TomGoodheart

Because of course anything £2499 or less is of no interest to people who knock over grannies for their purses, steal dvd players or nick vodka from corner stores to sell for harder drugs? Oh, even with a left mindset, I find it depressing Rob!

I think I'd strike too if my paycheck was always in the post but never delivered!

The CGB blog suggests that this follows on from the French post office's decision last year to restrict carriage of 'Declared Value' items (which I presume equates to British Registered Post or insured post). Items over 750 euro in value can apparently only be collected from main post offices. Why? The Post Office does not want to put their employees lives at risk, says Michel Prieur of CGB. He goes on to say "This is the famous French method, stop everything and nothing bad happens! Always the same logic: let cars only go 5 mph and there will be zero deaths on the road! Stop all activity and there will be no fraud! All die and no one will be sick!" If my and Google's translation skills are up to speed.

Apparently it is interdite (prohibited) to send coins by post in France. As of 21 May this year. Original decree here for anyone who wants to read it (in French): L'insertion de billets de banque, de pièces et de métaux précieux [inclusion of bank notes, money and precious metal] est interdite dans les envois postaux [in postal communications is prohibited], y compris dans les envois à valeur déclarée, les envois recommandés et les envois faisant l'objet de formalités attestant leur dépôt et leur distribution. Which is a bit of a pain for companies like CGB.fr who deal in .. coins. Fortunately they have taken the sensible decision that rather than close down and make all their staff redundant, they will just ignore it. "We will not apply this law which is backwards and perverse. To do so would mean the immediate closure of cgb with the loss of twenty-five jobs as over the counter transactions without mailing represent less than 1% of our turnover" (If anyone can improve upon my translations, please do!) As for what this means for people who sell a coin to someone in France and then post it to them ... I have no idea! Hmmm. What a mess.

Yes, that's the sort of thing I had in mind. Not necessarily mixed with the drink. Well, not at first anyway!

LOL Yes, I am quite skinny, though my testicles are in the usual place. And though I enjoy outdoors, I can walk to the local climbing wall. Unless I climb old Victorian railway bridges (which kinda needs ropes to be interesting) the closest bouldering would be somewhere like Derbyshire, which is a bit of a drive. Hence the lazy option of somewhere close, with nice padded floors to fall onto and a cafe to sit in while I recover afterwards! Did I mention I also suffer from vertigo?

I'm wondering if maybe I'm going through a mid-life crisis? Though I have to say I thought I'd done that in my late 30s! Of course, being me, I just have to be different. Instead of yearning after a Porche, I'm thinking of taking up (indoor) bouldering. Which on the face of it sounds like a sport for Gurls, since to do it you need a pair of uncomfortable shoes and a handbag (to put your chalk in). Garish clothing is also an option. But I reckon I might be good at it. After all, being a family man, I've had years of experience climbing up the walls. So this should be a doddle.

Welcome! I'm sure you'll find it interesting here. And if you have any photos of your coins you'd like to show off ... well, we're always keen to see those!

Interesting stuff Martin. Like you, I was aware of the 5% vat banding, but I don't get many coins from overseas and so far haven't been clobbered much. Where I have however, it has been the Post Office handling charge that has most annoyed me as it was disproportionate to the amount of duty I needed to pay. In retrospect I probably didn't need to pay duty, but seem to remember it was under £2 which I didn't really mind. However the PO charge was about £8. My problem is that while presumably the form you mentioned would allow me to reclaim (or have adjusted) the duty, I'm not sure if it's possible to challenge the PO collection charges. It seems to me that, as you've observed, it's a bit of a Catch 22. You can't have the item without paying the fee, but unless the PO is prepared to allow you to inspect the item, hold on to it while you challenge the charges it's difficult to query the duty levied. And you risk your item(s) being returned to the sender as uncollected if the process takes too long. So the temptation is just to pay up. I suspect that if HMRC had to refund the PO handling fee as well they might get the point. I don't think that's unfair since it's their mistake that it was levied! Anyway, well done on pursuing this. Hopefully things will improve ... at least at that particular Depot!

I certainly wouldn't have a clue. But then the gothic crowns would fool me too. I wonder if those guys could knock up a couple of Dorrien Magens shillings for me for a tenner?

£100 for the lot doesn't seem too bad if you're going to a US coin fair and can off-load a few. But £45 postage!!? Ouch! You may have read that wrong Richard. £100 was just the Start bid, he wanted £1100 BIN Oh, I just assumed nobody would be daft enough to pay that! But it might be worth an £100 bid if you were sure you could get rid of the things! Though I have to say the phrase "200 uncirculated Churchill Crowns in sealed bankers sack, never been opened" does bring the words pig and poke to mind! ....

£100 for the lot doesn't seem too bad if you're going to a US coin fair and can off-load a few. But £45 postage!!? Ouch!

