Madness

I've changed my mind about Michael. He said he'd accept the return but was very snarky when I told him the reason for my request. Not at all friendly. Can't deal with any more stress from the situation, so I won't go ahead with the return. I'll either keep the sixpence or sell it. What's it worth in VF? 25 GBP?

My guestimate: gVF

1513 Here's a piece written by Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521). King Henry VIII's grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was his patroness for a while. Although I don't have a chronology of his works, the embedded Gloria from his Missa Albanus would almost certainly have still been in circulation as the style was still popular in England in 1513. His work is represented in the Eton choir book of 1510, which miraculously escaped the destructive zeal of the reformation. Not only are we musically richer for its survival, but the manuscript itself is a thing of beauty, magnificently and elaborately decorated, much like the music it surrounded.

You put me on to the Davissons coin I think, Jerry. Really appreciate your help and generosity in sharing information. Time will tell re the DNW auction, but I'm trying to sell some stuff on eBay to give myself a good shot.

I've initiated the return process @Sword and explained the reason for this to Michael. Thanks for the suggestion. If I'm going to have a coin like this, I don't want it to be just an ugly placeholder. I want to take pride in my collection. Disappointing, as return postage won't be cheap. Even people who are trustworthy make mistakes. I need to learn more about grading. Much more practice needed!

Never mind. I'd need to sell the sixpence I have to buy the sixpence I want. If I lost the auction I'd be left with no example of the I/D. Forget I said anything.

I'd like to identifying as many dies as I can for 1787 shillings and sixpences. Re the shilling, 122 obverse and 125 reverse dies were prepared (Manville & Gaspar). It should be possible to distinguish a large number of obverse dies using images found online. The legend positions of all are slightly different given that these were punched by hand. My proposed method would involve the following: Identify and download many good quality images of obverses as possible Resize the images so all examples share a common diameter Rotate the images as necessary so that George III's bust is in exactly the same position in all examples Superimpose a circluar grid which would allow me to determine at which point on the circle (measured in degrees) each letter falls Organise the coins by groups according to the position of the letters, each group the product of a different die It would also be theoretically possible to distinguish the fruit of different reverse dies. According to Manivlle and Gaspar, the position of reverse legend is consistent across all examples. Fine features such as the strings in the Hibernian harp and the hearts in the Hanoverian shield were added by hand. I've also noticed that there are slight variants in the rotated position of the circle in the centre of the garter star. Using these unique details die identification should be a possibility, but it certainly wouldn't be a walk in the park. My reason for this post is to ask for help with the photo editing. I've found a free alternative to Photoshop called "GIMP". Is anyone familiar enough with this to help me work out how to use it? Additionally, can anyone see any problems with the method I've proposed? "Why bother going to all this trouble?", I hear you ask. Well, frankly, it will provide a way to help me fill in some time in an enjoyable manner. Additionally, it would be nice to have a collection of 1787 shilling and sixpences that includes every extant die variety. I don't call myself "Madness" for nothing! King George III's mental malady was nothing compared to mine!

I'm contemplating bidding on the DNW I/D and am going to sell some stuff on eBay to fund it. This will include selling the example I bought from Michael. I paid 55 GBP for it described as aEF. Considering it's only VF, how much do you think I should list if for on eBay? What does Spink say? Do you think the idiosyncrasies should increase the amount I ask for it? How much should I bid for the DNW example? I guess all this stuff is unknown and unknowable.

Yes @Rob. I think I'll be talking to myself on this thread. I'll keep it going, though, as I find it fascinating to associate coins with other aspects of culture going on around it at the same time. Edit: If anyone's interested, feel free to post a coin and I'll find some music to go with it.

Post a picture of a coin and a link to one or more musical pieces that were written in the same year. I'll go first: 1787 Shilling - Made to order at the Tower Mint for the Bank of England. This is the "no dots on obverse" variation: Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusic Mozart - Don Giovanni - Overture As an aside, my nickname at high school was "Mozart" because of my love of classical music and a desire to become a composer. One of these things has remained, although I did enter uni with this goal still in mind.

