Chris Perkins

They look a bit too nice, are they real? I thought I could notice the tell-tale sign of a couple of them being 2 thin coins stuck together, i.e. electrotypes.

Hello Andrew. Yes, that's normal for that coin.

That's one of the disadvantages of not being able to see the user IDs anymore (due to fraudulent Far Eastern 2nd chance offers). Only ebay can now tell if people are Shill bidding, and of course they probably don't give a hoot because they get their fees regardless, in fact if people bid their own items up unsuccessfully, ebay get even more fees. Have you seen the notices now that listings in some categories can only be paid for with paypal and nothing else?! Ebay own paypal of course and have long since been doing everything they can to promote paypal as the ONLY and 'preferred' method of payment for ebay items....but I don't suppose that breaks any monopoly rules as online and crossborder laws are usually stuck in the era from which Geordie posseses the most coins! In a couple of years will paypal be forced as the only payment method on everything I wonder?

Shill bidding is when you bid on your own things with a 2nd ID or get a friend to bid on your things with no intention of ever buying them in order to inflate the price artificially. i.e. if those bids up to over £100 are fakes and some plonker comes along, re-assured by the current level and wins it for £103, then the seller suceeds in selling a £3 coin for a heart wrenching price.

Bloody hell! I sell them like that for £3. And I'd scrub it up FOC if so desired! I hope that's Shill Bidding. If it isn't there should be a lot of people in need of the forthcoming Rotographic British coin grading guide.

No, I didn't deliver any personally. I was supposed to deliver a book, but forgot to take it with! But, had my bonnet not tore off my car while travelling at 70mph and had the police not stopped me for speeding on the way to the airport (in a hire car) then I wouldn't have missed my flight and I wouldn't have had to stay an extra day. Had I not stayed an extra day, I wouldn't have bought lots of .500 scrap silver from a man in Enfield and I wouldn't have made a nice little profit to cover some of my car related expenses over Christmas! Funny how things work out.

The same from me.

Oh right. But you did say above "with the I of Elizabeth pointing further to the right of the corner".

The one in the picture has a spot next to the 'T' but apart from that is nice, prooflike in fact: http://www.predecimal.com/threepence-1953-chunc-p-7132.html

Only in higher grades though, no one would want a Fine 1957S even though in true UNC they aren't that common. I find that I simply cannot sell anything from the 40s/50s without it being UNC or preferably BU. I thought there was a loophole something along the lines of it only being illegal to melt down current coins, hence the melting of pre 47 silver and pre 1970 Cu-Ni should be completely legal.

Bent, holed, completely flat etc doesn't matter at all for bullion coins. What else I always need (generalising) is BU 1940s and 50s coins, UNC 1930s coins and at least GEF 1920s coins. Gold coins always welcome and as are special/unusual coins like Wreath crowns. Anything older than 1920 should be at least VF usually (a few exeptions, e.g. 1905 shillings and most Edward VII is collectable in Fine). Fine is often acceptable for Victorian and older. You can email me at cp@predecimal.com Where are you? I could possibly arrange collection if you're not too far.

Any that are like new (really really perfect) should be kept. I imagine the vast majority, most likely all of them, will be face value fodder.

I've given this poster the details of Mr Lutt in Bedford who buys huge amounts of average circulated predecimal currency. The chance of anything being in there with any significant value is very low.

I bought a load of pre '47 silver yesterday. Paid 7x face, which would be about £440 for 500 half crowns I believe. It was mostly florins and shillings and came to £1080. I had to leave them in the UK though as it would have been far too heavy for Ryanair baggage allowance! I'd offer £440 plus your postage costs within the UK if you want to save ebay fuss.

I was in England over Christmas actually. It was an interesting trip with a very expensive begininng and end. I'll probably put more details in the non coin part as it wasn't really anything to do with coins.

I'm confused too! Can somone now list the 1911 varieties properly, and numbered from 1 - 4 or however many there are!

That looks fabulous doesn't it! Who can put a value on it when no one has recorded it? Spink would just guess, like I would guess. That kind of coin would be good for an auction because then the bidders would decide. I'd offer hard cash for it right here though!

Good point, I'd not thought that far ahead! ;-) I'm trying to find a company that can convert it into all popular ebook formats, not just PDF. This is harder than I thought as no one seems to answer me! So, it won't be available as a PDF until 2008. If you wanted a simple PDF with no bookmarks I could probably create that....£3.50 as usual. PM me.

Ah so this is another name for the hollow neck variety. I'm not sure why I removed that. Probably because I wasn't convinced by the 'hollow neck' description and that such a description could lead to confusion. I'll certainly put it back now, with a better description.

Right Geordie. It's much easier to sell a few thousand books per year compared to selling a few thousand magazines per month! WHS are not the easiest people to deal with, but there are specialist magazine distributors, unlike for books. Very difficult business.

That's if the members here would be able/willing to add something on a regular basis, which can be difficult with other comitments. I have no idea how one launches a regular magazine, and already have enough to do with the books! If someone wants to investigate properly (how to publish a magazine etc), I'm all ears. I already have a very good printer for the job.

It certainly isn't, and the seller fees for £400 are also more than £1, so no one acheives anything! A complete waste of space, like the vast majority of coins listed for sale on ebay. That's ebay's downfall and the reason that I don't usually bother looking for coins. Far too much badly graded, ill described utter toot.

New coins are all very well and obviously important for the world mints because they no doubt make a good profit on them and they therefore love to have them featured in magazines. But, most collectors are mainly interested in older coins (for UK coins that probably means pre Elizabeth II at least, and many collectors don't even touch milled!) In fact I don't know any serious collectors that even give modern issues a second glace, because they are targeted at so-called-collectors (always novices) and have very low residual values. I've seen the kind of German magazine that you refer to and I thought it was far too businessy, rather like a magazine for economists and investors than for collectors. I've not really paid much attention to them though because I'm not really interested in German coins and am even less interested in Euro coins. Surely German collectors would rather have something about older German coins, not just pre Euro but perhaps even pre WWI at least? I like the older Royal states German coinage, but with all the different Kings issuing coins it's far too complicated for its own good.

Clearly the seller has a number of IDs and has bid on it themselves for a laugh. Or, has asked friends to bid it up to that ridiculous level.

The pictures were very small Aprilia, but from what I could see, I wouldn't get your hopes up. It looks like the usual accumulation of the odd GIII copper mixed with mostly later copper and bronze, all of which looks to be quite worn. Try to link to larger pictures if you can and I'll tell you if any of the darker ones are worth doing anything with.