TomGoodheart

Ah, that doesn't sound as bad as I'd thought. Thanks for the explanation Colin!

Welcome Saxon! I've seen quite a number of ruined coins on ebay. Some are covered very obviously in scratches. One in particular would sell for £120 easily, but in its current condition, to me, worthless. Others are quite shiny and smooth. I have tended to assume that tinfoil was responsible for the latter. I've also heard of 'spit and tinfoil' being used to identify the metal, but any abrasion to a coin will damage it. Personally I'd be reluctant to buy even a very rare coin that had been overcleaned. Having said that, your groat doesn't look too bad. However I would try to avoid any cleaning that involved rubbing a coin if possible. Silver is surpisingly soft and detail=value. If I want to get gunk off I soak in warm water then use a cotton bud very gently on the worst bits. If it doesn't shift, I leave it. If you are selling a coin then, providing you can identify it, I would be inclined to leave any cleaning to the buyer. Oh, and if you or your friends ever find any Charles I shillings you'd like identified, I'm happy to give it a go as it's an area that interests me.

Oh, well, I've a nice one of those on ebay right now. Very reasonable price, though I do say so myself!

Right you are, Richard. Right you are! But despite that I took a close look at the legend decided it wasn't right (the W of CROWN in particular) and reported it. I'm so fickle sometimes!

Oh, I'm sure he must be OK Clive. After all, he has 99.7% Positive Feedback from ebay and we all know how reliable that is. Of course, if it really is 0.925 silver as stated, maybe worth buying?

Thanks! It was Stuart and his cut out roses that inspired me!

Where exactly is Ponterfract? And they spelled catalogue wrong too. Tsk. Americarns.

Here you go Debbie. Square and engraved! A Newark (under siege) ninepence on Mark Rasmussen's site. Rather fancy this one myself;

Perhaps a Bunker Hunt bought bags of the things and melted them down? Or maybe there's £50,000 of 1905 shillings still sitting in a bank vault somewhere ... next to the remaining £10,000 Dorien Magens issue.

I wonder if the scarcity of certain denominations in better grades isn't in part down to relative value? I imagine that by the early part of the last century half a crown was presumably a useful denomination, whereas fifty years previously it would have been the shilling that would have circulated more. Particularly amongst the .. industrial classes .. as Wikipedia calls them, when it says four and a half million one-shilling tickets were issued for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

And die 'polishing' marks on a hammered coin, previously referred to in another thread ..

LOL OK, I don't generally do staples. There is that risk of scratching the coin when removing it from the packaging. But to be honest, when I sell a coin, I want it to get there in exactly the same condition it leaves my hand. So I tend to pop it in an envelope (one of the 2"x2" white ones from Colin Cooke) with the ticket over the bust side (or on both sides if there's more than one ticket), put that in a small ziplock bag and then sellotape that to a bit of card, which I then fold over. That way the coin has the paper envelope, some protection against moisture (the ziplock) and a layer of card in case of sharp objects. OK, maybe a bit much, but as I say, I'd rather someone spent a few more seconds undoing it (I try not to make it too much of a challenge!) than receive a damaged coin! Oh, and if it's an ebay sale, I wrap the whole thing in a folded copy of the listing as a receipt before I put it in the final envelope!

Interesting. I think part of the problem US slabbed coins have is tales of misgrading and misattribution. Now that may be all in the past and standards may have improved, but if you have doubts about a service then it's difficult the then think of its increasing use as a good thing. So, in my neutrality, I can see what you and Mike have said about CGS as being nothing but a good thing. Reassuring that there is a proper 'system' to it all and a benchmark for reference. And if there is consistency, all the better. But for myself, really, someone else's idea of grade is of very little importance to me. When buying a coin I ask myself, is it better than the example I have? Is it as good as (or approaching, I'm not made of money) the best (or better end) I've ever seen? And is it generally a nice looking coin (because to me 'eye appeal' scores over grade most times)? If it ticks all three boxes, irrespective of whether somebody has given it a F+ or gEF grade, then it'll go on my wants list. So I think I shall remain in the 'I can see the appeal to some collectors, but it's not something I want for my coins' camp for a little bit longer. And fortunately our cats are accustomed to the tree and Father Christmas drinks whatever I'm drinking in this house, thank you!

