Chris Perkins

Ozt will be ounces Troy, which is what is usually used for bullion and coins.

I'm back in Germany now. The filling was painless and the tooth didn't hurt afterwards either, which is good. In Germany there is no NHS system like in the UK. Over here people that are PAYE (i.e workers on a fixed wage) have money taken for their healthcare automatically from the wage. If you're self employed here, as I am, the only choice is a private health insurance policy which is more expensive than basic NHS cover in the UK. It does have benifits though, like shorter waiting times than the proles! But, finding a dentist here is easy (at least it has been for me). You just pop along for an appointment and get done and dusted pretty quick. I have 2 dentists within walking distance and have been to both in the past. My bill for the large filling (which was one entire side of a tooth, right down to the gum) was EUR150. I don't know how that compares to the UK, and I suspect each treatment is slightly different. I expect I'll pay that bill myself because if I send it to my insurer they'll just put my premium up next year, which annoys me! I'd much rather have a basic cover like the NHS and be free to pay for private things when I want to. I am 29 and pay about £80.00 per month. I've never actually sent them a bill for anything, so it's a complete waster of £80 each month as far as I can tell.

The figures are thought to be correct but are of the number of coins made that year, not the number dated that year. As clarified under 'Mintage Figures' on page 4.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I fly to England for a week. Today, a filling decided to fall out and now I have half a tooth missing about 16 hours before I have to catch a plane! We called the emergency dentist and he can fit me in tomorrow moring, and will have at most 1hr 20 mins before I have to leave him to catch the plane. So, that should be fun!

Buying individual coins for scrap is very time consuming and I think the postage costs probably make it uneconomical.

Yes, they are often off the edge a bit, but it's clearly 1752.

Coming back to this, while I'm going through adjusting the prices in the book - it seems that a lot of stuff over the last 12 months has remained about the same. Also, compared to last year there have not been any choice collection offerings (like Cooke, Bamford etc). I hate to say this, but I think a lot of the prices are going to stay the same in the 2008 book (don't tell anyone, or it'll sell less!). Especially 20th century stuff, it seems to be about the same. I've already adjusted the pennies and farthings mentioned above.

The grade isn't bad for one of those, certainly around Fine. But it has been very harshly cleaned at some point.

All I have left is a couple of copies that I'm keeping for the archive. I believe WHS have 46 left!

I think that's almost certainly Vera Trinder. 38 Bedford St, just off the Strand.

Vera Trinder in the Strand should hopefully have some promptly. Possibly Michael Coins in Notting Hill and you could even order it from Spink and eventually WHSmith, Borders and WG Foyles, but I think Vera Trinder should be quickest.

You like the look of that eh! Actually there will be a couple of little changes to the cover...main thing is that the coin images will be split so they don't overlap each other. I think the free coin is going to be an excellent sales incentive. In fact I'm already selling them as we speak! Bertrams just called and want to meet me at the Frankfurt Bookfair (because I told them that their main competitor is buying more than 2x the books they do, which is true). Another wholesaler ordered 200 copies today bringing total pre publication sales so far to 1050 books. And yes, it really won't be ready until October 10th, possibly a day or 2 earlier. I'm just finishing it this week before it goes to print the week after.

Simply send them all to me and I'll give you 60% of however I price them!

I expect 924 the cow is probably long been turned into T-Bone and Rump.

I've got a wonderful old Victorian book on glues and pastes! It lists all the receipes for making glues suitable for just about everything. Problem is, many of the ingredients are no longer easily available or have changed their names.

I've certainly seen coins of about that age that have been stuck together. Even back then, a double headed coin would have been handy to have if you wanted your team to bat first!

I wouldn't get too excited, in 99% of times they are cleverly engineered trick coins made from 2 halves, hollowed out around the beads so that the edge shows no join.

I knew her personally (the cow, not your wife!) I expect it might make £5 on its own with good pictures. It is a very very weak '8' and the rest of the digits are ok. Who knows with ebay though, it'll probably not do anything much! Go on then, I'll give you a fiver for it, and add it to my 'unusual' pile. Have you got any silver coins, or anything well above average. If so, I'd like to save your time on ebay and make you a fair offer for them.

Filled die, or a weak punch or a combination. You do sometimes see weak numbers (with a trace of the number there) but that one is very obvious and interesting as such.

Yes, I noticed some of the things on the list, like savings, soap and fruit that I thought were probably not all that common in many households in 1888.

Another notification that the image upload now works again. This means that you can now post images in messages and it also means you can add/change your avatars etc. A path relating to the server that 'predecimal.com' resided on previously was to blame. It was hidden away and I finally found it after some pointers from the Invision knowledgebase.

I've fixed the image upload problem! It should also mean that avatars can now be changed/added in the normal way! Here's proof...

Oh my god, I've just fixed the image upload problem!! Chris, you should now be able to upload the image yourself by using the 'File attachments' prompt under the area where you write the post.

Yes, scanning is fine for most things. I got a new camera the other day which seems to do the trick pretty well. Don't use a flash and always rest the camera on a mini tripod because it's not really possible to hold it perfectly still when taking such a close up image. I still have my old camera, which is great (and only 3.2 mega pixels) but has a broken battery door.

No I'd have bought it for £80 and sold it within about 10 minutes for £140!