come out of the image towards us and are therefore foreshortened. I think some of the numerous problems involved in seeing this relate to my ability to recognise the sequences so whilst at one tome the sequence can show the seated lions stacked one head on the other in the next section I will show you another constant the "lion carrying the lamb in its mouth"

OK these are the lines that Madness noted on the image of the shilling he has on his training to grade thread. The thing that is so remarkable is the simple mathematical relationship I have in the next set taken the angle steeper so you can see what happens when the lines merge fully. It is always the same a set of parallel dark and light bands which b=cut across the coins face and when viewed from the side edge the sequences occur again and again ...I know it may be my brain ut how can this be. They are always clearest when you get this grid section of the pattern. You have to imagine a design drawn on a flat circle, then split into a series of arcs and domed up into a spherical projection. If I could just get you to understand that the sequences follow the same pattern of light and dark merges to form a joined line...each patch merges and in one "vertical sequence there can be as many as 50 combinations ...

I will post these pictures of your line question on my own wacky thread with the interpretation of how after taking an image of those lines the exact same mathematical relationships exist.

I know what they are !!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are part of my pattern I can see close up to the A or Gratia the tell tale sequence I see all the time note the way the parallel lines have a slight crenulation it you were to view them from the side angle the lines would merge...ooopss I am not supposed to be talking about this !

I'm with ebay then on that one

One of my neighbours asked me to list one of these £2 coins with the lettering upside down, I listed it for him for a week and no one at all was interested. I suppose as they go into the edgeding shoot some do flip over I don't think the machine is able reconcile the problem I suppose when you are churning out millions and no human in sight for 1/2 mile of conveyor belt it is hardly surprising this happens. even when the designs could be beautiful they just look rubbish , flat, miserable, uninspiring full of errors, and people become disinterested. I am sure they will soon do themselves out of a job or perhaps they might release old designs. Oh God! I sound like an old man

I tell you though these new £1 are so covered with the most awful flaws , metal running all over the place across the portrait and around the edges they are an embarrassment really perhaps some of the most terrible examples of British coining I have seen. Although I would argue there is a purpose behind these lines .....and marks LOL