And ex Roger Shuttlewood:

And for comparison: The ex M Sharp, Brooker coin: ex West, Carlyon Britton: Nice coin this!

Gor Blomey Pete! Did nobody tell ya ter invest! You could'a been part of Railways through Africa, Dams across the Nile, Fleets of ocean greyhounds, Majestic, self-amortizing canals ... and all fer tuppence, frugally an prudently invested! And you're going to tell us you blew it all feeding the birds I expect.

LOL I've only just returned to this topic and , my .. didn't it get heated! Anyway, for my own twopenn'orth, I am old, though I've only been collecting for 8 1/2 years and feel I can see both sides to the argument. I quite understand the protection aspect, particularly for copper or matte proofs, that's really a no brainer. You don't want marks on your pristine coins .. protect them. And I can sympathise with the autenticity aspect, particularly since there seem to be an alarming number of replica coins that I for one can't identify! But in the end, I don't collect copper, proofs or modern milled coins! The coins I do collect have been handled by collectors for many, many years and as Dave said earlier, I like that aspect. I am holding a piece of history that has passed through the hands of collectors, soldiers, tinkers and who knows who else. So slabs aren't for me, because they diminish that experience. To be honest I still tend to see the TPG thing as reflecting two different aspects to the coin collecting hobby. There are those like me, Peter and others, who like to be able to hold a coin. Sure it's maybe not pristine, but then I don't much like those shiny 'as new' museum cleaned hoard coins either. A bit of toning, a bit of history, makes a coin more appealng to me. And then there are those like the cited example where they will trade up their 'UNC 80' as soon as they see an 'UNC 82'. That's not me. I'm not after 'the best ever' or filling every gap, or having a collection with a certified and verifiable value. That's a different sort of coin collecting. For me to upgrade there has to be a good reason to do so and I remain to be convinced that a 2 point grading is good enough. So. tarring everyone with my brush, I think there are 'The Americans' and their sort of collecting and for many (most?), slabs etc fit that style of collecting well. Then there are the 'mahogany tray' collectors like me, who think a little paper ticket and some provenance is more important than raw grade. Neither is WRONG. They are just DIFFERENT. And so my only gripe I guess is the suggestion that I'm going to have to change, that my collecting habits are out of step with the rest of the world. I don't agree of course. I think there is room for both slabs/TPGs and shall we say, traditional, collectors to coexist. Yes, slabs will continue to prosper. TPGs are big commercial companies that are moving to monopolise (just look at ebay's US policies to bear that out!) The US market, and so the TPG market is huge. But there will continue to be coins that aren't worth slabbing and collectors that will break open a slab and those that are left cold by slabs but, when they first see a mahogany tray with coins all sat on their little felt disks, will think, "wow, that's the sort of collection I want".

It's to make you think you're getting your money's worth Nick!!! And yes, I normally resize them but was in a hurry to pop them onto photobucket and forgot! Better?

OK, so I'm thinking of selling this. It's not the most beautiful coin, but it's difficult to find the type (I've seen four others for sale in the last, .. 8 years) It's a clearer example than the Sharp, Brooker coin, if that sways anyone! I've done my best with the photos to get a true representation, but that's only on my laptop so it might look different in the hand from how it appears on your screen. I do have a few more pics if anyone wants and am happy to anser questions. I'm suggesting £200 because they are so scarce, but I'm open to offers! Postage (Special delivery insured) will be included in the price. Cheques preferred to save on paypal fees.

