TomGoodheart

That's the scanner Peck. Here is an example with my newer printer scanner and while it's another coin I think it just lacks something in comparison with the earlier example. I think if you have a scanner that produces acceptable results, great. But I just don't seem to be able to find how to tweak the images to my satisfaction with this one.

I've used both a scanner and camera. All of my earlier attempt were with the scanner, a cheap little thing that came with my pc package. My only complaint is that images are a little .. 'flat' and there's' no way to pick out highlights, beyond rotating the coin so the light hits at a different angle. The 'background in this case is just the inside of the lid of the scanner.. Example here: However our latest printer (an Epson) wasn't as easy to set up and as we have a small point-and-shoot camera I tried that and was happy with the results. I used Paint to draw in the background because I think it looks better. The advantage of a camera are that I can adjust the illumination. I shoot in bright daylight on my kitchen table, supporting the camera, which I set on macro, with nothing more than a coffee mug to avoid too much shake! But it takes quite a lot more time and effort than the scanner. In the end I guess it depends on your resources and what you want the photos for. Mine are really a record for insurance purposes so it's enough that you could tell my coin from another. Of course, it's brilliant that they are good enough to show off acquisitions too! But I wouldn't want to invest much more money or time just for that ...

Well, the laptop arrived. Windows 7 was not the horrible experience I had feared and works acceptably close to Vista. There are a few niggles, mostly for the price. Firstly, the thing came with no word processor/ spreadsheet / office package (!) OK, it has a trial version of Office 2013, but I don't want to buy something on top of what I already paid! Thankfully I have an old disk with Office 2007 but I'm not too impressed that it didn't even have Works. The case is definitely plastic. OK, it's light. And having taken the last one apart a few times, I suspect it's strong enough. But it could have been made to feel a bit more robust. Other than that, it's odd things like there's no physical volume control for the sound system. My old laptop had a little dial. This you just have to use one of the f buttons. The SD card port is smaller. I used to have a card I used for memory expansion, which fitted the old laptop neatly. The new one the card protrudes by nearly 1cm so having it permanently in the slot would risk damaging the card and slot. Annoying. Otherwise it's fine, just the usual nuisance of familiarising yourself to something new. The keyboard layout is slightly different (there's a numeric pad which I didn't use to have) so I find myself catching the wrong keys occasionally. I'm still trying to get it to hibernate (hopefully fixed, one of the network adapters was set so it could wake the laptop from sleep). And I still need to tweak the mousepad settings to exactly how I want. On the plus side.. It works!! The colour and screen resolution are good. And unlike Wifey's pc, when I look a images of coins they are actually round, not oval! You can imagine how irritating that was!!

Yes, you don't really want your laptop on, well, ... your *ahem* lap. Get's a bit too cozy for comfort! I have mine on one of those cooling tray thingies. The fan stopped working a few months after I got it (actually the fan worked, just the blades all snapped off one by one! Cheap Belkin tat), but it still helps ventilation and keeps it cooler than if it were directly on a desk or something.

Yeah, it's annoying. The laptop is barely 5 years old! If it were a part I could source easily (and cheaply!) I'd happily try to fix it. But I'm wary of throwing any more money at it when a new battery, ac/dc adapter and connector didn't resolve it. Still, teh interweb is wonderful and I was able to reassure myself that Win 7 isn't as bad as I'd anticipated. In fact it sounds as if it has pretty much all the features I liked from Vista, but may even be better. What gets me is that a W7 version costs more than the bloody W8! I did price up a Windows 8 loaded version, but when you then add in the cost of buying W7 to replace the OS, it was the same or more than pre-loaded. Plus surely technology should have gotten cheaper in those intervening 5 years? It doesn't seem like it to me! Anyway, I've gone for another Toshiba as they're familiar. I reigned myself in and didn't go for the 6GB. I can always add memory myself. And on balance I got what I wanted, an acceptably fast Core i5 processor, reasonable built in speakers and, from reviews, good resolution and colour display. It took me about a year to tweak the last one to how I wanted it. So now I have another little project to play with! Goodbye Rocxibl, my old friend.

