TomGoodheart

Netherlands is right I think. A billon Stuiver coin from Zwolle (a municipal area North East of Amsterdam). I can make out the CIVI ZVOL on the side with the cross. Example here: http://www.nederlandsemunten.nl/Virtuele_munten_verzameling/Steden/Stad_Zwolle/Verzameling_zilver_stuiver_Zwolle_zj.htm

I could get quite a few very nice coins for that amount. The £1250. Not the price of a pint. I'll leave that trick to scott!

Again, not so much a laugh as a jaw dropper. Mega Rare 1983 2p NEW PENCE - ROYAL MINT ERROR £1250 with 40 minutes to go. OK, pretty scarce. But that's pricey for a modern decimal UK issue coin! Plus I've never seen quite what difference it makes if it's in a Heinz or Martini set, as surely it's just the one coin you'd be interested in?

Dad was the stamp enthusiast. I collected mint issues for a while but never really got into anything else. His main interest was Polish/Ukrainian/German occupation issues. Sadly I can't read Polish as I have four very comprehensive volumes about the things. But he picked up some Victorian stamps and covers as part of his British series. Let me know if you might be interested and I'll take a look and see what there is, if you like. No use to me. Now. Who'd like some First Day Covers?

e mRfm eH.. Wha? Sorry. I must have dozed off early in the thread. Did I miss anything?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130888330623?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_sacat%3D0%26_from%3DR40%26_nkw%3D130888330623%26_rdc%3D1 Gosh. Is it time to get out my Dad's Victorian stamps then? I could do with the dosh ...

Yeah. I know I should. Trouble is ... last quote I had from a dealer was £200-£300 + fuel. Which I'm sure is quite reasonable for the work ... but that's probably my entire coin buying budget for this year. Do I buy coins or do I get my valuation updated? You can probably guess my inclination is to spend the money on the coins!

LOL I haven't even got all the TYPES for Tower Charles I shillings yet! After that I plan on getting an example of each obv/rev combination, then I can start working on the various privy marks for each of those ... .. after that the major published curiosities such as legend errors/ mules will need to be completed before I could even consider what for hammered coins would amount to a die study. Which I will be delighted to do as soon as I have the £100,000 I estimate might be needed for such an enterprise. Of course, if anyone is keen ... donations will be welcomed!

I've pinned it and copied it to the Beginners Area, which is the most my Admin powers allow!

LOL Goldberg's beat Heritage hands down on that front in my opinion. How about this for a very double struck hammered shilling? "Great Britain. Charles I (1625-49) silver Shilling (1643-44). S-2843. Tower Mint issue, under Parliament (1642-48). "P" in brackets mm (Spink #98, struck 1643-44). Extremely elusive variety, the first time this cataloguer has ever seen this peculiar mintmark on a superior coin! The standard catalogue describes this issue as "coarse work" and that is clearly an understatement, for the die-work here is almost comical. The reason, of course, is that the talent escaped London with the king at almost the same moment this very coin was struck. The king was under threat of life and Crown even at the outset of the Civil War, when this coin was minted. He was as yet not disowned as Monarch, however, and the weak Parliament which preceded Cromwell's rise to overlordship was the official issuer of this coin, or "in the king's name" as the saying went. If you understand this groundwork, this historical context, you must perforce be impressed by this extraordinary specimen! NGC graded MS62 but the cataloguer is at a loss to explain the number. The coin is clearly Choice and without wear, peering at it under magnification. The surfaces are original and elegantly toned a medium gray color. While crudely cut, the portrait is extraordinary, suggestive of the strife of its day; the king's bodice shows some fascinating little details, vague emblems of majesty. The shield is equally interesting and well struck. So too the legends, although they are only partial, some letters being off-flan because of its shape. The rarely seen mintmark is crisp in detail. At first glance this coin looks like nothing, a crude cobbling of elements. The more you study it, though, the more you realize it's a simply superb example of this emergency coinage, made at one of England's most horrific moments, outbreak of its disastrous Civil War, which when it ended in 1660 brought back a monarchy totally different in power and attitude from that which prevailed in 1643, when this coin was made, almost even then "in memory" of once-mighty kingship. " I love the quibble about the NGC grading. But even so, Give It A Break!

Hmm .. an interesting challenge! Best I can do on a quick search. Not really perfect, is it?

Actually, I've just tried viewing it in Internet Explorer (IE8) with Compatability View (which allows you to view websites designed for out of date browsers(!) and is supposed to correct out of place menus, images or text) switched on and .. problem resolved. So I guess ebay need to work on their coding. Along with everything else, that is! In the meantime, I've tweaked my search terms a bit. Now it's just "charles -diana -darwin -wedding -di -prince -lindbergh -dickens -smith -brooke -reales -medal -schultz -italie -france -gaulle -franc -french -spanish -Françaises -blanc -Spain -Francs -bridge -korun" Though quite how that is an improvement on wildcards, I'm not sure...

LOL 190819665797 and 370786722066

Interesting point Dave. See, if I was submitting a coin for grading, it would be irritating if it wasn't back promptly (because I'd probably be doing it to sell) but in the end it would be no big loss. But for someone that deals in coins, well stock that is unavailable is losing potential revenue, isn't it? So I can't imagine dealers being very keen to submit much stock for grading at a time, to avoid it all being in some limbo where it can't be sold at the same time. But part of the turnaround problem seems to be that they need staff, which costs, which requires people to request gradings. So if they could shorten the turnaround, maybe they would get more business and .... .. in other words, apparently increasing the wait time seems like a fairly poor business strategy to me.

