Peckris 2

No thoughts at all?

Exactly. Never mind his wife (though you'd have to ask why she doesn't become a full British citizen?), the question is why he had held a US green card when he intended to be full time as a British politician.

This opens up the whole subject of what exactly did Heatons do - did they produce punches for whole dies from master matrices issued by London? Or did they get sent dies that just needed the final digit and mintmark punched in? Given that the reverse dies for 1882 are different between London and Birmingham, that implies the former. However, it could equally be that Heatons were sent quantities of a particular reverse design, and that the London reverse was produced separately solely for the purposes of testing the electronic presses. Since Heatons needed to produce pennies dated both 1881 and 1882, it's entirely possible that they decided to repunch a single 1881H die, especially given the large quantities of 1882 required. They would never have been sent the London reverse (which perhaps was done after the bulk of the issue had already been done by Heatons?) which of course makes identifying a genuine London 1882 easier. Over to the predecimal hive mind...

The legend possibly contains the Greek letter phi. Also - possibly - a rho and a delta. My money is on it being (possibly!) Greek, but I don't have any information, sorry.

My Royal Doulton has cracked. I could do with some new dinner plates. Very nice coin, by the way.

Entertaining account of an urban myth!

Yes, I would. Are you able to scan the article and post it here? (Nothing comes up about it on Google).

"Ok Smith. Time to start work on the punches for 1859." [A little later ] "Damn. Sorry Guv'nor, I've used the halfpenny 9 in error" "Ah. Well, overpunch with an 8, no-one will notice. At least, not for 150 years." [A little later ] "Looks all right. Go ahead and use it. Oh, and there's some unused 1854 dies - use it on those if you have to. And then start work on the 1859 punches but don't mess it up this time."

my vote would be for a 3

You'll have to expand the link - it's "Forbidden" for some reason...

bit early for April Fool's!

"Yours for only £19.67 - a special celebration price"

Precisely. What the Russians REALLY want (AFAWK) is a land strip connecting the Crimea to the 2 separatist regions, which unfortunately includes Mariupol, so why didn't they just invade there? A pincer movement from the Crimea and Russia would have involved a "friendly" area to the East, so militarily it would have made sense to the Russian generals. International outrage would still have flared, but not to the extent it has (perhaps more on a par with Crimea and Chechnya). What the attempted grab of Kyiv was all about, who knows what goes on in Putin's head?

Spam / hack. DON'T CLICK!!!

They do say "minimum Fine", but no guarantee that the coin in the photo will be supplied!

junk leg prop?

Never mind. If you're hard up, you can always afford a 1902 Crown in F for a mere £250 https://www.royalmint.com/our-coins/ranges/historic-coins/historic-crowns/hisx160/

Mary had a little lamb She also had a bear I've often seen her little lamb But I've never seen her...

Translation: "How DARE those b45tards fight back. Ok, the second phase is that we'll go after the Dombass (which is what we were interested in all along) and when they decide they'll give it to us to stop the bombing elsewhere, we'll declare victory and withdraw"

...I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for a long, long year Stole many a man's soul and faith I was 'round when Jesus Christ Had his moment of doubt and pain Made damn sure that Pilate Washed his hands and sealed his fate Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name... Welcome to the forums !

yeah, I told them about the expertise on this forum. I also told them that genuine pennies don't have a bust that is so deeply engraved with such 'modeled' hair and bodice details.

I've sent a request that they remove it from the auction. It's a convincing fake to someone not experienced, but to us it's an obvious repro because we know what to look for.

I heard one "expert" claim that 7% of the world's gold is tied up in electronics.

I have a couple of redundant computers and a few other broken electronic devices. To cut out the Royal Mint, I'm happy to swap them for an agreed number of sovereigns.

I've designed a combination shovel and plastic bag - it's for cleaning up cocker pooh.