declanwmagee

Very good question! As my 45-year coin comparative values reference is based entirely on Seaby/Spink, that's the source I use. It's just that these days I take them with a hefty pinch of salt Also bear in mind that insurance companies use Spink too. I take an average of 4 to value the coins in my own collection: Tony Clayton British Coins Market Values Spink CCGB I update each one that's a physical book every other year, and Mr Clayton does his own updates. For coins I'm selling, I use my own historical records, corrected for grade, so a coins value is what I reckon I could get for it, based on what I've got for that particular date/variety in the past. Huge databases are half the fun of being a coinie!

Learned Gentlemen... I am reliably informed that the little 5 pointed stars punctuating the edge inscription of my 1845 Crown are actually cinquefoils, not Stars, and that a real star stop is eight pointed. That's useful to know. I dug out CoinCraft 2000 and there's a reference in there to a "4 in date has large upper serif" variety. examine, if you will... the serif on the 4 is a large triangle pointing upwards, not a crosslet, and not a "normal" rectangular stick. what do you think? Is that what they might mean?

The reason I hate eBay is the sheer waste of time dredging through the dross to find decent coins. It doesn't help to sort by "opening bid", as quite a lot of the better items will start bidding at 99p, so knocking that strategy on the head. If someone would come up with a surefire way of filtering out the crap, I'd have much more time for eBay, but when the crap is between 95-98%, well .... life's too short. You can easily cherry pick dates and filter this again into denomination. I accept there is a lot of rubbish on Ebay but I've still picked up some top stuff.....Don't be afraid to offer against some of the dealers listings....some dealers BIN are way too high but a crafty offer and a compromise can often be achieved. I stick this in the search - cuts a lot out.... "-IOM -baby -pattern -keyring -cover -wedding -200* -199* -198* -197* -sovereign -birthday -guernsey -decimal -50p -£2"

As a former dealer myself, I can tell you that browsing through unending sacks of auction lots full of rubbish "on the off chance", does tend to alter your perspective somewhat. It reaches the point that you tell yourself that only something extremely rare would make all that waste of time worthwhile. I agree - no interest to a dealer, but there was a time when I had lots of gaps in my own collection, that the thought of being able to fill a lot of them in one hit would have seemed a lot of fun. Maybe I'm still an anorak!

It's tragic that were suggesting melting these things - we are supposed to be coinies! It wasnt too long ago Id have been delighted to get 20kg of pre-decimal to sort through, and that must go for thousands of new or potential collectors out there too - just got to find them. uPut them on ebay as one lot - there's twice as many newbies now as there were 5 years ago...maybe even "Pick-up only" and get someone local? one man's junk is another mans treasure, so save the junk, I say!

this is an interesting thread. I tend to see our coins as a reserve, rather than as an investment. In other words, we buy when we're flush, sell when we're skint. Try to always buy better than we've got, and try to sell the worst first. Car failed the MoT? Sell a load of coins - it's easier than trying to find more work. And we know that in a month or two, when we've bought another car, we can start buying coins again.

I'm with you Scott - fill them gaps first, then you've got something to chuck out when you find a better one. Sometimes I have to make gaps in my collection just to keep the selling going (so I can buy more coins!), and I don't like doing it, even when I'm selling my worst first. I suppose I'm too much of a collector to ever be a proper dealer...

Thanks everyone - very helpful. I'll try to do a cool one-on-top-of the other shot like Gary did (except it won't be 2 high grade '49s! Gulp..), it'll be a low grade '48, and a low grade '50. The 1950 only came in a sharp version, and there isn't that much difference between that and the 1948, but it's not convincing enough for me to put it in an eBay description, I'd have to be a bit more confident to do that.

