Jump to content
British Coin Forum - Predecimal.com

50 Years of RotographicCoinpublications.com A Rotographic Imprint. Price guide reference book publishers since 1959. Lots of books on coins, banknotes and medals. Please visit and like Coin Publications on Facebook for offers and updates.

Coin Publications on Facebook

   Rotographic    

The current range of books. Click the image above to see them on Amazon (printed and Kindle format). More info on coinpublications.com

predecimal.comPredecimal.com. One of the most popular websites on British pre-decimal coins, with hundreds of coins for sale, advice for beginners and interesting information.

azda

2 curious questions for my inquisitive mind

Recommended Posts

Is it possible that a hammered coin can be anything other than VF or less grade wise?

Also, when grading companies grade hammered stuff do they have a different criteria than they would do for milled coins?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is it possible that a hammered coin can be anything other than VF or less grade wise?

Also, when grading companies grade hammered stuff do they have a different criteria than they would do for milled coins?

Hammered can be anything from dire to as struck (and well struck) just as milled.

Grading companies tend to be in the dark when it comes to hammered. Consequently the NGC grades for example tend to be over the top. A recent US sale had a coin graded MS65 where the strike was so bad you struggled to read it. It probably was uncirculated, but only because they had difficulty identifying it as coin of the realm and stuck it in the pending tray. Strike quality is a major contributing factor with hammered - a fact they seem oblivious to. Ignore the label on hammered coin slabs and decide for yourself if the coin is evenly and well struck, nicely centred and doesn't have any cracks or splits. That is a few too many parameters for a numbers based grading system.

Edited by Rob

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is it possible that a hammered coin can be anything other than VF or less grade wise?

Also, when grading companies grade hammered stuff do they have a different criteria than they would do for milled coins?

Hammered can be anything from dire to as struck (and well struck) just as milled.

Grading companies tend to be in the dark when it comes to hammered. Consequently the NGC grades for example tend to be over the top. A recent US sale had a coin graded MS65 where the strike was so bad you struggled to read it. It probably was uncirculated, but only because they had difficulty identifying it as coin of the realm and stuck it in the pending tray. Strike quality is a major contributing factor with hammered - a fact they seem oblivious to. Ignore the label on hammered coin slabs and decide for yourself if the coin is evenly and well struck, nicely centred and doesn't have any cracks or splits. That is a few too many parameters for a numbers based grading system.

Spot on Rob.

I believe it is a US born need to be told/reassured what a coin is and its grade and the better TPG's will even guarentee this.

The premium for another grade point can be massive.

When presented with a hammered coin usual factors don't/cannot apply.As struck hammered should all be MS...ERR take a look at the 1st strike Edward 1 pennies :o

Use your eyes when buying hammered,ignore the grade.What appeals to you will probably appeal to others.I have sent back several bought blind hammered and nowadays won't buy blind.

Spink do themselves no favours with F & VF....why not just a price range?

The beauty of hammered...you can dig em up and even clean them. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

When presented with a hammered coin usual factors don't/cannot apply.As struck hammered should all be MS...ERR take a look at the 1st strike Edward 1 pennies :o

Use your eyes when buying hammered,ignore the grade.What appeals to you will probably appeal to others.I have sent back several bought blind hammered and nowadays won't buy blind.

Spink do themselves no favours with F & VF....why not just a price range?

The beauty of hammered...you can dig em up and even clean them. :)

The problem with a price range is that the really nice example which is way better than the normal fayre will distort the figures. If you have only 2 or 3 examples available to collectors, 1 or 2 in Fine - VF and one close to mint state, then the latter will sell for multiples of the former and so set the benchmark. If you have the only lower grade coin and the best sold for say £10K, then most would expect theirs to sell for perhaps half of that without considering that most people would wait for the better one to reappear. Or, using a milled example, consider the 1667/4 half crown - 3 known, all dire, but one is less dire than the other two.

People always see what they want to see which in the case of the grade applicable to their coin is over-optimistic (or nearly always so).

A price range would also cause problems for insurance purposes as you would be obliged to revert to the price paid for your coins as opposed to replacement cost.

Edited by Rob

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As Rob and Peter have implied, it's quite possible for a hammered coin to be EF. Strictly speaking EF means a coin that exhibits very little sign of circulation, with only minimal marks or faint wear, which are only evident upon very close scrutiny. (Spink) or ... virtually perfect but will have, however, very slight wear on high points of the design ... (Dowle & Finn)

The problem as you'll know is that hammered coins were very rarely struck on a perfect flan. Consequently there are often weaknesses which make the coin less attractive or may be taken for wear, but are actually there from the outset as opposed to being due to wear. Milled coins come out the press as perfect as they can be but even then, die wear causes minor variation. How much more so with hammered.