I tried the customise. I wanted to search between £0.99 and £5000, but it just flips back to £52-£620 as soon as I stop typing. Now it may be that currently there are only items for my particular search priced above £52 and as soon as someone adds something below that the search range will change to reflect this. But if that's the case, it should say so. And I still think I shoud be able to set it to whatever I want, even if there are no items for those prices (though I'd have expected at least one new item below £10), otherwise why give me the option? The other suspicion I have is that some (or all) of my filter terms are being ignored. I know the wildcard option was to be removed, but I have a number of full words I want excluded from my search and yet seem to be getting cr*p in my results I'd hoped not to see ... Oh, well. Same old same old of companies that insist on giving you what they want, on the premise it's 'better' when it's actually not what their customers want or need.

BLOODY USELESS EBAY! With the new look I now have text from my search terms across the results and the price range for searches is stuck between £52 and £618. WTF? Honestly if it's not fixed by tomorrow (today now) morning it's really not worth using any more. A site as big as ebay without a working search function is pointless.

Yes. I do wonder if one of the reasons coin collecting is big in the US is that they still can find circulating silver coinage from 100 years ago. Or at least cents from 50. We've lost that continuity forever and with it the nostalgia for things like shillings that, at least in my case, was one of the attractions of collecting that denomination in the first place. OK, to kids today I guess 1971 is 100 years ago, or I should say 1991 as you won't find any of the original pre-decimal sized 5p or 10ps any more ... but despite the Mint's best efforts(?) I can't see many people getting excited about coins stretching back all of 22 years ..

Mmm .. not sure how useful TC's site is for the price of a coin that comes up so rarely. That said, if I wanted one (which I did once) I'd be inclined to wait and see if it goes down a bit, or at least became open to offers.

Quite. Mine are all 80s at least. But on a more serious note, I don't believe that you can't grade a hammered coin (though some will undoubtedly present a challenge), it's just that in very few instances is the quality of striking uniform across the whole coin. Hence weakness or wear that is 'acceptable' if it is on the reverse, or to the legends, might be felt to severely detract from the desirability of a coin were it to the portrait. Then you have the issue that the shape or size of the planchet can mean that parts of the legend are simply not there. While this has nothing to do with wear (and hence grade, per se) I think all of us that collect hammered will agree that a fully round, centrally struck coin will be preferred 9 times out of 10. As for a well struck coin with an indiscernible mint mark .... Should such details be factored into the grading of such a coin? In fact, is is possible to entirely remove 'eye appeal' from the equation, when part of the assessment of coins is done by humans? It will be interesting to me to see how CGS resolves these questions. Particularly as I'm not sure there's always a clear concensus amongst collectors of hammered coins ourselves!

So basically, you can dig the river and people's houses. But not under ... streetlights, is that? How unreasonable! Well, have fun then! And of course, let us know what you find!

Hammered now, eh? Interesting. Although since I can buy six EF Charles I shillings, a meal for two and some chateau bottled Burgundy for less than £30 is a fair chunk of coin budget for me ... I'm not going to be hammering at their door for them to grade my coins just yet No, I'm sure it's reasonable compared to US TPGS. And I guess hammered are trickier to grade ..? But I'd like to see some results on that!

Quite. Despite my constantly playing Devil's advocate, I agree it's been interesting. I think GCS fills a market gap. Should I ever want to have coins graded and encapsulated, or just authenticated, there's no doubt that I'd feel much more confident with them than any of the US TPGS. And despite my early cynicism (largely based on anecdotes concerning slabbing in the US) I can see some benefits from such a service. Plus, essentially because of comments here, I feel reassured that the UK coin market really is different from the (main) US model. And so there is little liklihood of us being forced into slabbing all our coins to have a chance of them being acceptable to 'the market'. For those that want such a service, a reliable 'home grown' version is now available. And for those that don't .. well, there's still that choice too. I'm comfortable with that.

I wonder if NGC would regrade your labels? I suspect they don't have many, so they must be worth more, surely? Edit: Doh! Of course I was forgetting these will be British coins, won't they Rob? So it'll need to be CGS .. .. OK, I'm going to stop now. I promise!

Interestingly I just found this on the Coin Community Forum ... it's from a thread about 'crossoever' slabbing (ie getting a coin reslabbed by a different TPGS, a service they are now apparently happy to provide!) Yup.

See. I think that makes perfect sense. While price guides, such as Spink, are referred to by sellers and buyers in their consideration as to whether the price of a coin is acceptable then grading (since that's how the guide books work) will continue to have a use. But I suspect that, apart from Bill and maybe a couple of others, most of us do what John does and go by the attractiveness of a coin (and then its rarity in that condition and cost) rather than worry about if it's an 88 rather than an 86. Certainly when we're buying for our own collections. As for the 1729 no stop, I really don't need to know what grade number it's been given to see that it's a spectacular coin! If it was an equivalent coin of the type I collect, then irrespective of what anyone else says, my only real concerns would be; do I have one already that's as nice and if not, will they accept body parts can I afford it? I suppose what I'm saying is I find it interesting that, given I believe most of us operate on the above collecting basis, so much effort is being expended commercially to determine something that's perhaps not of key concern to us when we buy coins. Particularly in terms of the sometimes relatively small qualititive differences (75-78 or whatever) mentioned elsewhere.