I wonder if anyone can tell me any more than Peck can about the varieties of 1941 and 1948 Nickel-Brass threepence: This is what Peck says: "In practice the Royal Mint found that the life of the dodecagonal collar was shortened unduly by the development of cracks in its sharp corners. During the early years of the War, when the quantity and quality of steel suitable for die making were on the decline, the corners of these collars were made more rounded, and this resulted in a substantial increase in the effective life of the collars." Although Peck makes no distinction in his rarity ratings between them, for both 1941 (when they switched to Rounded) and 1948 (when they switched back again), I have found that the Rounded 1941 is harder to find than the sharp 1941, and the Sharp 1948 is harder to find than the Rounded 1948. The difficulty arises when trying to distinguish a worn Sharp from a Rounded, particularly with 1948 - which is a difficult year in high grade anyway. I'd love to find out if there's an easier way to tell the difference, like a pointing or something like that. I understand that because we're looking at collars, not dies, it may not be that easy. Any ideas? cheers Declan

Looks as if it could have suffered a bit of cleaning and reverse a lot worse than obv. (normal). But at £15 I suppose... I think it's a bargain. I've bought plenty from this chap, and he's one of my favourites

Makes me wonder how the logistics works - how they actually get from Llantrisant to your local Tescos - do they go via a bank, or do the Royal Mint trucks actually unload direct at the Supermarket...? It would make sense if you were trying to get straight to where the demand would be - I can't see many occassions where banks would dish out 1ps just a thought...

oh don't, you'll make me all bashful...thanks a lot for that though - I showed the Pwincess (who's in charge of despatch & presentation) your comments and she was suitably chuffed too. We do try to be a bit different from yer average eBay coinie...

the Pwincess sent off for some ground pumice powder to make soap with a few months ago. The package arrived damaged with deepest apologies from RM, and the handful of small ziplock bags that would have been about half full with white powder were missing. I suspect there's a postie out there somewhere with a serious nosebleed...

Here's my eBay balls-up of the week. Someone new came into our shop and spent £20 on a nice VF+ 1916 Halfcrown, so we thought we'd give him the full treatment as he was new to us - nice little coloured envelope, sprig of lavender and hand-written "Thank You". He requested Record Delivery but we forgot to do that and sent it normal first class with all the others. Realised this when we got back from the Post Office, so, being nice people, dropped him an email telling him we'd sent it, but only 1st class, and would refund him the extra 50p he'd paid for Recorded, and apologised for our incompetence... then dropped over to PayPal to send him the 50p, and promptly refunded him the lot. So now another grovelling email to ask him to pay for it again...I'm sure he will - he'll have had the coin by now; but it means I have to curtail my shopping till the payment comes back, and I bet I've missed all the bargains - I could have done a lot with that £20 this weekend

Clive....oh Cli-ive...! sounds like one for you, mate. i'm sure you all know who I mean

It's going to be a compulsory purchase, Chris. We live in a bus, and we'll be making a space for it on our one bookshelf. oh, and Mr Red Riley tells me one of our coins is in it, so it'll be something we have to show everyone we know too...

Surprisingly few people are Josie, that's the whole point of the book. I've probably said before, but will say again, that grading, particularly on the internet can fall to the level of the blind leading the blind and the book is an attempt to put a stop to that. Yes, there will always be some room for personal opinion, but I just hate seeing Fine coins being passed off as EF to young and inexperienced collectors who in their turn pass the bad habit on to others just taking up the hobby. I know, I know. Sometimes I catch myself questioning whether trying to be eBay's stingiest grader is a particularly smart move, commmercially - when I put out a stonkingly gorgeous coin as a VF+, because that's what it is. I know that many coinies would advertise it as an UNC, and get the bids, and we'll struggle to get the asking price because we've called it VF+. Maybe it's best not to put a grade at all, but I kinda like listing with a grade because it puts a bit of a spotlight on the more blatant overgraders, and might just serve some educational purpose too. Should have written a book....!

Thanks for the reply, Chris. It's been quite a gradual process for us. Over the past couple of years, the coins have made up a greater proportion of our income - not because the income from the coins is increasing massively, but after a few occasions where we came in from a hard days work only to find that we'd earned more from the coins that day than we had from the hard labour, we had to sit up and take notice. The universe points you in the right direction sometimes. We came to realise that I didn't HAVE to spend eight hours a day bent over a pickaxe, and frankly, we're not getting any younger and won't be able to for much longer! So we deliberately started cutting back on hard labour, deliberately started cutting back on our day-to-day overheads too, and started skimming off from the coins to pay a few bills, and it seems to be working. We still haven't managed to persuade our local petrol station to take our PayPal but we're working on it! We don't have huge ambitions, really. We don't fancy having a bricks and mortar business - even the term "business" is over-egging it a bit. We just fancy living in our old bus, growing our own food, building up our "pension fund" (the coins) and skimming off what little cash we need from it, whenever we need to. we won't know till we try it, and the thing about dreams is that they'll always remain dreams if you don't give 'em a go. all the best Declan & Suze