Thanks! That sounds like just what I was thinking of!

Well I used the diagnostic charts, ran through all the options and tests and ended up with it saying i should buy a new system board. Which I take to be what most call a motherboard. Since I couldn't see a new one on ebay and prices seem to be £250+ I've just bought myself a new laptop. Just in case I decided I wanted to do such a crazy thing, anyone know what would happen if I popped the HDD from my current one into the new? Or is it better to get a cradle connector and just link it up? It's just I think I have everything I want saved externally, but .. well, there's likely to be somethig I've forgotten to transfer, isn't there?

LOL Shows how little I know! There was I thinking it looked like an Ashmore obv! Good find!

Bah. I fitted the new socket, but it still shows no sign of life. Pretty sure I put it all back correctly. Bother.

Interesting. While I would not claim to be an expert, this is certainly not a die obv/rev combination I've ever seen for Stephen before. Do you happen to know who attributed (ID'd) it?

Oh, I say! That's bloody well just not cricket! Typical Johnny Foreigner! Thank God we never won anything because we were better at fighting!

I had a quick search and it looks as if Jersey issued a series of 'shipbuilding' related coins, with different names impressed upon them. So I suspect it was done at the Mint. Though I couldn't find out whether they decided the ships themselves weren't recognisable enough and added the names afterwards, or they were part of the original design.

As Peckris effectively says, it's very difficult to predict how much someone will pay for a 'one off'. You need a number of rarities to sell before you can establish a likely 'market value'. That said, some people collect errors like this and with the backing of the RM letter confirming that it's not been 'created' as a novelty, but is a genuine error it might do OK. How much? Well, the 'undated' 20p was well known and eventually settled to about £40 each although the earlier sales were in some cases much higher. The only way to find out how much someone will pay is .. to sell it I'm afraid. Though I don't think a bit of publicity (such as contacting a local newspaper) would hurt first! Local man Finds Rare Coin! might just be what's needed to raise some interest! Alternatively, you could contact Chris, the owner of this site and see if he's interested? Assuming you're keen to sell?

Yes, I bought a new battery. But normally, even if the battery is not connected, the indicator lights that show when it's on mains power illuminate. They don't at present, suggesting no power is getting to them. I'm hoping it's a connection issue. I'll replace the connection socket as I know the adapter works and hope it shows some signs of life!

Ah, yes. I remember something about that now from when I upgraded the memory chips. I found a video on yuotube that shows how to take the thing apart. Quite simple, although they could have surely made it so you didn't have to undo quite so many little screws and take so much of it apart to get to what is effectively an external port! There's no obvious socket damage, but it's one of the things that came up when I searched for a dead laptop so I'm hoping it's that simple. Of course it might end up like when I replaced the CMOS battery on my wife's Dell pc. We now have two new drive segments, two versions of Windows and neither boots up from switch on, so you have to go through F1 every time. Bloody technology!

My laptop no work. It's a Toshiba Equium A210-1AS. Similar to the Satellite series afaik. Thursday it was fine before I went to work. I put it to hibernate as usual and when I got home ... it was dead as a dunkin donut. Not only does it not power up as it should, it does absolutely nothing. If I plug in the ac/dc adaptor, there are none of the lights that indicate it's on mains power or that the battery is charging. No fan, the DVD port doesn't open, the screen is black. Nothing at all. I tested it by taking it to work where my boss has a similar Toshiba laptop. I plug in her adaptor, which works fine in her laptop and mine still shows no sign of life. But if I use my adaptor in her laptop it says it's connected, so it's not the adaptor. I'm hoping that it's the jack socket and that it's just that the power isn't getting to where it's needed. I was quoted £80 to replace the socket, so I've ordered one off ebay and will do it myself. Somehow £2.95 seemed more attractive than £80 that might not fix the problem. But it it doesn't ... well, I'm no computerist, so that's me out of ideas. Anyone else any suggestions what might have caused the problem and what might fix it? Sure I could buy a new laptop. The files I care about are all saved elsewhere. But I don't like Windows 7 (can you still get that?) so suspect I'd hate W8. I don't like IE9 so can't see 8.1 being appealing. I don't want touchscreen or a tablet. I like Vista. I like IE8. I want my laptop back. Any ideas anyone?