This coin for example is pretty much 'as struck'; but you'll see there are areas that aren't as crisp as could be, particularly on the reverse. Plus there's a scratch! It's spent much of its life in a museum (Hunterian) cabinet so it should have suffered very little wear since it was acquired.

post-129-042576900 1316597557_thumb.jpg

EF? Could be, because it's difficult to distinguish softness of strike from wear from a pic. And that's why I think with hammered I'm not sure there's much point trying to micro-grade that gVF/nEF border. I'm sure you'll agree it's a blooming nice coin. As for me, I'm happy to leave it at that!

Of course, everyone is interested in price. So I think the Spink F - VF range is 'good enough'. If your coin is towards the better or worse end, it provides a guide. But in the end, what you think is an acceptable price for a coin will always be related to the condition of other similar coins you've seen and what they have gone for. That's why I'm constantly learning and revising my expectations as more material comes to light. But it's a personal thing. What I might be prepared to pay for a coin might be much more or less than anyone else, irrespective of actual grade. As Rob says, if the only examples that exist are much of a muchness, what does the grade matter if you want one? It will come down to availability and eye appeal.

That's why I'm not interested in what grading companies say. Particularly the US ones. I simply don't believe they have seen enough hammered coins to say what the 'finest example' might be and so I suspect they slant their grading based on what they have seen before, which really they shouldn't if they are supposed to be working to a system based on how much physical wear a coin has been subject to.

Edited by TomGoodheart

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh, and an example of an American description of a hammered coin that amuses me:

post-129-071950000 1316599667_thumb.jpg

Lot 2161

Great Britain. Charles I (1625-49) silver Shilling (1643-44). S-2843. Tower Mint issue, under Parliament (1642-48). "P" in brackets mm (Spink #98, struck 1643-44). Extremely elusive variety, the first time this cataloguer has ever seen this peculiar mintmark on a superior coin! The standard catalogue describes this issue as "coarse work" and that is clearly an understatement, for the die-work here is almost comical. The reason, of course, is that the talent escaped London with the king at almost the same moment this very coin was struck. The king was under threat of life and Crown even at the outset of the Civil War, when this coin was minted. He was as yet not disowned as Monarch, however, and the weak Parliament which preceded Cromwell's rise to overlordship was the official issuer of this coin, or "in the king's name" as the saying went. If you understand this groundwork, this historical context, you must perforce be impressed by this extraordinary specimen! NGC graded MS62 but the cataloguer is at a loss to explain the number. The coin is clearly Choice and without wear, peering at it under magnification. The surfaces are original and elegantly toned a medium gray color. While crudely cut, the portrait is extraordinary, suggestive of the strife of its day; the king's bodice shows some fascinating little details, vague emblems of majesty. The shield is equally interesting and well struck. So too the legends, although they are only partial, some letters being off-flan because of its shape. The rarely seen mintmark is crisp in detail. At first glance this coin looks like nothing, a crude cobbling of elements. The more you study it, though, the more you realize it's a simply superb example of this emergency coinage, made at one of England's most horrific moments, outbreak of its disastrous Civil War, which when it ended in 1660 brought back a monarchy totally different in power and attitude from that which prevailed in 1643, when this coin was made, almost even then "in memory" of once-mighty kingship. NGC graded MS-62.

Estimated Value $600 - 800.

The Cheshire Collection.

Realized $1,208

MS-62 ... and ugly!

Edited by TomGoodheart

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The problem as you'll know is that hammered coins were very rarely struck on a perfect flan. Consequently there are often weaknesses which make the coin less attractive or may be taken for wear, but are actually there from the outset as opposed to being due to wear. Milled coins come out the press as perfect as they can be but even then, die wear causes minor variation. How much more so with hammered.

Another problem with hammered is that the dies were less reproducibly made. If you have a full letter punch, then it is reasonable to assume that the character would be sunk into the die until the main body of the punch acted as a stop. With earlier hammered coins the letters are usually composites of lines, curves, wedges etc., using all of which are more likely to result in an end product of a less consistent depth. Then you also have the problem of worn dies, flan hardness, flan size, force applied when striking, number of strikes made or even at which mint the coin was made. The list is lengthy. Variation in any of the aforementioned will result in a different product every time. Even the waviness of the flan is down to how easy it was to remove the coins from the cutter. It seems a reasonable assumption that the coins were cut out of a sheet using something akin to a pastry cutter because you frequently find Saxon coins in mint state with a wavy flan. The only sensible explanation I have heard for this is that they were deformed trying to remove them from the cutter, because their as struck nature would exclude damage from circulation.