To be honest, I'm enjoying the research as much as the actual collecting, if not more. My wife is recognising this and has agreed to effectively double my hobby budget to the equivalent of 100 GBP per month. I'll be spending some of this on books. Have my eye on three at the moment: Bull - English Silver Coinage Since 1649 Peck - English Copper, Tin and Bronze Coins in the British Museum 1558-1958 Spink - Coins of England & The United Kingdom - Pre-Decimal Issue Do you think these will be useful resources? Can you recommend any other "must-haves"? I was also able to track down a copy of Cooper's "The Art and Craft of Coinmaking: A History of Minting Technology" that I was able to borrow from the State Library of NSW. Slowly working my way through this. If I could find a copy at a reasonable price I'd probably buy this as well. The books will have to wait until next year. I've got my eye on two more coins from the September auctions and @Rob has kindly kept a "no-stops-at-date" 1787 Shilling that he has put aside for me until later in the year.

My first experience was buying a guinea graded by the eBay seller as good very fine. It was a piece of crap worth only its value in bullion. The research was part of an effort to ensure that I wasn't ripped off again. There are many trust worthy people here, but part of the learning process is learning to know who to trust. I appreciate all advice on this forum and thoroughly enjoy my interactions here. I've come to Pre-decimal to learn, which implies I trust you, which I do! Thanks everyone for all your help. 😊

Just want to make it clear that I didn't "discover" the overstrike. I saw the DNW auction listing, was interested and decided to investigate further at the suggestion of @Peckris 2. Just wanted to verify that it was a genuine overstrike, determine how rare it was and try to work out how much it was really worth. This hobby is teaching me to be less trusting of people. Hmm. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

In the process of buying two coins from Michael recently we exchanged a couple of emails a day. In the process he revised the grade of the 1787 shilling down from pAS to EF+, indicative of his current grading activities. Despite what the website says, he seems to be actively involved in all aspects of the business. I recently asked him to keep me in mind if he ever found a "1-over-upside-down-1" 1787 shilling, and he stated that he wasn't actively looking to increase his stock. So, yes, he seems to be semi-retired and living/working in Reading.

In case anyone is interested, here are my sources of images for I/D 1787 sixpences, some of which are for sale: https://www.gbclassiccoins.co.uk/shop/sixpences/1787-george-iii-early-milled-silver-sixpence-no-hearts-near-ef-2/ https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Great-Britain-1787-George-111-Sixpence-Without-Hearts-EF-gVF-/142907377281?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137 (sold on eBay apparently and so link redirects you. You have to click "see original item") https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1787-GEORGE-III-SILVER-SIXPENCE-WITH-HEARTS-GOOD-VERY-FINE-OR-BETTER-CONDITION/152522895551?hash=item238312b0bf:g:kMkAAOSwVm5Y~dBd The overstrike isn't very clear here, but the other marks of the same die are evident. Pretty confident this is an example on that basis. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1787-KING-GEORGE-III-GREAT-BRITAIN-SILVER-SHILLING-AND-SIXPENCE-/253803827617?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137 (Again, this has apparently sold on eBay and the link redirects. Click on "see original item". https://townhallcoins.com/products/gb-1787-sixpence-vf https://www.baldwin.co.uk/coins/great-britain/british-patterns-and-proofs/george-iii-rare-proof-sixpence-1787.html (Described as proof, but this is just a heavy-flan test piece in my opinion) https://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/great-britain-george-iii-proof-sixpence-1787-/a/3032-31906.s (again, heavy-flan piece, not proof) Add to these the coin that I purchased from Michael, the "heavy-flan example" in the first post and the link to the DNW auction in the first post, that makes ten examples in total. I made a mistake in my first post, as I remembered having come across another heavy-flan example, making three of these and seven circulation coins. Another couple of points of interest are that the I/D obverse is always paired with the same reverse die. You can tell by the flaw on the "D" in the legend that's at the 2 o'clock position. I also suspect that the "8" in "1787" is upside down, but need to look into this further.

Thanks Jerry I used the money from my guinea sale to buy this 1787 shilling, which I won at the Davissons auction that just ended: https://davcoin.com/lot/e-auction-26-lot-89 Looking forward to expanding my 1787 sixpences as well (in time), including run of the mill varieties.

I thought so too @Michael-Roo The grading is Michael Gouby's, not mine. I trust his opinion more than my own, though.

