Kipster

That's about where I would have gone up to if I wasn't spread too thinly on other things. Did you per chance nab any of the proof farthings in the LCA this weekend?

Just PM'd you Pete. Cheers.

And that one is an absolute stunner. Ir was CGS graded and I believe it was regraded by NGC as MS64. Looked far better to me.

Guy Fonquernie and Richard Regnier both run it. Guy has some unbelievable pieces in his collection and is a penny collecting man. Richard does the silver side of things. They haven't updated any stock on their website for at least a year, so probably concentrating on auctions now.

The drawing looks more like Mary, Queen of Scots to me.

If it went to you, hats off.

Very nicely done. I was bidding on that as well and you pipped me to it. 👍

Has anyone been watching the St James auction this morning? Some big numbers being reached. A 1954 VIP proof farthing graded PR66 just hammered for £2,000.

Picked up this penny at auction recently. An F139. The variety hadn't been noted on the slab so I think it slid under the radar. Not the most beautiful coin in the world with a couple of issues, but far, far superior to my current example, and picked up for a very reasonable figure (I think).

There have been some unusually high prices hammered by coins in a few auctions recently. Some which had absolutely no right to get anywhere near the figures reached. Call me cynical, but it all seems rather suspicious to me. Perhaps someone's doing some laundry...who knows...

An interesting link for anyone into ancient English coins and history. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/new-king-esunertos-hampshire-coin-b2432256.html

This is a perpetual problem with several of the auction houses. Over-brightness on the images wipes out a lot of black spotting, particularly on the full lustre/colour coins. I picked up my third choice yesterday, but was really after the 1739 O over R sixpence, so if anyone picked that up and is looking to sell it on, I'd be interested, within reason. I wanted to bid more and would have, but I have my eye elsewhere and wanted to keep the powder dry. I was surprised that all those lovely Halfcrowns didn't find a new home.

Taking images that give you a true representation of what a coin looks like completely eludes me. But then the old Sony camera is due for punting out on ebay anyway, so maybe a cheap DSLR is needed. I looked at a few proofs when I went to Noonans a few weeks ago, but the images actually made the coins look far nicer than they were in hand.

This is interesting. That's pretty much how I would expect for a proof to look, however, this is currently for sale at Baldwins: https://www.baldwin.co.uk/product/victoria-bronze-proof-halfpenny-1868/ If it wasn't listed as a proof, I wouldn't have necessarily given this a second glance...

That's the kiddy. It's a shocker from my point of view. Apologies, I should have posted the link.