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oldcopper

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Everything posted by oldcopper

  1. The only part of China we ever colonised was Hong Kong. So we didn't lose anything because of the above attitude. But it was a fair enough comment at the time - they were a very backward society compared to Britain, and the comment was made back in the days when people were honest and judged what they saw, not turning themselves inside out with political correctness. And most Chinese would have seemed ultra-compliant and subservient showing little free agency of thought,. to a large extent because their culture made them like that. And that type of ultra compliant culture continues to today. Look at Tianamen Square for instance where people tried to show freedom of thought and action. And let's face it, do you think British soldiers would run their tanks over protesters if they were told to? But coming back to the point, it is apparent that the Han Chinese, the main ethnic group, feel they are superior, and it can be said that China is turning itself into an ethnostate. This can be seen in their mistreatment of other ethnicities/cultures eg the colonisation of Tibet, the enslavement and attempted breeding out of the Uighurs, and the replacement of Cantonese with Mandarin-speaking Han in positions of power in Hong Kong.
  2. Do you know why he died so young (42)? I think that's the normal higher tide 1mm variety.
  3. You may be right, but I've never really understood what is meant by the term "lamination" in terms of a coin's surface. In this case it would presumably mean partial flaking of metal from the flan on striking not caused by any irregularity in the die. However, the P.1237 does show another similarly textured fissure on the left of the bust, stretching from the back of the King's head to the second G in Georgius. This can be seen on another example of the large crowned bust, the P.1220 lustrous copper example (lot 605, DNW Oct 2023). As this fissure is on more than one example, it has to be from a hairline die crack. Though I have not seen any other P.1237's with the complex fissuring to the right of Britannia shown in the example above.
  4. Looks like the product of a die crack. Here's a similar wiggly one on the recent P.1237 halfpenny sold DNW Oct 2023:
  5. Bleach 'em, that's what I say! It is confusing though, but I've just googled it and an old name for sodium thiosulphate was "hyposulphite of soda" which is where the hypo comes from Glad MT didn't mean mounted.....
  6. oldcopper

    1919 kn forgery

    Sometimes the head/face can be quite sharp on the real ones. Here's one I used to own ex one of the CC collections, I think the Workman one.
  7. oldcopper

    More Pennies

    Thanks! A very strange 9 if it is one with a sharp top. I think there was a thread on this overstrike a while ago with people going over this in far more detail.
  8. oldcopper

    More Pennies

    Fascinating letter. I see the 58/3 described as 59/8 in the later edition. Never thought of that before - I wonder if that makes sense for Bramah's other 58/3 variety with the hump coming out of the left of the lower 8 and the vague straight mark in the middle right join of the 8. Normally overstriking give a stronger overstrike than understrike but I don't know if that's the case here if it really is 9/8. Peck didn't put the 1858/6 variety in his Addenda to 2nd edition of 1967 (BNJ) which confirms he wasn't sure of it being a 6, as he says, or else he had submitted or finished his paper by the time of this correspondence. Dave Craddock sold a D/U 1825 farthing several years ago now with a confirmatory letter from Peck, and that got into his 1967 article, so he was more certain about that one.
  9. I've got the 1985 version (as has everyone else). Is there much new stuff in the new edition? As an aside, I'm impressed by Freeman's assertion in his intro that he had a collection of 60,000 Victorian pennies (acquired "randomly from circulation"). He would have collected these in the 1950's to early 60's presumably, and by then the 19th century Victorian pennies would only have made up a small proportion of circulating pennies with most remaining in very low grade. So say there were 10% Victorians left in circulation at that time, Freeman would have had to sift through 600K different pennies to weed out 60K Victorian ones. So if he collected his pennies actively over a period of 15 years "from circulation" prior to his book coming out (printed mid-60's), that means he would have had to obtain 110 pennies EVERY DAY of those 15 years, each time a fresh batch, to sift out on average the 11 Victorian ones. Perhaps a more likely scenario was that he was able to buy large accumulations of pennies destined for scrap from the bank, but he would still have to get 600 thousand to sift through for his 10% Victorians, and give back the remainder to the bank.That's assuming the proportion in circulation by then was even as much as 10%. Most would presumably have been melted down or discarded due to wear and age before the massive 20th century issues.
  10. oldcopper

    More Pennies

    Thanks - at least it's there. You probably saw this but Spink missed one a few weeks ago in a 3 coin lot - the bidders didn't - it went for £2800 hammer.
  11. oldcopper