I've only bought one coin from Guy, a rarity, as are a few of his coins. But that was via his website after he put it to Best Offer on ebay and AFAIK most everything else of his has sat there for a long time. Anything that will sell .. I suspect sells quickly. I have no experience of CNG as a seller, nor knowledge of their commission, but have observed they have a good range of coins, including ancients. And of course, any Charles I shillings I'm always on the look out ... but I'm sure you know that.

Well, thank goodness you're all technically minded! I wouldn't know a thingy from a whatsit. Even a cheezy one!

Pinned. Though probably a whole new forum would be better, my Admin powers don't stretch to setting one up. In theory, forgerynetwork.com should be a place to consult for such things. But I have to admit that I've not posted anything there for a while and I really don't know how many people are aware it exists ..

Well ... perhaps someone can find a use for those? Coins into art Stacey lee Webber

True. But I doubt I'm alone in being more forgiving if the wear is to the legends or reverse, leaving a nice portrait. And if the portrait is as sharp as a razor but also weak, it will probably be less desirable to me than a coin which has circulated but shows the design well. In other words ... eye appeal is King!

Proofs any good Paul? You've probably seen it but I just picked this to give a mention to Lloyd's site in case you hadn't found it in your searches. He has some decent stuff and the prices are more sensible than many I've found.

Modern copies of some series do exist. And though most appear cast, some are quite good and cleverly, not of top end expensive coins that undoubtedly would attract the attention of the more knowledgable collectors, but more modest coins that pass for £20-£40 on ebay. That said, there are ways of spotting dodgy ones, even if you don't have the coin in the hand to inspect. And you can always ask here for an opinion. Plus the number of genuine coins still vastly outnumbers the copies. So really, the real difficulty is more the natural variation in hammered coinage where legends were changed, or more commonly, the coin is worn or bits missing making it difficult to nigh-impossible to make out the essential details. However, that's partly what makes hammered coins such interesting things to collect. And what makes better examples desirable, of course!

The real bonus is the strict pricing applied in the US where a 61 is a non-coin and hence can be purchased cheaply. Number collectors will turn their noses up at excellent examples of coins simply on the grounds that another example has been graded higher. Again a perfect example of how difficult it is to see anything useful through a slab. It certainly doesn't stand out to me and my feeling is there are flat areas on the reverse (rims, tail, nose) where I'd expect more detail for an MSAnything. But I've come to the conclusion a lot of coin collecting in the US is just completely different from over here. From recent threads on CCF I've gathered that some collectors would replace a coin because it's in the wrong sort of slab to match the others and that once slabbed with a decent grade, people start to get .. expectations.. about value. I'd really hope nobody here would turn down a nice coin at a good price because it was graded by the 'wrong' TPGS. Not even the CGS enthusiasts!

Welcome Hudson. Nice that you're starting to get a taste for the coins themselves! Of course, you'll know you're really hooked when you buy a coin with no consideration for the value of the metal at all!

Got me all excited for a moment there Peter! Then I realised it's just the regular 33 and I've dozens of those. It's the open 3 I need. Anyone? Oh, well. Guess I'll just keep looking then ...

A few up on ebay: 151054282615 151054390599 151054367714 151054345149 151054304118 "Mates Rates" available so if anyone is interested, PM me!

My understanding is that automatic cameras adjust the white balance across the whole field of the photograph. In other words it averages everything out to a (pre-set) shade of grey. Consequently if you have a white background then a coin will appear darker than in real life.. and a black brackground will give a lighter coin. Using a 'mid-grey' (I seem to remember that in the old days of manual photograpy you could buy a sheet of graded paper the correct tone) should end up with a more life like tone to the coin. The problem is that cameras are too bloody smart! And the electronics don't work like our eyes. So normal North-facing daylight will result in a bluish colour cast etc. Yes, cameras are programmed to adjust for this. But manufacturers probably don't imagine you want to photograph a coin (which can be very reflective or dark and dull). They are all geared up to people photographing their friend's faces (or arses) to post to Facebok. Like Rob, I do spend quite a while tweaking my images, partly because I'm like that and partly because if I'm sticking it on ebay the time (which I have and because it's not a business, is effectively 'free') to end up with a good photo is a small cost to me compared with the money I hope to get from selling the thing.

Interesting. I don't have any lights (apart from the normal ones in each room of course!) and so use daylight for my photos. OK, I do edit the photos for colour balance so they look as close as I can get to 'real life' on my laptop screen. But I only use MS Paint (which is a pretty simple programme with few options other than making the image a bit warmer or cooler) and generally I'm happy enough with the results. Here's my last effort, mid edit. Taken in daylight with a compact camera using the close-up setting. The background is just an ordinary brown envelope and I've started to mask out around the coin with Paint.