Peckris 2

And there was I, a Latin scholar and a pedant, thinking I was being clever!! It's a common misconception that we don't have a constitution, but we have many bits and pieces of one, starting with the Magna Carta, going down through the ages to the Bill and Claim of Rights, and so on. What those judges (dubbed 'The Enemies Of The People' by that "august organ" the Mail, qua The Nazis in the 1930s) ruled on in early 2017, was that Parliament had a constitutional right to have a say throughout the Brexit process.

I would have recommended Picasa, but even that's gone the way of all flesh.

1. 52:48 is far too close to apply to a permanent constitutional change - but Cameron was either too stupid, too party political, or too in thrall to the `Euroseptics to apply the normal requirements for referenda. They are NOT general Elections which only apply for a maximum 5 years. 2. An EU judge has ruled that Article 50 is reversible and will cancel Brexit, provided it's not done for flippant, temporary or 'advantage in trade talks' reasons.

MP. Enough said...

I'm not sure it's a safe assumption that all images were changed in one fell swoop. My hunch is that they were changed piecemeal for maybe different reasons.

In the early 90s it was still Seaby's. When was the changeover to Spink in the 90s, and did they change all the illustrations then or keep the existing Seaby ones for a few editions?

Do we need moderating? Oops, we didn't...

Trouble is, it never reaches Christmas - there's no stable version...

That's quite a pale example Mike - I believe mine may be more typical? More like the MT 1940s pennies, in other words.

Yes, he may have taken that from Freeman?

Yes, I think that's a Freeman slip-up. Most of the 1935s I've ever seen are lustred, in fact I can barely recall seeing a hypo example.

[Adopts tone of voice of the railway bore you dread sitting next to you...] Ah well you see, it's quite easy to tell. I can see from the riffle squod mark that the bullet was made in the North Croydon Works of the Machine Arms Co and they only made them with that particular riffle squod up to 17th August 1914 and the entire consignment apart from one case was used before November 1914 in the Belgian trenches on the Western Front - the one case was used in 1915 but only at Gallipoli so if I was a betting man I'd feel my money was safe in saying that is a 1914 bullet. As I was saying to my friend Roger only last Tuesday - and there's no-one knows more than Roger about riffle... [cont p.94]

Blimey. Even if the other 10 had never heard of QI it doesn't take a great stretch of intellect to realise that there is only one possible anagram of "IQ" !

Yes it does! "No actual squirrels were hurt during the making of this video..." Thanks Paddy.

Just the usual blank screen I'm afraid Paddy. Couldn't you try Dropbox? That works for me.

Compare the average halfcrown mintage from 1902 - 1913, with those from 1914-1918 for real dramatic effect!

Design visibility (i.e. wear) first and foremost, and also strength of strike, and any damage. Visual appeal is one of those hard-to-quantify things which people just gain from experience and which leads dealers to adding a premium to the price!

That is fractionally preferable to "He's taken the guy at knee height....".

I share your pain. That abomination seems to be everywhere. It's always in answering a question - "What started you in collecting coins?" "So I was at home one day..."

Yes, because Edward's portrait was both larger and shallower so was a better design. The ghosting reduced in a few stages : after the shallower portrait was introduced in 1920/21 after the ME portrait after the reduction in size of the ME (on bronze) with the new reverse designs (small for bronze, 1925-1927), radically different for silver from 1928

Probably for the same reason that 'massive' is now a synonym for 'important'.

That right hand one definitely looks wrong. Absolutely a different die.

It suddenly started in 1911, when the deep profile portrait of GV came in. For comparison, the portrait of Ed8 is sufficiently shallower that ghosting is less pronounced and Britannia suffers much less. As the ghosting was an accidental effect, it is neither intentional nor invariable so there are good strikes out there, but they're hard to get hold of. As for the poor hair detail on some, that's purely down to the overuse of dies - note how the increase in penny mintages was sharp and dramatic, and "there was a war on" too. Bear in mind that the obverse 'sucked' metal from the reverse even when the die was worn; the hair detail was simply the icing on the cake, not the priime cause of ghosting. I think you're probably right about the war ending the recessed ear experiment.

Here is the conundrum : the stronger the obverse and the better the hair detail, the more likely it is that there will problems with ghosting and weakness on the reverse. It's rare you will get both - the high profile obverse sucked metal from the reverse, which had thin rims and little protection. Ironically the short-lived recessed ear experiment of 1915-16 went a long way to curing the problem, so why it was abandoned... (answers on a postcard).