    More Pennies

    Do you know their pricing for the Medusa?
  12. "They're on majestic plains" was it?
  13. This is coming up in the next DNW general sale - an 1859 proof penny, or is it? It's either an exciting new variety to rival the Medusa penny, or it's a fake. I'm going with fake, but perhaps it needs to be seen in the hand. It's got poor blobby legends, especially the date, nothing like the real 1859 proof date. Badly drawn underneath of Victoria's eye, back fillet more bordered, under-fillet finely lined. Also the top of the ponytail isn't struck up properly plus part of her hair by the temple. These bits are struck up on currency but if it is a much later striking, maybe they wouldn't necessarily be. The reverse, raised peripheries on the shield bars, different and wavy scale edging. The weight is 19.96g; this is very overweight, some 1841 proofs are just over 19g, but I don't know any Victoria copper penny this heavy. And it looks like a Patina-type copy. But maybe I'm wrong - perhaps some Mint employee was playing around with the currency dies in the 1860's. https://www.dnw.co.uk/auctions/catalogue/lot.php?auction_id=626&lot_uid=418653 Here's that recent London Coins proof penny for comparison: and an 1859 currency penny for comparison: https://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/lot-archive/lot.php?lot_uid=399839
  14. Thanks. Some reasonable prices there - nothing went too mad.
  15. Talking of which, it's been over a week since the Baldwins auction and they still haven't got their prices realised up. Be interested to see how that 19th century copper went.
  16. DNW sold a 1953 "VIP" proof set in Sep 2013, but it was a special set, with a toothed border penny and a farthing not previously known in proof. Nice box as well. Apart from that I've never seen a set so described.
  17. Never noticed the tiny initials EF and CT above two of the shields before. Seems to be a general feature checking out other 1953 proof crowns, and expect it's explained in the reference books. Perhaps two people thought they were a special feature like the ON on one or two of the 1951 crowns, so went stratospheric!! Edit - it's the initials of the two co-designers according to Sovereign Rarities website. I live and learn.
  18. I thought vice versa for quite a few of them!
  19. oldcopper

    1698 Half penny

    I should add that finding a 1698 DIL halfpenny in any condition above Fine is probably impossible. Peck's plate coin (BM) is almost certainly the best by far.
  20. oldcopper

    1698 Half penny

    The best ones I've noticed are (1) Nicholson (Colin Cooke 2004); Pywell-Philips, Spink 2018; GVF and (2) G. Bates, DNW, 2018, similar grade, some lustre.
  21. It doesn't even get begin or end anywhere near a mainline London station like Euston. Apparently it can only go to Stratford, 45 minutes trip from Euston. So the much vaunted rapid journey time, which is how it was sold to us, is a farce. It should have been kicked into the long grass a long time ago. There was a chance to strangle it in 2019 but Johnson for some reason wanted it to continue. Still ,could anyone brief me on Labour's opposition to HS2 as its projected cost has risen from the original civil service back of a beer mat estimate of 25 billion (from memory) to over 100 billion. Not a squawk as far as I'm aware. Where is the opposition in this country? And the UK is 2.5 trillion pounds in debt. So how can we even afford it? Oh yes, more borrowing.
  22. oldcopper

    Russians

    Encapsulated by Labour's take on the Alison Rose saga. Because the bank had wrapped itself in this hard-left ideology, much of it pushed through by Rose, she was "one of them". So Labour had no comment on her 5.2 million pound salary, and subsequent 2.4 million pound payoff. Rather they weirdly defended her in an identity politics victimhood scenario with Rachel Reeve saying she thought Alison Rose had been "bullied". No evidence was provided for this as none is ever needed of course for the woke oppression narrative. Some victim, broke the rules and gets an x million pound payoff! An interesting theory suggests this corporate wokery all really got going around 2010 as "Occupy Wall Street" were pressurising the financial sector, compounded by the bad publicity about greedy bankers as a result of their reputation for being massively overpaid and incompetent since the 2008 crash. How to neutralise this? - pretend you're on their side, talk the language of the adolescent woke left, have it enforced by ESG, perhaps another protective mechanism from the world's most powerful financial organisations, and finally frame the narrative carefully through the corporate-owned media. Then the financial sector will be free to carry on making their zillions without anyone even raising a murmur. Well it has certainly worked. The left are so gullible that 15 years go they were outraged at bankers' hugh bonuses, as was everyone else, but now they're complete kittens to corporate greed, because these corporations fly rainbow flags, swear allegiance to BLM and have DIE courses.
  23. oldcopper

