How to deal with sticky coins?

[How to deal with sticky coins?]

On 28 October 2018 at 7:21 AM, ozjohn said:

You can try metho. I don't know about the UK but in Australia you can buy it without the purple dye. I find it good for cleaning and degreasing bronze and silver coins. I have never experienced any reaction between the spirit and a coin.

In UK you can buy Surgical Spirit, which I assume is meths without the dye?

[Which coin would you prefere]

41 minutes ago, Sword said:

I suppose coins in plastic have less things to react with than coins in a cabinet such as the chemicals in the cloth, free flowing air, potential emissions from wood etc. Cabinets are handmade furniture and I guess each one is somewhat unique.

True, but most cabinets (and all Nichols?) use inert woods like mahogany. As for the free flowing air, you may have a point there - the toning is nearly all on coins in the large cabinet, which I later found was a medals cabinet with comparatively deep trays and no individual recesses for coins.

[Which coin would you prefere]

4 hours ago, 1949threepence said:

Some of my pre 1920 one's have toned quite spectacularly even since I've had them. It has to be something to do with storage, although what I'm doing wrong I don't know, as they're in a Peter Nichols cabinet in a dry warm room. It's the upward facing reverses that have received the toning.   

I say some, as others are 100% unaffected. Indeed, all the Edward VII ones are unaffected.    

Snap. For example, I have a 1938S shilling that was absolutely BU - now it has an uneven dirty black tarnish on parts of it despite storage in a cabinet. Pennies have lost a great deal of lustre. Strangely, coins in flips or albums don't seem to suffer. The upside is that my Unc 1838 shilling that was so glossy you might think it had been polished, is now toning back nicely. 

The other weird thing is that coins in my small Nichols cabinet (Mascle?) are largely unaffected.

[Which coin would you prefere]

44 minutes ago, PWA 1967 said:

I just went off Eric mentioning proof and the top of the page saying it was also ,maybe i got that bit confused 😉

The colour maybe more along the lines of the metal mix and the reason sometimes you see tiny flecks of verd that have got into the metal.

On Michael goubys website he says...... "different mixes were tried for silver coins from 1920 and again in 1922"

The mix for 1920 being Half silver and half Cupro nickel.......The cupro nickel being 90% copper and 10% Nickel.

Maybe i am way off the mark ............... on his website he does go into more detail on other years.

Pete.

Some of this probably does not make sense now you have edited your post Mike 😂

No, believe me - it's not the alloy mix. However, it COULD be toning; I've seen pre-1920 silver tone to a whole range of colours - reds, oranges, blues, purples - and this could be toning due to its storage medium.

[Which coin would you prefere]

5 hours ago, VickySilver said:

I thought I was the only one that liked these 1920-1926 era silver coins in the middle silver denominations.

Me too. They're much more rare in high grade but because of the shallow portrait the reverses are usually fully struck up.

[Which coin would you prefere]

There are several minor varieties of 1921, Mike (noted in David Sealy's 1970 varieties guide in the Coins & Medals Annual). The pre-1920 obverse hadn't even been noted at that stage! It's quite possible you have two distinct reverses there.

[Strange coin: Carolus IIII 8 Reales 1817?]

Not so much a fake perhaps (the date error is too obvious) but possibly an "evasion", i.e. a coin minted with a deliberate wrong date for purposes of trade in certain regions?

[Which coin would you prefere]

14 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

That's true. My early 1920's shillings have a very shallow relief - especially the 1923 -  so it's no wonder they "wore out" so quickly. Many of them probably down to <fine within 10 years at normal use. 

Look out for the 1921 with the pre-1920 high relief - it's much scarcer than Spink's values indicate, especially in high grade.

[Which coin would you prefere]

9 hours ago, ozjohn said:

I also note that finding a high grade 1920 florin is difficult compared with the sterling silver coins of the series. There seems to be plenty in the VF - GVF range which make me think that quite a bit of hoarding of Sterling silver coins. went on when the debased coins were issued.

Absolutely correct - this was the first debasement of silver in the milled era and there was extensive hoarding of pre-1920, which is why it so commonly turns up in average of VF or better. 50% coins weren't hoarded, but also they wore more quickly due to the shallower portrait with less well defined hair. This is why it's uniformly more difficult to find top grade halfcrowns, florins, shillings 1920 - 1926.

[Music to sort coins to]

a ying tong ying tong ying tong ying tong ying tong yiddle eye  po

ying tong ying tong ying tong yiddle eye  po yiddle eye  po

a ying tong ying tong ying tong ying tong ying tong yiddle eye  po

ying tong ying tong ying tong yiddle eye  po yiddle eye  poooooooooo

[Which coin would you prefere]

Yours, definitely.

[Last Silver Coin in Australia for Circulatation]

48 minutes ago, ozjohn said:

I think most of them were hoarded as the silver value exceeded the face value. There are still plenty around to buy from dealers at about $ 12 - 15 depending on the silver price. I think Canada issued silver coins in 1966 with the Machin effigy as well.

Yes, I believe they did. I have some 1967 examples.

