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Picture is blurry Mike, but think good enough to be fairly confident it has been tooled. Also if had been authentic then would have expected a w.w........ which looks to be missing. That points the finger to a tooled 1858 or 1859 to me.

I'd take him to small claims court. You sold him a coin, and refunded him. He now has a coin which he has not paid for. What goes on between Richard and the RM is none of the buyer's business, is it? I'd send a letter before action telling him that if he doesn't either make payment or return the coin you'll proceed against him. I doubt you'd need to go much further.

Agreed. Or else 'old man Seaby' owned it simply as a curio, though knowing it was not authentic.

Can't be 100% sure but when blow up the picture of the one on ebay earlier I think there is that bit sticking out bottom right of the T of GRATIA which we have discussed on the forum before now.......and again typical of the 1859. There is also a die flaw on the ebay one from earlier; 4 beads from left hand side of numeral 1 and running from front of truncation to border tooth in a curved shape. I have just checked all my 1859's but cannot find a piece with same die flaw location.......but maybe another member can find on one of theirs.

Also, the 5 of the date is different to the first one, which was a small date type. Plus, the T of GRATIA has that tiny extension to the right of the base serif, referred to by Bramah (page 4), indicating that it's a tooled 1859 large date penny. With the first one, I can't tell definitively whether that extension to the base serif of the same T is there or not. I don't think it is. So maybe a tooled 1858.

It could well be the Batty coin, with the 9 altered to a 0 by removing part of the loop and closing the circle at the 9 tail. The join at 10 o'clock suggests that is one end of the added bit, but the bottom is a bit blurred. That coin was in Peck's collection, but I can't find any reference to it being sold by Spink out of the Circular, nor an article in the Bulletin if HAS bought it from Spink.

A pity the only face on image or clear image is the museum picture - but perhaps not surprising. If it stays low enough it might be worth buying just to leave crappy feedback.