TomGoodheart

Well I'm generally just interested in getting back what I paid for them. Like most here have done I guess, they were bought in a moment of enthusiasm early in my collecting days and now a few years on I'd really like to improve on them. Or actually, with the knowledge gained in the intervening years I could spend the proceeds rather more selectively. Plus when, like the other day, I miss out on a very rare coin for the want of a bit under what I'm asking for the last coin, it's frustrating. I need a bit in reserve for when that coin I really want turns up!

Thanks Guys! And another one. (If you knew how much I'm struggling to get the new camera focus on a coin, you'd buy them all out of sympathy!! Spink 2797 Sharp F5/1 Has the usual drawbacks of a dug coin such as surface scratches, but it's oddly quite tricky to get a reasonable portrait on this type, there's normally a flat point somewhere on the King's face so it's not bad, for what it is. I got it in April 2004. £160 and it's yours. All coins come with my ticket (and any others I got with the coin). Postage at cost, so your choice from 60p (First Class), £1.50 Recorded 1st Class to £5.90 fully insured through Special Delivery. Cheques please to avoid PayPal costs!

No 6 (D3/1) is VF but fairly typical of such coins. Some good detail, but a weak bit on the King's face and a flan flaw on the reverse and spot where some corrosion has been cleaned off maybe. Plus it could do with being a little bit rounder. But not so bad 'in the hand'. One of the A's is an inverted V. No 7 is a decent VF, the weakness being due to a thinner central part to the flan, where the design hasn't struck up so well. Die flaw at 2 o'clock, but otherwise quite nice. And now I've highlighted all the drawbacks in my little offerings .. nobody's going to want them, are they? Good choice. They are quite nice chunky coins. Just remember to try to get a reasonably round one with a clear portrait. They were produced in large numbers so a nice example shouldn't be too difficult if you go for one of the commoner mint marks (dates) and avoid rarities. From a dealer if you can stretch the budget to a bit over £200 or a bit less if you're patient and careful on ebay.

Thanks! Grading is certainly a challenge. With milled you know the original flan will have been uniform and so working out how worn a coin is shouldn't be too difficult. Particularly as there are usually plenty of examples of that design in various grades. With hammered you have to get an eye to estimate how well struck a coin was originally before deciding what is wear and what's not. In case you find it helpful, my grading is as follows (from the top coin): E4/2 actually VF, but a very weak strike on the bust (as is often the case) When you see the coin like this: You can see the legend is quite decently struck. The second and third coins (E2/2 and D4/2) are only Fine in my view "Showing quite a lot of wear but with designs and legends distinguishable" Number four (E2/1) is nVF in my view because although the design is clear that's because it was a good strike. The coin shows wear (rounding of edges, most noticably) on the higher points. The bit of weakness on the King's face and of course the fact that it's been bent and straightened again also detracts, though doesn't strictly effect the grade. You'll perhaps notice a bit of double striking on the obverse too (mark of value, mint mark and top arch of crown). Number five, I'd grade VF. The patchy toning is a bit of a let down, plus the flan flaw on the reverse (maybe rust on the die?) The lines behind the harp on the reverse are either where the die has been polished or 'stretch marks' affecting the flan and are generally lost on more worn coins. So sort of a good thing!

£190 Spink 2791 Sharp E2/2 Unusual overmark on the reverse (crown over bell) York Coins August 2004

£180 Spink 2791 Sharp E2/1 ex York Coins Sept 2005 £190 Spink 2789 Sharp D3/1 Bought August 2004

£80 Spink 2789 Sharp D4/1 Scarcer with this mint mark. Bought June 2004 £95 Spink 2791 Sharp E2/1 Scarcer with this earlier reverse. Ex Prestbury hoard (DNW 68 Part Lot #116)

£40 Spink 2792 'Rare' bust variety Sharp E4/2 Bought December 2010 £50 Spink 2791 Sharp E2/2 Scarce with this overmark (Tun over crown) Private purchase April 2004

My feeling is TA, LB. The first is a bit contrived, though the T is similar to the one The Telegraph newspaper uses, the engraver has had to stretch it to make an 'a' ..but the LB seems fairly clear to me.

Happy Birthday Chris! Hopefully you're celebrating by getting hammered! Coins that is ....