Edited by Rob

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Even the waviness of the flan is down to how easy it was to remove the coins from the cutter. It seems a reasonable assumption that the coins were cut out of a sheet using something akin to a pastry cutter because you frequently find Saxon coins in mint state with a wavy flan. The only sensible explanation I have heard for this is that they were deformed trying to remove them from the cutter, because their as struck nature would exclude damage from circulation.

That's quite possibly so with thinner / earlier coins. With larger coins like shillings it appears a number of roughly circular pieces were cut from the plate then stacked into a pile, a bit like a sausage. The ends of the 'sausage' were clamped to keep the individual blanks together and then someone went along the sausage with a hammer bashing the whole thing more-or-less circular. This means that you tend to get thicker edges and an almost concave lens like shape to the blanks. The result being that legend is well struck up but the bust/reverse design towards the centre where the metal is thinner is weak. I imagine bashing the edges also caused quite a few blanks to stick together.

Coupled with the fact that the dies were not made from one master die but punched from a number of puncheons (up to three for the bust, one for the privy mark and numerous for the lettering and elements in the royal shield) makes the liklihood of finding a perfectly struck coin nigh impossible. And that's before you take wear of dies and subsequently the coin itself into account!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

How would we extend this argument / debate into the area of Ancient Coins e.g. Roman, where coins were struck using very similar methods, but on planchets that were much thicker, and in vastly greater quantity? Certainly there are many Roman coins - especially silver denarii - that have survived in what I'd call "near mint state" but which would probably be graded EF. (Though I was gobsmacked to see a late bronze on eBay that had been graded VF by the British CGS service but if you looked at it to see wear, there was absolutely none visible; it put me off buying the item as I ended up thinking "what's wrong with it?" purely because of the grade CGS had given it - an example of under-grading doing people no favours?).

It is also a fact that Roman coins on the whole seem to be better struck than hammered coins struck maybe more than 1000 years later. It does seem there is a noticeable deterioration that occurs when you move from Saxon / Viking to Medieval.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It is also a fact that Roman coins on the whole seem to be better struck than hammered coins struck maybe more than 1000 years later. It does seem there is a noticeable deterioration that occurs when you move from Saxon / Viking to Medieval.

That's definitely the case IMO, some of the portraiture is far superior.

And lets not get onto roads....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It is also a fact that Roman coins on the whole seem to be better struck than hammered coins struck maybe more than 1000 years later. It does seem there is a noticeable deterioration that occurs when you move from Saxon / Viking to Medieval.

That's definitely the case IMO, some of the portraiture is far superior.

And lets not get onto roads....

No, LET's get onto roads if they're Roman - we'll get there quicker! :D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just a quick thought on grading of hammered coins:-

They can be either "AS" or "AS" (As Struck or As Seen)!

Sorry :rolleyes:

Bill.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just a quick thought on grading of hammered coins:-

They can be either "AS" or "AS" (As Struck or As Seen)!

Sorry :rolleyes:

Bill.

A man/lady who moves to Ilford from Wessex (Bournmouth area?)...wow she/he must of been a looker.

Truth is MOST good hammered stay in the collection.Trays of rubbish at coin fairs plus Ebay :( .This is one area where the collector needs his friendly dealer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes Peter, but at the time the move was either a case of a job continuing work similar to that which I had been doing at a railway depot (Selhurst) on the Southern Region which was closing and moving to the Eastern Region, or no job at all.

On reflection, Ilford depot was a bit like going back about twenty years on what we had previously achieved and the latter choice of no job might have been more advantageous.

My first move into the London area at Croydon was at a time when offices were being moved out of central London, so our office at Eastleigh (Hants) was closed - LOGIC STRIKES AGAIN !

Bill.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just a quick thought on grading of hammered coins:-

They can be either "AS" or "AS" (As Struck or As Seen)!

Sorry :rolleyes:

Bill.

A man/lady who moves to Ilford from Wessex (Bournmouth area?)...wow she/he must of been a looker.

Truth is MOST good hammered stay in the collection.Trays of rubbish at coin fairs plus Ebay :( .This is one area where the collector needs his friendly dealer.

