Starting Place

[Guest darkmast2]

I've got a selection of coins I found in my cupboard the other day that I used to collect a few years ago. I have quite a few British as well as other country coins but i'm mainly interested in the British coins at the moment.

Is there a website somwhere that I can visit to find out the information for these coins ? At the moment I have coin guide book I bought back in 2000 and I am going to get the new 2003 one but in the meantime I was hoping there was a website or some other resource I can use to get started. Ideally something that would help me identify the coin and give me an idea of their worth, of which i'm sure it won't be a small fortune but one can always dream

thnxs

[Chris Perkins 223]

Dear Darkmast,

Well you may find my advice hub and listings of coins for sale will help you on your quest:

http://www.predecimal.com/coinadvice.htm

http://www.predecimal.com/coinsforsale.htm

And this book is great value for only GBP6.50 inc postage!

http://www.predecimal.com/collectors_coins.htm

There are other sites out there that also have listings, none are of course as good as mine!

Chris Perkins

www.predecimal.com

[Guest darkmast2]

Thank you for your quick response. Those links are very interesting and helpful. Now all I have to do is try figure out which grade the coins fall into.

P.S. What do you use to get the pictures of the coins ?

[Chris Perkins 223]

Yes grading is the most difficult thing for beginners.

I use a flatbed scanner at 200 or 300dpi and perhaps adjust the brightness of the result when dark coins are involved.

Chris

www.predecimal.com

[Guest darkmast2]

Hmm good idea that, I never thought of doing it that way as I didn't think it would come out right. I thought you might have used a digitial camera or something.

I'll give that a go and see how I get along with it.

[Chris Perkins 223]

With some coins it works better than others, and be prepared to fiddle a bit with the settings!

Chris

www.predecimal.com

[Sylvester 15]

Silver coins are by far the easiest (i find) to scan. Gold is not so easy. Copper, well it depends on the lustre (shine) of the coin, the dark toned dull ones are much harder to scan than the brighter ones (by no means should you clean them though!)

Sylvester.