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Do not cease hostilities or cede an inch to Russia as it would give them a breathing space. Your perceived weakness will result in them resuming their expansion when they have had time to regroup. They need to be forced out and the west needs to support them in this. By all means set up a demilitarised zone once ejected which could be run by the UN if necessary, but do not give them a territorial gain as a reward for invading. A wide enough buffer zone would give them something that potentially removes any NATO troops from the Ukrainian border, and also means that Russia couldn't sit on Ukraine's border, waiting to invade. Russia would likely never accept this as it would interfere with their centuries old habit of invading their neighbours. It's what they do best. Russia has killed many millions of Ukrainians in the past simply for being Ukrainian and would do so again given they look down on anybody from outside of Moscow/St. Petersburg. Do not encourage them in doing a rerun by handing over people who don't want to be part of Russia. When Russia is taking children as 'orphans' and resettling them by adoption with Russian families, it isn't because many of them didn't have parents. Russia's biggest problem is demographics, and continuing the conflict is exacerbating this. Every generation they have a cull of young males due entirely to their empire building. Maybe only 15000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, but Ukraine with 10x that number to date has set them back at least a generation in development. Russia is a cancer on humanity and hopefully will implode and break up at the end of all this.

Sorry I still have to list the Balmbergers...these are a special group referred to as Crude copies and you are right they are pretty ugly ...like the evasion copies I think the uglier the are the scarcer they are LOL well I suppose if someone gave you a one as a present you would think what a S****e present and fling it !!! I call these ones the "ol big nose" type

Must admit those balmbergers are not the most attractive coins in the world

Likely nothing suspicious. When you have a reduced listing fee weekend, you take down the most expensive items, or those with only a day or two to go, and then relist to keep the fees down. Can save a fortune.

After my mistaken identification of the 8+J above, I decided to check my other two that I had down as reverse K. Turns out that I have both an 8 and a 9, reverse I. So F313, F314, F315 crossed off in quick succession. A further search on eBay, turned up this one, which arrived this morning. Reverse K. ? Paired with 9. F317.

Just noted that the 1849 half farthing model is not in any of tony barters books must admit I am surprised there must be less than five or six out there. Must be worth a couple of hundred quid I would think . By the way if anyone knows tony (Yes I know he has sold his collection) would they like to mention it to him , thanks .

Like the guy who took exception when I suggested they were collecting opinions. Was it MS65 1967 pennies? Whatever, really rare because only a handful had been slabbed in such exalted grade. Thus proving that most people still retain their marbles.

How about one of the major driving forces behind this "pop top" business? Registry sets! Yikes. The TPGs rate people's submitted sets but note that all coins must be from that TPG and no others included. I probably let my pride get the better of me, but thrice with regards to sixpences and shillings (Victoria and George V) and Victoria half sovereigns, I suggested to each poster on one of the chat rooms that possibly I might blow their set(s) out of the water but chose not to party at their end of the pool & of course they took exception. I guess my real point is that there are many coins that are not slabbed or not entered into registry set competition.

The nice thing about George V sovs is that you can get really good examples at bullion prices. Something like 440 million were minted in total and they were uncirculated for most of the 22 years they were in production. Most of mine would grade between AU-58 and MS-63 and I've got a 1918 that would probably do better than that. They're nice coins but Georges in that condition are fairly common and they're not worth grading. I know folks who love their premium slabbed coins and actually buy proof sets from the RM to send off to NGC in pursuit of the coveted PF70 Ultra Cameo. However, I can't really bring myself to get excited about slabbed coins, let alone paying top dollar for them. One can see the point in the US with the enormous trade in restoring Morgan dollars and suchlike. Having an expert certify that the thing is at least genuine, especially when you're going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a coin with a melt value of $20, sort of makes sense. Buying a brand new proof coin and immediately bundling it off to a grading firm - not so much.

I dont think NGC want this customer........... https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/6672546-013/65/

If you're inexperienced it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference. But as Richard says, with a true beaded border, the beads are fully separate from the rim, all the way round the 360 degrees. With some, due to minting issues, some of the teeth are away from the border, and do appear as separate discrete "beads", but they aren't beads they are teeth.