oldcopper

"They're on majestic plains" was it?

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

Thanks. Some reasonable prices there - nothing went too mad.

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.

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.

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.

I thought vice versa for quite a few of them!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The trouble is there's no debate because when you put the Daily Mail clipping to Peckris, he pulls out the cliched lazy get-out clause so beloved of the Left: "The Daily Mail, you can't believe a word they say etc etc etc!" Which is very convenient, because a person with even less self-awareness than Peckris can see that cancelling the words mother and woman is not a good look. So isn't that lucky he doesn't have to discuss it with you. And the Cabinet Minister and the other MPs who are complaining about it, and who are probably referred to on page 6 - that's all completely made up by the Mail as well? Let's analyse this. If the Mail either made up the story or got it completely wrong, let's consider what would happen? Firstly, they'd get a complaint in writing from one or more of the involved parties and would then have to issue a subsequent apology and retraction at the very least. If this were not enough, or it was not forthcoming, they would then be referred to the press regulator.and perhaps be taken to court. Thus any newspaper is going to have to be pretty sure that what they print about any organisation or powerful people like politicians is based on facts, unless it's obviously opinion. They cannot afford it not to be. So presumably Peckris has examples of hundreds of cases of the Mail being sued for printing false stories about powerful people or organisations? Because they do it all the time, right? No of course he doesn't. There may have been a few over the decades but that's true of every paper. It's his way of avoiding the subject. And Peckris airily assures us that NHS "users" are referred to as "clients". But this story is specifying maternity clinics, not just general "users" of health services, who will usually have non-sexually specific conditions. So he changes the story to fit his narrative. And when was the last time he hung out in a Maternity Ward? And where does this one come from? - "NHS Trusts who (voluntarily) listen to Stonewall or other such organisations wouldn't get very far with their patients" I'm so glad that the first question that Mrs Spriggs and her haemorrhoids will have is to ask the receptionist is how involved that NHS trust is with Stonewall, because if it is, she's going to march out of the door and find another hospital to have her operation (in 6 months time). We can safely say that Peckris talks nothing but complete nonsense.

That's alright, Michael can't dispute any of my points so he has to fall back on name-calling. Par for the course.

Never mind the Spanish Inquisition, here come the Puritan woke! Closely followed by the grammar police..... A harmless and wryly amusing joke in my opinion, playing on our stereotyping, but in your eyes not as funny as picturing Trump and Hitler greeting each other, truly sophisticated humour that, or thinking about it, berating someone for having the temerity to design their own book cover not up to your expert standards.

Yes, I expect I'll go and have a look at them at some stage.

Though DNW say on the web that it's been graded by NCG without specifying a grade, now I've received the hard catalogue (£25 - ouch!) that isn't in it. Some of the collection has been only recently slabbed (as they weren't bought as slabbed), but some of it is not slabbed, including some big items like the silver P.1086. And some coins have been removed from slabs. It seems quite random, and not dependant on date of purchase. It would be interesting to know why.

One of them went for £2,200 in the Spink Sept 2015 auction, that provenance mentioned in the catalogue, as part of a collection (Andy Scott?). Nice coin in that case, a bit mottled on the reverse, but unfortunately quite a few other coins in that collection were artificially toned. And even worse was in one that I bought, the colour was more like painted on rather than baked in (however they do it!), as even a light dab of a cotton glove to remove a bit of debris resulted in a light brown area of under-copper suddenly appearing amongst all that colour! Unsurprisingly I was not happy, but rubbing that side on a carpet did make it look better if a little weird, and I sold it soon after. Then it reappeared in another dealer's tray at the LCF a few months later looking vastly "improved"! Poor coin. The KT3 gilt is interesting - fantastic looking coin. I saw it at St James auction 2014 preview, and this is the only time I had ever seen this, but the coin had been shrink-wrapped, or perhaps "vacuum packed" in a cellophane or clingfilm type plastic skin. I asked Mr Fenton about this and he airily said it was for protection. It only occurred to me afterwards to wonder how you would take it off. I presume it's not been slabbed still in its plastic skin, though I notice DNW haven't mentioned the slabbing grade in their catalogue. "Unc details - clingfilmed" perhaps!?

I should have asked at the time - it wasn't a bad coin apart from the defects.

I don't think gold and early proof sets really count for many collectors - they're now mainly collected by investors from what I can see. Which of us is going to fork out the best part of 100k (or the best part of half a million upwards for a good 1839!) for one of the old proof sets? Especially as you could pick up a nice one for 10-25K 20 years ago. Anyone seen the Philip Richardson mainly Soho collection now listed on DNW? There's 200 lots on there. Some nice coins.... I notice one anomaly, to do with the gilt 1797 inscribed edge KP5 penny. DNW refer to the coin as a one off, and the inscription was referred to in Peck as a later adulteration in a footnote. Now, whether it is or not I don't know, but In Baldwins 47 (Gregory II) one of these was the front cover coin, in beautiful and brilliant mint state no less. A stunner. However, a more ropey one turned up in their auction a few years later, scratched and edge knocked, but it was given exactly the same provenance as their supposedly unique earlier mint state one. This is the one in DNW. So either someone bought it in Baldwins 47 (£2,800 hammer), kept it in their pocket for several years, then resold it (£460 hammer!), or more likely there are at least two of these coins in existence, both identically and incusely inscribed. In which case it is more likely that the edge is a contemporary and official addition.

Separate from the proofs of course, but I wonder how they were stored or given to people as quite a few of each variety were made. Or perhaps the Mint just stuck them in a cupboard for a long time, but they must have sold them/given them away at some stage.

What surprises me is that, as there obviously seem to be more of some of these proofs than were issued in the sets, why haven't any survived with an original case, Royal Mint envelope or whatever packaging they would originally have been put in? There are no contemporary official boxes around for any individual proofs of the Wyon proof set years as far as I know. Same with the pattern florins of the late 1840's for instance. About 25 years ago in SNC there was a fantastic set of all three main Gothic crown varieties (2 x1847, 1853) plus several of the different florin patterns in a plush velvet case, but that my have been a later case.

I've never seen a clear William III BRIVANNIA halfpenny, although this is still listed in some catalogues. More likely a damaged T in the cases I've seen, with no telltale middle gap. Spink are inconsistent, they don't list copper patterns, although some of these (the Medusa and the DEI GRATIA eg) were seemingly just released as currency. Yet for instance 1826 George IV/Wm IV crowns, and all the 5 and 2 guineas/5 and 2 pounds (except 1823 £2) from George III to Una and the Lion, though patterns, are listed and priced. If I remember rightly (haven't bought a Spink catalogue for some years) several edge/border varieties of the Una and the Lion are listed and priced. The staff are probably too busy to re-write it to any extent.

"the rims although equal in height to the currency coin are more raised from the fields". A nonsense comment from LC. If the field was lower in relation to the rims which are the same thickness as normal currency, then the coin would have been struck on a thinner flan and thus be lighter. As there's no mention of a light weight, presumably it is of normal weight and hence normal flan thickness. So any suggested lower field observation is just an optical illusion.