For a very good reason. Due to the inconsistencies of striking, an EF details hammered piece is almost an anomaly wheras an EF milled piece has merely seen little circulation. Couple that with the fact that Saxon aside, where the amounts struck at the time were huge due to the Danegeld payments, relatively few quantities have been found in hoards post this period that were fresh from the mint. Therefore, most issues have a few choice pieces that become far more desirable than the run of the mill coins that make up the bulk of the examples extant and they are known by the people who do their homework. One Truro crown on my shortlist has been off the market for the past 102 years. If it appears at auction the price will go through the roof compared to Spink guide prices, though pro-rata not as much as the Petition Crown over the same period. At a sale in 1909, it made £30 compared to the Petition's £43. It is round and fully struck up with no double striking. Nobody is going to willingly part with such a coin.

Another attraction of hammered is their individuality. Inconsistent strikes give rise to a greater variation in eye-appeal that is not found so easily in the milled coinage where to a large extent it is determined by the toning. With many milled coins, a date run results in a lot of sameness be it full lustre or toned. A run of say Victorian bun-heads will be far less interesting to the eye than a run of privy marks even if the denomination stays the same.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Another attraction of hammered is their individuality. Inconsistent strikes give rise to a greater variation in eye-appeal that is not found so easily in the milled coinage where to a large extent it is determined by the toning. With many milled coins, a date run results in a lot of sameness be it full lustre or toned. A run of say Victorian bun-heads will be far less interesting to the eye than a run of privy marks even if the denomination stays the same.

Not to me!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
A run of say Victorian bun-heads will be far less interesting to the eye than a run of privy marks even if the denomination stays the same.

Not to me!

not to me either..........each to their own.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
No, LET's get onto roads if they're Roman - we'll get there quicker!

:D:D:D:D:D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
A run of say Victorian bun-heads will be far less interesting to the eye than a run of privy marks even if the denomination stays the same.

Not to me!

not to me either..........each to their own.

Did I ever mention how much I like the fact that pretty much nobody else here has the least interest in the shillings of Charles I?

Or at least, those that do are in the minority! LOL

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Did I ever mention how much I like the fact that pretty much nobody else here has the least interest in the shillings of Charles I?

Or at least, those that do are in the minority! LOL

it strikes me ( excuse the pun) that most here are in fact misled that hammered refers to the method of coin manufacture in this period.

in reality hammered referes to the alcoholic state of the person producing the coins :D:D:D:D

Edited by ski

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Did I ever mention how much I like the fact that pretty much nobody else here has the least interest in the shillings of Charles I?

Or at least, those that do are in the minority! LOL

it strikes me ( excuse the pun) that most here are in fact misled that hammered refers to the method of coin manufacture in this period.

in reality hammered referes to the alcoholic state of the person producing the coins :D:D:D:D

That would explain many a Premier League decision :lol:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
referes

may have caused a jolly old confusion there eh peckris with my poor spelling.....but not referee's

so............................

2 irishmen sitting in a pub having a beer.

paddys doing a crossword.....and struggling. patrick says can i help?, give me a clue.

paddy says "old macdonald had a?"

patrick says " the answer is farm"

paddy says " how do you spell it"

patrick says " E I E I O".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
referes

may have caused a jolly old confusion there eh peckris with my poor spelling.....but not referee's

so............................

2 irishmen sitting in a pub having a beer.

paddys doing a crossword.....and struggling. patrick says can i help?, give me a clue.

paddy says "old macdonald had a?"

patrick says " the answer is farm"

paddy says " how do you spell it"

patrick says " E I E I O".

LOL

Ok, here's my David Beckham joke.

David and his wife arrive back at Heathrow after a trip to New York. The cab driver says "'Ere mate, aren't you that David Beckham?"

"Yeah, that's right"

"Where you been, then?"

"New York. We went to a great restaurant there, full of celebs and the like"

"Oh yeah? What was it called then?"

David's brow furrows in thought. Then his eyes suddenly light up. "Give me the name of a London railway station"

"Paddington?"

"Nah"

"Euston?"

"Nah"

"Kings Cross?"

"Nah"

"Victoria?"

"Yeah yeah, that's it!!!" Turns to his wife, "Victoria, what was the name of that restaurant we went to in New York?"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Did I ever mention how much I like the fact that pretty much nobody else here has the least interest in the shillings of Charles I?

Well, I'm not sure you'd be right there. I'm far more interested in Charles I, than anything else, I just have to compromise. Picked this up a while ago, not really any good and moved it on, but.....

post-4698-090340100 1316978008_thumb.jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Apart from a few Rose farthings Ch1 was my 1st hammered.I have moved over the series and at one time was collecting by Monarch.I now prefer quality...unfortunatly this is proving expensive.I have a couple of as struck hoard coins and find a pleasure in studying around the subject.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×