Oh, come on now. Didn't you see that it is "A Splendid Highly Collectable Example "!? ... that and the fact that this is eBay, not the real world of course. It's not that bad an example as they come, with the question being whether you want one or do you want the gap. You would pay into 4 figures for any shilling around the EF mark with E or E* below. High grade examples are seriously rare. True about the gap thing, and scarcity of better grades. My Spink gives £45 for F, £250 VF. It will be interesting to see if it hits the £100 mark, which I'd put at the maximum I'd have been prepared to pay when I was interested in that sort of thing ... the current price is about right maybe. Of course, it just squeaks into the Scottish coin market too which seems fairly buoyant at present ... we'll see.

Oh, come on now. Didn't you see that it is "A Splendid Highly Collectable Example "!? ... that and the fact that this is eBay, not the real world of course.

Quite. I've quoted this before but in the into to the Coincraft catalogue Richard Lobel quotes an early mentor of his who said "when you go to value a coin it is what you have not seen rather than what you have seen that matters" and this is particularly true of grading. Some very common coins are almost impossible to find in decent condition, particularly the hammered series where a round, centrally struck, even, unclipped example would be well worth snapping up if ever you saw one. Whereas others are quite easy to find. The key of course, is knowing which is which!

Yes, I had an email from Gillian saying they didn't photograph hammered coins because it doesn't do them justice and suggesting coming to the next fair they attend. I didn't bother suggesting better photography and in the end a trip from Buckinghamshire to Newark didn't appeal, so a potential sale lost here too. But hey, maybe they can afford to lose customers. After all, there's plenty of money about and small businesses are doing better than ever I hear.

And there I think is the problem. TPGs encourage people to be lazy and, rather than in the old days learning how to grade coins to their own satisfaction, many now rely upon someone else's opinion. There is a suggestion that grading is an absolute science, but of course, it's not or we wouldn't get any changes upon resubmission, would we? But that aside, I guess I don't really have much of a problem with graded and slabbed coins, so long as they aren't ones I collect! If people want to fret about whether their cent is MS64 or MS65, 'finest known' or whatever, fine. Since US coins are graded using the Sheldon scale anyway, sticking a coin in a plastic slab doesn't make much difference and I can see the advantages of protecting the things from sticky fingers and knocks. But when TPGs try to use the same standards on English hammered, well, I'm not happy with that! For a start, as everyone should know, it takes experience to grade coins. You need to have seen enough to compare one against another. But also, I would question whether the precentage of wear a hammered coin has had is a useful measure. For accuracy you need to know both what a 'perfect' as struck example might look like. And also have an idea what condition the coin you are grading was in when it left the mint. Die and striking variations can mean that a coin that has had a lot of wear (but was very well struck to start with) is much more appealing than one as sharp as it was on day 1, but from an uneven flan or poor strike. From that perspective slabs simply make it difficult to photograph a coin and tricky to see how round it is (those four little supporting 'spurs' might be better but they still obscure parts of the edge). And really, even with UK dealers, I tend to rely on what I think of a coin, well before I see what grade they have given it. As for US TPGs well, I personally just don't think they have enough experience to voice an opinion. I have posted this wonderful piece of hyperbole before because it amuses me. And while the coin is sharply stuck, is it good looking? Not so much in my opinion... http://images.goldbergauctions.com/php/lot_auc.php?site=1&sale=31&lot=2161

I use the vcoins search function which works pretty well, rather than by dealer or category. But I think only a few UK dealers are represented there and agree more would be good. I also find it strange when dealers use a website like a mailing list. Now when I collected milled coins I'd risk buying from a description in a mailing list. But with hammered coins I need a photo. OK, it takes time and I guess bandwidth. But I'm no longer prepared to buy sight unseen. For a start, I'm much more likely to pick up interesting details than most dealers will notice, but mostly because 'eye appeal' is an essential element in hammered coins. You can have two very similarly graded coins, but one might be much more appealing to me than the other for reasons that I'd find difficult to explain. As for people who have photos but don't post them or who just have thumbnails, well, I've tired of emailing dealers asking for pictures. Now if there aren't any or they are unclear I tend to just move on I'm afraid ..