It depends how flexible you want to be. For example if you included shillings you could add variety with gun money (James II), shilling tokens (George III), and colonial issues (Windsors). The only denomination that isn't continuous in milled coinage (apart from oddities like fractionals) is the florin. And if you include British colonies you can have a coin of Edward VIII too! Agreed. If you start with the cheaper more recent stuff there's a risk prices will rise as you progress backwards. As Paul says, if you have a 'wants' list and stick to it you have the chance to pick up pieces as you go.

Depends if you are including hammered, in which case the only denomination that goes all the way back AFAIK is the penny! You'd need to decide how you wanted to proceed when silver pennies were switched from regular currency to Maundy, but it would be possible to get a complete run to the present day with time and money.

I didn't want to hijack Declan's thread but was interested in Rob's comments about the grading of his 1684 shilling(?) Now, we all know that grading has changed over the years. You could call it less strict. We've all seen previously listed coins creep up (but somehow never down (!) the grade scale). Or maybe it's just that more 'sub' grades between Fine, Very Fine and Extremely Fine have opened up? But I was curious as to .. why? Is it just a commercial thing? After all, while we don't have things like the American's Red and Grey books that insist the difference between an MS 64 and MS 65 should be $xx, grades do influence price. The thing about that is that the coins themselves haven't changed, have they? Rob's coin was a nice coin and still is. Other similar graded coins haven't all been melted down making it rarer surely, so it's still on a par with the same coins it would have been compared to back in the 1960s. Or has it? Has teh interweb brought more coins than could have been known in the 1960s to light and now we have more comparative specimens? Some of which will inevitably be better, ... others worse. Views? Opinions?

I've been thinking again about this, partly as a result of comments about toning on another forum. One participant said of AT: "Prove it... that's the rub. How do you prove it was intentional exposure instead of years of incidental exposure. But since it is exactly the same chemically [AT and NT] that's why a purist doesn't differentiate between pretty and damaged." I guess if one had to compile a list of 'coin crimes' there are some that would get you on Santa's naughty list and others, not so much ... 1) Sanding down one side of a coin and engraving it .. well, Victorians did this and while it would be a 'no no' now, people do collect such things! 2) Drilling a hole through it. OK, I admit guilt here. I wanted a Mercury dime on a cord for luck. And I did do it to a gold touchpiece, though a Jonson Matthey replica, not a real 18th century Angel of course! And holed siege pieces, well, we just have to live with those. 3) Cleaning with sand, brillo pads, or whizzing. 4) Varnishing 5) Giving it a quick 'rub' to bring out the shine(!) or the spit and aluminium foil thing. 6) Colorization (again and spelling deliberate!) 7) Adding a bit of subtle colour to make it look less straight-off-the-production-line. Anyone else ones to add? Or re-order according to views?

I just read that Lou Reed died. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJpQJWpVJds Brings back happy memories.

Looking forward to what 'Met' comes back with next, "anti-American racists" indeed!! Odd thing is ... he's based in the UK according to his profile!

If Peter and I get bumped off Coin Community Forum it's all my fault! I couldn't resist chipping in on the subject of *coughnaturallycough* toned coins again!

LOL I get a similar thing from Lockdales. Kinda fun to see stamps still with 1/2p values. I do wonder if Royal Mint plc. will stop accepting such things one day. Mine got to charity shops, like the Red Cross to sell on.

What are the letters on the shoulder? (Look like CHR? to me). Might give a clue.