I recently purchased a 1787 sixpence from Michael Gouby graded at aEF. I don't consider it to be the prettiest of pieces, but was attracted by an interesting detail: I'm sure it's very apparent to you that there is a funny curved line between the top and bottom of the first "I" in "III". I'm pretty confident that this is an overstrike of sorts. My theory is that the die maker started to strike "Dei" straight after "Georgius" in a momentary lapse of concentration. Immediately noticing his error he corrected it by filling in the curved section of the "D", leaving an "I". In the process of filling he missed a very small fraction running along the edge of the "D"s curve, which resulted in the small, thin raised line you see. I was encouraged to do some research and so over the course of a couple of days I looked at several hundred images of 1787 sixpences. Basically, I looked at every reference and image to the 1787 sixpence that Google brought up directly and then some. Out of these I found nine definite matches with the same issue. If the sample I looked at was representative of the entire issue, slightly more than 2% have this identifying feature. Not only was the I/D overstrike there, but each coin shared several other anomalies indicating they were all from the same die: Die pitting to the left of the hair ribbon, die pitting in the corner of the mouth, a mark underneath the eyebrow and the precise position of the legend lettering. The 2% figure is consistent with the number of dies produced for the minting of the 1787 shilling (see the Manville/Gaspar article) . Coincidentally, this die was used to produce a (presumably) very small number of coins on a heavy pure silver flan. Here's one of the two examples I came across: In one of these two examples it was described as a proof. I don't think this is the case. Although the edge is plain, there is no toothing around the edge as there are in the September proofs struck by Pingo. Moreover, there is bifurcation of the bottom of the lettering. This all indicates that the coin was struck without a collar (proofs were made with a collar) and the edge wasn't milled as you would expect with a circulation coin. An odd hybrid. I can't imagine that a die in poor condition like this would ever be used for a proof either: The pitting of the die; The D/I; The error on the "E" of "Dei" (which seems to have been corrected on the circulated sixpences produced from this die). There doesn't appear to have been any special preparation of the blank's surface either. There's no way that this is a proof. I'm only very new to numismatics, but here's my theory of the existence of a heavy flan struck with this die. The end of the order was approaching, but the mint was running short on workable dies. They dug out a die from the metaphorical bottom draw that had been put there because of the D/I and "E" errors, but it had accumulated some surface blemishes (small rust pits maybe). Wanting to test whether they could use it, a few test strikes were made using a thicker blank they had to hand so as to differentiate it for the circulation coins. No need to mill the edge as it wasn't meant to be used. Somehow is escaped being melted down again and escaped into the wild. Do you think my theory has any possibility of holding water? Anyway, I bought the first coin pictured from Michael for 55 GBP. I was tempted to bid on this sixpence currently listed for the upcoming DNW auction. It has an estimate of 200-300 GBP, which is out of my reach at the moment. Very happy to have the example I bought from Michael, though.

Well, my coin collection has officially started, if in fact two coins constitute a collection. Both of these was purchased from Michael Gouby. The 1787 shilling is a thing of beauty, graded by Michael as EF+. A faint scratch on the obverse prevented him from selling it as "practically as struck". This is the less common variety without the stop of George III's head. The second coin is a 1787 sixpence in EF? condition. It's obviously less visually-appealing than the shilling, but has an interesting flaw that I might bring up in another thread. Certainly worth having, at least for me. I was tempted to throw in the towel after my first experience, but I'm now officially hooked. Off to look at auction offerings! I've got some spare money from the guinea sale burning a hole in my pocket.

If you have a spare 45 minutes, listen to this. If you don't have a spare 45 minutes, you shouldn't be collecting coins! Takes me back to 1992, when I heard it for the first time as an 18 year old. I lived on a rural property and must have been the only one at home. Midnight on a balmy summer's evening. Sitting on the doorstep with Prokofiev blasting out. What a revelation that was.

My guestimate: Extremely fine This obverse has many imperfections, but they are almost all related to die deterioration in the form of wear, cracks and fill. There is only minimal wear to the coin itself. I find the toning a little puzzling. What are the marks that look like rust? Is it possible that the coin was in contact with a rusting metal surface and this stained the surface of the coin? Are the very small gouges "bag marks"?

I'M TIRED OF TEA!!

I'm a mule

When is a mule not a mule? When it's a little hoarse.