Pavel

It sold for US$ 4,400 at that auction. The mint mark seems to be the same as that of the five sovereigns.

It was pointed out to me that the design is more like the five sovereigns issued at the same time, of which the Sydney Mint did strike some. Here's an example that went from the Sydney Mint to the Melbourne Mint to Museums Victoria: https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/77707 I am wondering if they could have used the same dies to strike one from silver too?

Can someone please shed some light on this? Apparently, it was sold as a "Sydney Mint pattern" at a German auction some time back.

If you look through their other photos of proofs, it seems they were not stored properly so an awful lot of them - which they got straight off the Royal Mint as specimens sent to the branch mints in Melbourne or Sydney - look weird, with patchy toning etc.

For the penny, 101A is 1880 - so is this one 97A or a different (not listed) variety?

Thanks Rob, much appreciated.

Good day, would somebody be able to help me identify the correct Freeman references for these three proofs? https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/60093 - penny 1879, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/82685 - halfpenny 1879, and https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/57818 - farthing 1879?

I will "swing by" the LCA auction, as the English expression has it so I can probably at least get you a coffee for the trouble 🙂

Well, yes... If I could pick them up from somewhere in London between June 1st and 3rd, I can buy a reasonable (small) number of books off you and carry them in my checked luggage on my way back to Australia?

This guy always has these rare Australian crowns... https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Australian-1938-KGVI-Caseys-Cartwheel-Crown/303148406811 I bought one (gave him the benefit of the doubt, and the photo was blurry so not immediately obvious as fake). Wasn't even silver. He refunded immediately and sent me a note that he was "horrified" to learn it was fake; he bought a bucketload of them apparently "from a garage sale" (Aliexpress, rather?), and is still selling them. ps has other accounts too, with the same coin descriptions, but always with new photos.

Personally, I would advise the owner of the site to get https. It's a pain in the backside to get it running; it took me half a day to configure it on my site, and I am (sort of) competent as server admin. But, on the other hand, he will just get someone more competent than myself to do it for him. The reason I recommend it is not security only, but also that recently Google started "punishing" sites that don't have https - they are considered unsafe, and get lower search ranking. In other words, you lose visibility and visitors.

Exactly what I am trying to achieve 🙂 But I also want to have "present value" of that money, so I apply inflation correction based on OECD data. Long term, I want to be able to track "return on investment" over a period. And yes, I know coin collecting is a hobby and not a sound investment strategy as such but I want solid figures to a) back this statement, and b) hopefully find some exceptions to the case.

Would you be willing to donate some, or maybe just allow me to borrow them for a short period? I only need to copy the data, long-term I don't need the actual books, my wife is already complaining about the two bookshelves I have taken over for the purpose. I suppose I could just take photos of the pages or something.

It's not even a post... I am trying to edit my profile, and just adding one word - "Australia" to the location field?

I can tell you why I want them, and maybe you can give me a hint of what I need? Specifically... for my site, I need old pricing data so I need books like Remick (I have the third edition only) with extensive listings, and coin prices in a usable form (e.g. not "between 1 and 10 pounds depending on grade", as some books tend to have). I put these into a CSV, then import it into the site, mangle the data with some basic arithmetic (e.g. apply inflation data, then make a linear regression), then generate price graphs and trends. You can see an example here: https://onlinecoin.club/Coins/Country/New_Zealand/Half_Crown_1940/ for the NZ Centennial Crown - note the tables and the graphs, and see FAQs for background. Currently, I only have these for New Zealand (thanks to the publishers of the John Bertrand catalogues allowing me to use their data) and a handful of others, but I want to expand to all other countries. The site is under construction, but eventually I hope it will cover basically everything (or a reasonable part thereof).