Master Jmd

Maybe not the best for those just starting out, but https://www.numisbids.com is great for searching many online auction house listings in one go.

Very cool, thanks for sharing and congratulations on the recent acquisition.

My prediction here was a little off. It's spent most of the time since hitting the $73,000 figure at an average of $65,000, dipping a couple of times as low as $53,850 before rapidly bouncing back. There wasn't really a big percentage slump like we've seen with most of the other peaks. It's seen another fast rise off the back of Trump winning the US election to a new all time high of just over $93,000 achieved earlier today. I presume a lot of people will have $100k as their auto-sell figure and that will be a large wall for it to overcome. It'll be interesting to see how it performs over the next few months and what impact any new US economic policies may have.

I had posted about a specific variant back in 2022, but I figure a list of exactly what I want and what I'm prepared to pay may be more effective, so without further ado: 1953 1+A "VIP" Proof - £1,500 (example) 1953 1+A Matte Proof - £2,500 (example) 1953 2+? "VIP" Proof - £2,500 (example) 1937 Matte Proof - £2,000 (example) 1937 Frosted Proof - £500 (example) [do these even exist in the wild?] Any "VIP" Proof excluding 1956 and 1949 - £800

I'm amused that they don't have a better way to present lots like this one: I'm also rather curious why such bundles exist on their platform in the first place. You'd think they'd reject single lots that are this varied. At least the listing photo shows us everything in the lot without having to read through the whole thing... (sarcasm if that wasn't clear - there is no photo).

I was hoping to win the Elizabeth I Pattern AR Halfpenny. The estimate was 1,500 CHF, my bid was 3,500 CHF, hammer price was 5,500 CHF!

Not to take away from your sale - this would be a wonderful addition to a bookcase - but if anyone's interested in the book's contents it's available in full on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_tables-of-english-silver_folkes-martin_1761/mode/2up

Does anyone else find their handling of the coins hard to watch? Maybe I'm just sensitive, but this one has a £52k estimate and I wouldn't touch coins in my collection that are worth a small fraction of that the way they do in these videos: They could at least wear gloves. 😓

What an incredible collection. The catalogue for the first part of the auction can be viewed (and pre-bid on) here if anyone's interested in direct links: https://www.arsclassicacoins.com/biddr/#!/auction?a=4515 and https://www.arsclassicacoins.com/biddr/#!/auction?a=4516. I find it fascinating seeing some of the coins having a pedigree going all the way back to the 1700s.

Don't underestimate the younger generation's ability to buy things that don't exist: Counter-Strike skin sells for $400K, probably the most expensive gun in videogame history. Ever since its inception the main argument against Bitcoin is the whole "it's a bubble, it's going to burst", but so far this hasn't happened, yet rather amusingly price corrections act to bolster this belief that some people have. From an investment standpoint, Bitcoin's price history looks something like this: 2009-2011 Bitcoin goes from having no value at all to around the $1 mark by April 2011. News of it breaking the $1 barrier sends the price up to $15. The first "It's a bubble, it's going to burst" comments are heard. Price corrects itself down to $3.50, and the first "Haha, told you so!" comments are heard from the bubble commenters, despite the value now being 3.5x higher than it was before the price rise. 2012 Price slowly climbs from $4.70 in January to $13.45 in December. 2013 Price continues to climb to $120 until October when price shoots up to a high of $1,120. "It's a bubble, it's going to burst" comments become rampant. 2014 Price falls from all time high down to $500. Despite being 2-5x higher than it was before the price rise, "Haha, told you so!" is heard from the bubble commenters. 2015 Price stabilises between $300 and $600. 2016 Price steadily climbs from $300 at the beginning of the year to $900 at the end. 2017 Price continues to climb all the way to $13,380 by the end of the year. "It's a bubble, it's going to burst" comments have commonplace throughout the year. 2018 Price sharply corrects down to $10,000 before slowly falling down to $3,413 by the end of the year. Despite being 11x higher than it was before prices started climbing, "Haha, told you so!" is heard from the bubble commenters. 2019 Price bounces back and stabilises between $7,000 and $11,000. 2020 Price remains steady at around $9,000 until it begins to climb rapidly and ends the year at $28,993. "It's a bubble, it's going to burst" comments become rampant. 2021 Price continues to rise to an initial all time high of $58,783 in March, then $61,359 in October. The price here is fluctuating between $31,000 and $61,000, which percentage wise is no different from what happened in 2015, but with two extra zeroes at the end of the value. The bubble comments continue throughout this entire period. 2022 Price sharpy corrects down to $19,925 by June, then $16,528 in December. Despite being 2-3x higher than it was before the price rise started, "Haha, told you so!" is heard from the bubble commenters. 2023 Price bounces back a little to between $25,000 and $30,000 until the end of the year where it starts climbing up to $42,500. "It's a bubble, it's going to burst" comments start slowly appearing again. 2024 Price continues to sharply rise up to a new all time high of $73,000 in March. <- You are here. My historically-informed prediction is that Bitcoin will continue to climb for a few months before correcting itself down to around the $50,000 mark. The bubble commenters will be out again with their "Haha, told you so" comments despite this figure being more than double what it was before the price rises started in 2023, and the cycle will continue. Right now I think the only remorse felt in the Bitcoin community is from those who listened to others telling them not to put any money into it and those who sold several years ago for much lower prices than we see now. I was fortunate enough to get into Bitcoin back in 2013. I'm not someone who plays the market and tries to predict when I should buy or sell more, instead I've been steadily buying since I first learned about it and honestly have no regrets. I've used Bitcoin on and off to pay for various things, ranging from fast food to 5 figure trading card auctions. I've never regarded myself as an investor with Bitcoin, and don't think I'd be too bothered if the value did one day fall to zero - but I can't see that ever happening at this point. My only real regret with Bitcoin is listening to my parents advice in 2013 and placing half of the money I was going to put into Bitcoin into a company that specialised in fracking - and on that I'm down 98%. 🤦‍♂️

