Chris Perkins

I had webspace restraints/extra costs with the old hosts. They were taken over and eventually became utterly incompetent in July 2012. Now it's hosted by a bloke in Gravesend and there are less restrictions and more space etc, as well as an excellent service and lots of features for me to play with.

I know that you all have all of my books and know every page by heart, but just for the newbies yet to discover the fabulousness of Predecimal/Rotographic, here is my £2.50 coin as featured in the last Check Your Change. It really bugs me how this mutant ever came to exist. The inner part is of a £2 coin (2006 Brunel), but slightly larger. The outer ring is part of a 50p (2006 VC hero), but is round and has a milled edge. It is the most unique and extreme mint error that I've ever seen.

Experiment by saving a whole page of the forum (this page for example). If there are save options, chose the one that looks to imply that it saves everything and not just the basic html - which should also result in it saving a wee folder full of sundries such as images and the like. To make sure that it's saved everything: Unplug your internet connection and open the html file of the page and see if there's anything missing or weird looking. That's what I'd do. I have no experience of doing it in Firefox though and only distant memories of trying it years ago with IE.

Members are now able to store 1000 messages and also are able to send attachments in PMs. Re saving in HTML and keeping the structure so that there are no externally hosted links, images etc: I think there is a way to save an absolute copy of the page locally, but I don't think it's the default in IE. In fact, as the forum uses php (and cleverly displays itself instantly as html) with a database behind it, I'm not entirely sure if saving a hard copy of such a page is possible!

I think even if the DM put something online today bringing people back down to earth about the likely future values, they will still keep on selling for silly prices for a few weeks. Once people get an idea in their head about something being valuable, they hate to let that idea go, despite instinct, facts and logic telling them the exact opposite.

I bet this was all started deliberately (not mentioning any names of course). The 1983 NEW PENCE 2p (in it's BU year set) is worth £500 - £700. And that's proper rare! Assuming there are max 200 of the Aquatics 2011 error 50p, that makes mine 1000x rarer than the 2009 Kew 50p, so should I look forward to at least £200,000 end price?! I've written to the DM just now.

Scarce compared to the many millions of the other dates in circulation, but not rare. The 210,000 is plenty to cover the number of people that want one to keep.

£8 BU, £10 in the card folder! Not published just yet, so I can incorporate this madness and put a current price as it is right now, and with some accuracy predict a future price somewhere near the old level. Gullible fools. I despair.

I can't change the title now that it has bids. I can append something to the bottom of it. I'll do that. The number of watchers has risen to 61 in recent hours.

How can people be so bloody gullible, and what do they all want to do with them? Keep them as investment? Or more likely, re-sell for a quick profit. 210,000 coins. Exactly the same old rubbish as with the dateless 20p and every NEW PENCE 2p. The general public believe any old hype, it's insane. It should help my 50p though as people will be looking a lot in the 50p section. Now I wish I'd written 'RARE' or 'LOOK' in my item title!

It was £155 after 2 days and there are 44 watchers so far. Not bad for a decimal!

Had that problem before with scanning notes for books! These days the BofE put pics on their website and grant permission for them to be used in books as long as they are credited. So this year I saved £50! I think if you scan it to disc and then open in the standard Microsoft Paint, it should work and allow you to edit it.

Yes, 10-12 probably is a bit low on reflection. Someone else wrote to me over ebay stating that they knew of about 16 and estimated a total of 300. I'm pretty sure it was at least some of the first batch that contained the error. The RM estimates 600 in total. That seems very high for the surprisingly few have come to light though.

Stop having a go at £1000. From then on it's serious bidders only!

All have a go at it. Only stop when it gets to £1000!

I've listed my withdrawn 'lines on face' 2011 Aquatics 50p on eBay, in case anyone fancies a punt! http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271404710693?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649

That's right. What have you got that's for sale and not on eBay?

The members only bit? It's still there and visible just to members. Should be the 2nd one down. See it?

Yes, that's right, I'm merging some things to make it a bit simpler. Have also added a few new ones, e.g. the separate area for For Sale/Wanted and a TPG sub forum. Everything is still here, just (in some cases) in a different place. The top 2 and Ooo err, hmm are now all in the top forum. The Rotographic related posts are all in one area without separate, largely unused areas. If there's anything you can't find, let me know.

Yes, yes yes! I should have known you'd all crash in here. Suggestions noted.

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There's a lot of old school people still out there! My cousin Graeme Monk (we established once that he's most probably related to one of my maternal great-aunt's husbands) of Croydon Auctions was along the right lines with his low fees etc. Shame he's giving it up.

I sent an assortment of 3rd Reich bits to Lockdales once. Carefully itemised and packed. When they got them they said they were all repros, which for most items was no doubt true. However when I got them back 2 pieces were missing - a tie pin and a badge. I enquired and they said they'd never seen them! I packed them myself. And eventually I never heard anything. No apology, no compensation, nothing. So, to me they are not just thieving the postage, they steal the potential auction lots too! Since then I'd had nothing to do with them. So, if people find this post: Be warned. Lockdales are very dubious auctioneers.

Is the blue bin for your old magazines Peter?

I wonder if it was somehow corrupted on download. I used Calibre to create it from the mobi file, so that should be absolutely fine. I'll email it to you.