    Russians

    Political correctness, woke - it means using whenever possible words like "NazI" and "far-right" to constantly vilify people who don't subscribe wholly to their creed. No grey areas are allowed. It's been infused into us for over 60 years and accelerated strongly about three years ago with the advent of George Floyd and Coronavirus. No coincidence of course and all planned. It means ignoring or downplaying Pakistani grooming gangs yet visiting people's houses who have eg misgendered someone on social media to record an Orwellian "non-crime hate incident". I'll give you a perfect example of this propaganda from the Guardian a few years ago, the title "Most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men" https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/15/child-sexual-abuse-gangs-white-men-home-office-report and from the BBC's report on the grooming gang paper in question from the Home Office: "Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white." See, what are these far-rightists going on about? From the main three studies quoted, in one 42% were white, 35% ethnic (the largest of which was black at 17%), from another the figures were 30% whites to 28% Asian, so quite close. In another, out of 52 of these gangs recorded, half were Asian and only 11 were white. None of these figures were given in the Guardian article, but can be got from the Home Office report via the BBC article. But what a slam dunk! But hang on, aren't most murderers in China going to be...errr...Chinese? For example. Exactly, firstly the white population of the UK is about 6 times larger than the ethnic population, and nearly 15 times larger than the Pakistani-origin Muslim one. Not mentioned. Secondly figures aren't currently available from large towns and cities where active investigation was still occurring such as Telford, a massive Pakistani grooming centre, and thirdly, the police didn't always record the ethnicity of offenders for some unknown, perhaps politically correct, reason. These factors weren't mentioned either. And where were the whistle-blowers in these Pakistani communities? Literally thousands were involved, spanning decades. One can only assume no one saw anything wrong with it, or they all lived in fear. So the Guardian, in order to get to its big point, deliberately misleads its readers. They're so keen on the over-representation argument when it suits them, such as the police/race dynamic in the US (very misleading if you look at the violent crime rates), but cannot mention a much greater over-representation when it doesn't suit them. And let's not forget the grooming that is overtly racist, as white girls are nearly always the victims of Pakistani-origin groomers. They don't seem to do it to their own. This wasn't mentioned either. What a surprise. This is how much propaganda works - it's lying by omission. You are only given the part of the picture to make you think what they want you to think. The same of course goes for the Home office paper, obviously slanted as much as possible to muddy the waters and happy to assert the meaningless "most are whites" comment without context. But the figures still speak for themselves So what the Guardian headline should have said was: "Whites and Chinese least likely to form child sexual abuse gangs." I'm guessing the Chinese aren't big offenders. Woke also means the constant demonisation of white, Western societies as fundamentally bad and built on oppression and racism. The "far right" is always used a a bogeyman, yet in reality means people who object to mass immigration, and lately the sexualisation of very young children and the sexual mutilation of children and young people (see the latest Costa advert), and much more of what the globalists decree as our new Orwellian truth. Even Ulez protestors are "far-right extremists" according to Sadiq Khan, whom it's now known has pressurised scientists and falsified the scientific evidence for introducing it. This woke illness has come from the top and promoted by the media with its excesses brushed under the carpet. Quota systems, identity politics - if people don't see what a danger this poses to any meritocratic society and the incentive to work hard, use your brain and be a success, then they are naive to say the least. Stupid and evil could be two other words that apply.
  24. oldcopper

    Russians

    Well said. The news is that 77 NHS trusts have signed up to the "Rainbow Badge Scheme" where they get points for degenderising the workplace ie when talking to patients etc. This has apparently originated from an internal unit in NHS England and has no mandate from any of the staff - it has basically been forced on them like much else of this nonsense. Just why "breast feeding" should be re-named "chest-feeding" for instance is a mystery to possibly everyone. And mother as "birther", Peckris might think that's progress, but it's just dehumanising people. Well said. I think providing specific information, as Paddy did, makes things much more credible. And if there's no blow-back from the NHS, then the story is of course true. Perhaps there will be, I very much doubt it though as this is an easily checkable story which the journalist will have done already. This information is also available from other sources, such as an interview by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio, available on YouTube. Peckris has given no facts about anything, nothing specific, as usual it's just platitudes, slogans and in this case, asserting a certain woke isn't "extreme" is his opinion. Was that his big argument? So how can he say he's stating facts or whatever. Where are they? Have I missed something? I'll give the Mail this - though they sadly toe the line on Climate Change and other such stuff, they do now and again publicise things the rest of the media shy away from, such as Biden's corruption and the sinister absurdness of this wokery being forced on us. There is a very good article on this in, yes, The Daily Mail, which also contains a piece by Professor Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology, whom I have seen give a public talk before, about the corrosive effect of all these Diversity, Equity and Inclusion courses all NHS staff now have to their waste time on, rather than actually doing their job.
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