Coin prices seem to keep going up and so I'm thinking of selling a few shillings to try to keep up with them! They are generally lower grade coins, but either scarcer varieties or interesting or difficult-to-come-by mint marks/ overmarks that I've had for some years. Price wise starting around £40 upwards, but nothing will be over £200. I'll try and take a few photos to post in the next few days as I don't feel the scans I did a while back are all that good. But if anyone might be interested or has any specific gaps they want to fill, please feel free to pm me and I'll see what I can do. Richard

I don't buy the recoinage idea, otherwise wouldn't it be expected that more coins would be marked in this way that we actually find? Coins that were decent weight were holed so that they could legally continue in circulation and yet examples so pierced are really quite scarce. All other coin was due to be melted down and yet we seem to find marked coin far more frequently than pierced ones. Surely any that failed the test would have been taken in immediately? We know that coin was taken at 5/8 an ounce, in other words people weren't given money for individual coins, what they had was weighed and they were given the bullion value (less a percentage that paid for the process) in return. There were already questions about the fact that weighing the poor quality coin took more time and therefore expense, than had been allowed in governmnet calculations realting to how much the bullion price should be adjusted to pay for the process. I can't see that there would be any official sanction for individually marking coins that were due to be melted down almost immediately. Personally I wonder if it isn't more a folk superstition thing? If you look at this article it says that European charms often require silver coins to be used, which are engraved with marks such as an "X" or are bent. These actions personalize the coin, making it uniquely special for the owner. I'd be interested to know if gold coins are found so marked? If it's just silver (which are generally considered lucky) it might support the idea that it was to do with making a personal charm of some sort?

I didn't really start until I was clearing Dad's house. He was an inveterate hoarder and I took the silver/part silver coins he had to a dealer and came away with a few 'nicer' coins. Then looking through the library to find out a bit more about coin collecting I happened across James Mays' The Splendid Shilling and I was hooked. Shillings were something I remembered from my youff and I decided to collect firsts and major design changes. The later stuff was easy enough, back to around George II but the Stuarts in decent condition were rather out of my budget. Oddly I avoided Charles I as being far too complicated for quite a while. Then I spent a bit too much and Wifey found out and wasn't best pleased by which time I had bought a couple of Charles I shillings. Dad died and left us reasonably well off and Wifey decided that perhaps she was being a bit churlish as it was sort of more my money than hers. She asked how much I reckoned I'd need to build a collection, I told her and she halved it to 10 grand. I decided that would work, but it wouldn't be a very big collection so opted to sell off the other coins and concentrate on Charles I. Through ebay I 'met' other collectors and learned from them and .. the rest is history. As to 'stars', like Rob, my view changes depending on my mood. I'm obviously happy with the coins I feel I got cheap (few though they are!) and there are a few rarities that would be the very last coins I'd part with if I had to sell. Off the top of my head? Maybe this? Not much to look at, I know! But it's one (the better) of the two 'discovery' coins written up by Michael Sharp in the BNJ when the bust was first recognised. Unrecorded until 1995 and though others have come to light since then, it is still quite scarce (I know of 7 other examples). Ex Roger Shuttlewood. Nice to have a bit of numismatic history I think.

Hard to say since the reverse is busier and so marks don't stand out as much, but my feeling is they are much more common on the obverse and usually are in front of the bust. I have seen scratches over the bust on occasions, but mostly it's a cross or couple of parallel lines in the field which suggests to me people wanted them to show. If you just wanted to test a coin unobtrusively you could scratch a flake off the rim or somewhere it wouldn't be so obvious. A small selection of examples on shillings of Charles I: Of course coins do get dig marks and there used (in the days of flips that you stapled closed) to be modern scratches from mishandling when opening the flip or envelope, but most of these marks are quite different from the characteristically deliberate ones we see here IMHO.

Ah, but now you're back Chris, have you seen this brilliant scheme we've all joined? You buy silver bullion coins from them and if you then recruit others to do the same you get your coins for free!! We're all going to be millionnaires!! Just sign here ....

LOL If we only bought what other people said was 'worthwhile' it wouldn't be a very satisfying hobby! If you like it, why not? I don't really see the appeal of quite a lot of the farthings and I know quite a few here don't 'get' hammered coins, but it would be no fun if we were all after the same thing, would it? A collection is a purely personal thing and that's the point. It's about collecting things that appeal to and mean something to us - after all, we're the ones that have to live with it (and hopefully enjoy it). Enjoy your penny pies!