The impact is noticeable, but it's not as bad as a lot of news outlets portrayed it when the story was going around a year or two ago. It's hard to find comparable recent figures - and it's harder still to find figures that relate specifically to Bitcoin and not cryptocurrency as a whole - but I believe as of the beginning of March Bitcoin is estimated to be using around 145 TWh per year equating to around 84 Mt CO2, which is around 0.25% of the world's yearly output. This includes both mining and transactions. In comparison, as of August 2023 gold uses 265 TWh per year (126 Mt CO2) and banking in general uses 263.72 TWh per year (though this figure is very hard to accurately calculate). Bitcoin does use power and is using increasingly more power as it scales up, but the challenges faced by Bitcoin are quite a bit different than those faced by gold - Bitcoin can be mostly powered using renewable energy sources. From what I can gather doing some quick Google searches, only around 15% of gold is mined using renewable energy, whilst the figure is above 50% for Bitcoin.

A shared European currency was first thought up in the 1920s and even after the Euro started being discussed across Europe in the late 1980s it didn't take off until the early 2000s. That's a currency with a lot of country governments leading the charge that still took decades to come to fruition. I think it's unfair to expect a worldwide digital currency that isn't politically lead - and is something governments have little to no control over - to be generally accepted as money 15 years after its inception. El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 and I'm sure its only a matter of time before others follow suit, if not with Bitcoin but with some semblance of cryptocurrency. At the end of the day, through direct transactions and third party conversion there is very little I can't buy anywhere in the world in an instant with Bitcoin in 2024, and that makes it much more desirable to me than precious metals and time-gated shares, and makes it much more desirable as a foreign exchange tool than any country's siloed currency. I think Bitcoin's foundations are very strong and cryptocurrency in general will continue to grow in popularity throughout the century.

I've been following and have owned Bitcoin since 2013 so I'm well aware of the fluctuations it has. The filling teeth argument seems an odd point to make given that gold wouldn't be the first choice (I believe porcelain would) - a much better use of gold is in electrical circuits, which as far as I'm aware is the only major practical application it has right now. Having followed Bitcoin for this long I'm well aware of the challenges it faces, however I've witnessed a lot of misinformation and a lot of misguided comments. A lot of those grannies you mention who don't trust Bitcoin are the same grannies who don't trust banks to hold their money in the first place. Grannies aren't paving the way for the future, and we've already seen a massive decline in cash usage (even before covid) since the turn of the millennium - it's only a matter of time in my opinion before the likes of foreign currency exchanges follow suit. I don't really see where your "the initial premise was wrong" comment comes from given that a lot of companies do accept it in exchange for goods, which is exactly what money is. Most major auction houses accept Bitcoin as a payment method, and in January I used proof of my Bitcoin balance to secure a new mortgage through Nationwide. I'm not going to try and convince anyone to buy Bitcoin as it's not my place to do so - I'm no financial advisor - but I do think Bitcoin has far-reaching future potential, and to be something most people in the developed world will have heard of is very impressive for something that didn't exist at the turn of the century. I don't think Bitcoin is going to go away any time soon.

The basis for value of Bitcoin is for the most part simple supply and demand. Right now the price is up because a lot of people are trying to get in on the action both due to the recent introduction of SEC-regulated ETFs (which is a huge step forward) and the upcoming halving event which will decrease the rate at which new supply enters circulation. Ultimately there's little difference between owning Bitcoin in a cryptocurrency wallet and having money available on a bank card - in both cases your money is represented digitally until the point where you choose to spend or convert it to paper money, however the latter is owned by banks whilst the former is owned by you (if you have your own wallet, at least). A big thing holding Bitcoin back, and will hold Bitcoin back for the foreseeable future, is that governments cannot print their own as and when they see fit and for the most part have put up artificial barriers against its adoption (higher tax rates and in some cases state-funded smear campaigns). Right now we're 15 years in and Bitcoin is more popular than it ever has been, and that I think is something worth celebrating as a technological feat regardless of whether you believe in it as a currency or not.

I managed to track one down for £23 on eBay in November after searching on and off for over a year. They do exist, but they're certainly not easy to come across (unless you're willing to pay £85 for the copy that's currently on eBay!). This is the post I made in the Wanted section referenced earlier in this thread: https://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/14540-the-bronze-coinage-of-great-britain-2016/.