That sounds more interesting than what I found Gary! This is from "A New History of the Royal Mint" by C.E.Challis: "every effort was made to discourage excessive demand for coin, and it was during the War that the issue of silver threepences was first confined to those required overseas and then discontinued altogether. Bronze demand was also discouraged, and the Mint was fortunate that existing supplies were large enough that for much of the War it was not necessary to strike pennies to meet domestic needs. When the issue of pennies resumed in 1944 the Mint adopted an earlier practice of discolouring them so that demand would not be inflated for frivolous rather than practical reasons." I wonder if there was an "Official" reason, with everything being planned and under control, and only later did the real reason, as outlined in Freeman, be admitted?

It's well-known that the Mint artificially darkened post-war bronze Pennies, but I found out why recently and thought I'd share it. It was fashionable at the time to put shiny new pennies in kid's Christmas stockings, and the Mint considered this a frivolous use of valuable national resources at a time of austerity, so darkened them with thiosulphate in order to discourage the practice. How about that? I don't know about anyone else but I find it fascinating to find out the reasons behind these things, rather than just knowing that they happened, and the more I look at it, the more I realise how little we know. For instance - why is there is a calm sea 1957 halfpenny? Making changes to dies can't be cheap, so there must have been sound commercial thought behind all of these facts. ain't coin collecting great? Declan

In 1977, as a nine year old boy, I found an 1873 halfpenny in a stream. It was green and smooth but just legible. I still have it, of course. I gradually built up a British pre-decimal collection, but had still never sold a coin till 2004. Even then, I had no duplicates, so tried to sell my worst coins to finance buying better ones. That doesn't work, of course, and was never going to. So the Pwincess came up with a brainwave - why not buy better examples of the coins you've already got, and then sell the worst? Brilliant. You can see who's got the business head - I'm just a coinie, what do I know? So, tentative steps at first - started selling on eBay (I know, I know, but nothing touches it for exposure), set up an eBay shop, started paying a few bills with PayPal, started cutting down on the amount of time we had to spend labouring for money (I mean really labouring - farm work, building sites, etc), and now here's the thing - in a couple of weeks we're going to live in an old bus and really try to survive on this hobby that started with that 1873 halfpenny. Can it be done? We'll keep you posted - it's a brave experiment...

OK I give up - what's the difference between this one and the common ones? And before anyone says "go and buy a Freeman", I am trying - I get an email whenever one pops up on eBay but they always go out of my league! cheers Declan Declan, There are two basic types for 1909 penny, one with what Freeman describes as reverse D and the other reverse E. The reverse E type is the rarer one. They are characterised as follows: Rev D: • The waves to the right of Britannia are coarsely cut. • Britannia’s central trident prong points to a tooth. • The first ‘1’ in the date points to a gap between two border teeth. • Both legs of the ‘N’ in ‘ONE’ point to border teeth. • The uprights of the ‘P’ and ‘E’ in ‘PENNY’ point to border teeth. • Britannia’s fist, where it grips the trident is smaller and less spread. Rev E: • The waves to the right of Britannia are more finely cut. • Britannia’s central trident prong points to a gap between two teeth. • The border teeth are arranged so that the first ‘1’ in the date is centrally over a tooth. • Both legs of the ‘N’ in ‘ONE’ point to gap between border teeth. • The uprights of the ‘P’ and ‘E’ in ‘PENNY’ point between border teeth. • Britannia’s fist, where it grips the trident is larger, and more spread out. Less easily identified is the fact that reverse D has 167 border teeth whilst reverse E has 164 border teeth. Hope this helps!! DaveG38 Dave you're a star - thanks very much - top information! all the best Declan

good for you Scott - it's work like that that will fuel the enthusiasts of the future - be encouraged! Fine Job.

OK I give up - what's the difference between this one and the common ones? And before anyone says "go and buy a Freeman", I am trying - I get an email whenever one pops up on eBay but they always go out of my league! cheers Declan

right you are! thanks chaps - I'll get snipping them up pronto : )