blakeyboy

Agreed. Very true, about the 1864's as well, Martin. But I will add the 'look out for the forgotten VF area' again. Ooh- rarity estimates for different grades???? My kind of book!

Yep! (....and when it crosses the Meridian it's summertime in Azerbaijan, and Formica Day in the Solomon Islands. Lucky them. )

Really??? I'm amazed......mind you, that means were are now a shilling...... See what I did there?

I have a feeling there are way more than 25 extant, since I've just had a look, and I've got 8....:) ( Unless everybody is happy to believe there are only 25, so I'll get a few more, be then able to control the world price, and I can then charge what I like for them and then I'll be rich, I tell you, RICH!!!!........ ....at this point the nice nurse calms me down and gives me my Horlicks .....)

Or, of course, not list them, but send the list to a trusted member who can collate the lot....

I think good ones are undervalued. Another interesting thing is trying to find a nice VF example...you see a few in fine or worse, and a few in GEF or better. The middle ground is not really represented...why..? Is it because those are all in less valuable/less well funded collections, that, like mine, popped up cheap once, and won't likely be replaced with a better one, and appear on the market? Rare in high grade, certainly, but seemingly very rare in the middling grades, if you judge a population by what appears at auction, which is, by it's very nature, a skewed resource.... Maybe one day we could all list our collection, with just F number and honest grading, and after collation, a more accurate (maybe graphical) picture of what is actually extant will appear? I know that the inherent 'Collection Bias' that reflects TODAYS selection, rather than an historic one, will be present, but it will hopefully be more of a curve rather than a curve with a dip in the middle? It would be very very interesting....:)

I look for them several times a week on Fleabay - I've done this for years now- I hardly ever see one, even in worn condition. It doesn't suffer from the 'Collection Bias' that has flooded the world with worn 1912.1918/1919 'Heaton pennies, ( maybe 1875H too) or BU 1901's (because that was the shiny one in the pocket of the person the day they heard Victoria had died) etc etc.. It's not spotted by non- numismatists over the years. F79 is the No1 penny for me that seems to have it's rarity rating way out..... Finding a really good 'un without paying over the odds for a selected one at an auction is proving impossible. Mine is a nice GVF bought when someone didn't know what it was and put a BIN of £15.....that'll do....

I know very little about copper pennies, in fact, what I do know about them could be written in 48-point type on Donald Trump's brain, but you've all managed to make this a damn good read. Thanks Guys, and well done!

I did try and phone them this morning but they were understaffed....

Clearing my folk's house. In the lounge, a pile of small electrical items by the chairs, all in a 4-gang. I went to unplug the 4 plugs, and the 4-gang fell to bits. Complete bio-degradation. Cheap Chinese crap. Got away with it - I'd switched off the wall socket . The plug is just holding together too. A child could crush it to powder. Could have killed so easily, or started a fire. Check yours!!!!

It is very very interesting to me how many need to exist before a variety like a 'missing sea' commands a premium. The psychology of it is fascinating. I'm waiting for some more 1880 missing sea type to turn up, so my seemingly only child example might accrue value...:) Mind you, I don't think the guy or gal who finds an 1863 penny with a '1' beneath the date will be in the same position.... Maybe the feeling that it may well exist is like those scientists who could see a hole in the periodic table, and tried to discover an element that fitted.... ( 'A tale of seven elements' by Eric R. Scerri is well worth a read if you like this sort of stuff. )

Nice- how many extant?

Donald! Duck!

I'll alert the Media.

Is a definitive fact that the obverse and reverse dies were single pieces of metal, and not concentric, so the outside could rotate like in the picture leaving the centre basically struck as usual?

I find rotational analysis such as this fascinating- 'forensic numismatics'... I don't know enough about coin striking to probably be correct on this, but if a coin is in a collar when struck it can only rotate about it's centre( ? ), unless something goes strangely wrong, but with hammered, is it true that a coin can therefore rotate about any point, even about a point that is outside it's own circumference? Or move with no rotational element at all - just a sideways move? Did it always take more than one hammer blow?

Preferably someone else's....

Ah- that's what immediately came to mind- never knew it was the Big Yin who said it. One of my favourite quotes. Another was first popularised by Paul Begala in the late '80's- "Politics is show business for ugly people."

From the Guardian website today: The Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for heavy snow across eastern England, with people told to expect travel delays, power cuts and a chance that rural communities could be cut off. The big picture: the right kind of snow, London 2009 People in East Anglia woke up on Saturday to a thick layer of snow that had settled overnight, with the conditions expected to continue until the afternoon. Most of the rest of England and Scotland have a yellow snow alert in place, which will last until Saturday evening. Oh great.... You know what Frank Zappa told us about yellow snow, well, it looks like we are going to get some......:(

I think biting sarcasm for the sake of balance is a misunderstood art form!

It was five of my one-a-day.....:-)

I went to school with Matt Sandblasted-Proof, if that's any use.....

I wonder- in No10, in the Covid meetings do they toss a special coin to make decisions? You know - the one with 'Vaccinate' on one side and 'Vacillate' on the other....?