[Last Silver Coin in Australia for Circulatation]

3 hours ago, Michael-Roo said:

The decimal portrait being used in '66!

I knew it went back to at least 1966 for non-UK coins. Anyone know when Machin's was first used?

[Does anyone know what this is?]

I was going to suggest toothpick holder! So I take a bow to the pomander guys.

[Shillings & Florins in circ. after 1971]

21 hours ago, ozjohn said:

If you knew the answer why ask the question ? At least Australian coinage of the 50s & 60s contained 50% silver rather than the Cu Ni coins

issued over there. Also the Australian "silver" coins with the exception of the 50 cent coin still retain the size and weight of the old UK imperial coins.

I didn't know the answer. That's why I said "never knew that". The clue's in the words...

[Pennies High grade.]

2 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

They are a super looking series, with undoubted coin charisma. 

Just give me the kudos.......  

I think the 1936 is a rare coin, but not grossly overpriced like the 1934. Also, it is the only rare item in the otherwise extremely common 1936 denomination series.

[Shillings & Florins in circ. after 1971]

1 minute ago, ozjohn said:

It's an Australian QE2 florin which for your information were made from 50% silver. The old LSD coins were minted in .500 silver up to 1965.

Wow - never knew that! Wonder why?

As for politics you have your opinion and I have mine and as Paddy says probably better left out of this forum.

Good job you're on the other side of the planet. 

 

[Pennies High grade.]

1 minute ago, 1949threepence said:

I'd still like one though, but they are damned expensive. 

They do come up, though not nearly as regularly as Crowns in the surrounding dates, as might be expected. 

I have 3 wreaths if you include the 1927, but have never really been that interested in owning the 1934, unless for kudos reasons. Strangely, I'd be more excited to own the 1936.

[Buggy - has there been a recent "upgrade"?]

Mostly the site works as it should, but the 'Unread Content' feature sometimes has a bug.

What happens is that with the list of topics the cursor doesn't change from a pointer into a hand+finger, so you can't click to enter a topic, and sometimes also the list of topics doesn't fully load. Reloading the page usually solves it (maybe after two or three attempts).

This never used to happen, now it happens about every day. Anyone else noticed this?

[Shillings & Florins in circ. after 1971]

What's the Elizabeth II florin doing there!

"disastrous election result"? We don't all think that! It's true that had TM won a predicted landslide, she could have pursued a Chequers-style solution to Brexit from the start without worrying too much about the Europhobic rabble in her party (Rees-Mogg, Fox, Gove, Johnson, Cash, etc) and got us a reasonable deal. Now it's anyone's game, anyone's guess.

As for 1945, Atlee's government helped shape what we know as modern Britain rather than the failing Empire mindset of the 1930s. Even Thatcher couldn't (or wouldn't) undo all of that. The British people shouldn't be insulted as 'stupid' for evicting Churchill, who was inspirational in the fight against Hitler, but who proved less than inspirational as a peacetime leader.

[Pennies High grade.]

3 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

Gouby does touch upon this scenario, but only briefly. A book which makes a much better fist of these rarity grade distinctions is "The standard catalogue of English milled coinage, silver, copper and bronze 1662 - 1972" , by the late Geoffrey M. Cope and P. Alan Rayner . From 1974, it unfortunately doesn't cover all varieties, but is well worth a read.       

Agreed - though Cope & Rayner has one or two real bloopers; for example they say that a 1923 halfcrown in top grade is harder than the 1925!

[Pennies High grade.]

10 hours ago, Rob said:

Could this not be a difference of perception? While coins are circulating the relative rarity applies to those that you can expect to find in your pocket. Once no longer legal tender, then the rarity goalposts move to reflect the reduced number of people with an interest in the coin. The number of actual collectors of said item then has to be weighed against the number of coins extant, which will diminish rapidly around the time of demonetisation.

Possibly, but I still think that Scarce in relation to a population of 251 - 500 is rather ridiculous. It means that there is no way to differentiate the 1912H from the 1919KN penny, both of which would exceed those figures, in one case by 000,000, in the other by far less. It also means that the 1913 "mules" could not be described as scarce, nor 1864 or 1865/3 pennies and any number of other examples. 

Your example of wreath crowns is perhaps the exception: 932 (1934) as a proportion of all wreath crowns minted excluding 1927, is not so small, and as you say this was an issue where nearly all original strikes still exist and come up regularly for sale.

[Madness' Coin Grading Training Ground]

The site says the winning price was $336? (Which presumably includes buyers premium which you would have known about before bidding). However, to go from there to $431 seems very harsh. Did they mention all those charges in the small print or could you challenge them on it?

[Pennies High grade.]

201 - 500 = 'Scarce'? That's absurd. (For currency coins minted in the millions).

[Shillings & Florins in circ. after 1971]

6 hours ago, Nick said:

Not wishing to continue the discussion but it should be remembered that more pits closed under Harold Wilson (1964-1970) than under Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990).

Mines closed steadily from the late 60s onwards as other sources of fuel became available. But only in 1984-1986 were they closed by violent confrontation between the miners and the forces deliberately unleashed by the government of the day.