All I know Will, is that whn I Wiki 'network marketing' I get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_marketing As to the other points, I don't think Tesco asks it's customers to recruit new customers through contracting to a subscription scheme to get 'free' groceries! And tangible assets your bullion may be (of course it is), but it seems to me that you're taking on trust the concept that silver will be worth more than you pay, or even anything at all, when you want to use it as collateral against a purchase. If it all goes pear-shaped and everyone in this scheme decided to sell their bullion at the same time, what do you think will happen to prices? These are hardly scarce assets either, at least compared to the sorts of things people on this forum tend to collect. If I'm proved wrong and you make a fortune, well I'll be delighted for you. But it's not for me.

I think if you pay a fair price then the main factor will be time. Had I kept hold of many coins until today, I would have turned a nice profit on almost all of them. However I wanted the money to buy other coins at the time and didn't. Dealers sell for a profit so are going to want to buy at a discount to the current market value. Wait a few years for the market price to go up and the dealer's offer will approach (and hopefully exceed) what you paid. Sell too soon however ... OK, rarities are a shortcut in that if someone really wants something that rarely comes on the market they will have to pay the asking price. But in the end there's always a risk. The only way to hedge against it is to know your stuff so you don't pay too much and buy what you like in the hope that others will like it too. Personally I wouldn't rush into it. Decide what you like and do some homework. In every coin series there are gaps that are difficult if not near impossible to fill. And when that time comes you will have to pay for the pleasure, so it's always handy to have a 'war chest' for when that coin appears. But knowing which are the really tricky coins to find, and which just take patience, isn't something that can be picked up overnight. If it was, I personally think it would take some of the fun out of collecting! Though you can learn some of it from other collectors - I think that kept me going for about five years, before I started to get a feel for which coins can be found in decent condition and which are almost invariably poor, making better examples particularly desirable. And I'm still learning!

Personally, I don't particularly go for 'perfection', but eye appeal. This may not be as good as they get, but I'd rather a couple of coins like this than one amazing one. In the end, it all comes down to what appeals to you!

Something like this might look nice. Of course, you'd need to buy a cabinet to put it in. Plastic flips just wouldn't do it justice I don't think ...

You know, old though I am, it still surprises me that people will pay more for a lesser coin because it looks like a soap bubble. MS67 Ultra cameo PF69 Americans, eh? Gotta love em ...

OK. I just quoted from this article comparing Numis Network with ISN. (He liked ISN better).

Oh, s'OK, I got it. "ISNCoins has a start up cost of $149 (including your first coin), and an autoship of $96.95 per month to receive 1 MS69 American Silver Eagle. ISNCoins ships you a MS69 Silver Coin worth about $40-45. Your first year expenses would come out to $1215, or an average of $101 per month. International Silver Network uses a simple uni-level that pays 8 levels down, and infinitely wide. For all personally sponsored collector reps, you earn $12 residually. For any collector rep that is within your 8 levels, you receive $4 per coin shipped. If you sponsored two collector reps and the rest of your income came from $4 overrides, it would only take 21 collector reps TOTAL underneath you to reach $96 per month. Now, if you personally sponsored each of your downline, it would only take 8 TOTAL COLLECTOR REPS to reach your $96. That means you are paying absolutely nothing to be in ISN, and you are receiving a FREE MS69 American Eagle Silver coin." Seems complicated to me. But what do I know?

I'm sorry if it's come across like that Will. I think it's that we're coin collectors first and several of us perhaps view the investment side with some scepticism/cynicism. We are mostly grumpy old men after all! You're happy with your choice and are making money, great! But I'm still curious; Care to say how much that would cost me?

THAT is as good as you will get. Maybe I'm an old duffer but some coins are awful. Do you just need an example ? I just leave alone.I took an early BSE mint Ed 1 penny described as VF but was a pile of tat.It was VF for issue.S1377. I don't like it,never will.Then Clive sends me an Aethelred 11 and I must have looked at it every day. Indeed. Stephens are extraordinarily difficult to find with a half decent portrait. Most can only just be made out for what they are, so that as Peter says, is good. I suspect you'd find it difficult to improve on it for twice the money.