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Sylvester

Coin Hoarder
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Everything posted by Sylvester

  1. Sylvester

    A 1799 US Dollar...?

    Start a dollar collection and have them as fillers! If that 1799 was genuine you'd be looking at a thousand pounds worth of coin (if not more)!
  2. I sadly don't have any to hand (so please correct me if I'm wrong here) but 1990-1992 they have wire milling, from 1992 onwards they have flat edge milling. However, I do remember a few years ago discovering that either 2005 or 2006 pieces have both types, wire and flat edge milling. Can some confirm which year, since I can't find a 5p anywhere at the moment!
  3. Sylvester

    1932 Penny

    Good EF! Ha, that shilling wouldn't even grade Good VF, looks more like Yul Brynner than Vicky.
  4. I've handled alot of lower grade 'scrap' silver over the years and there is a wide variation in coin thickness, all due to wear. In fact it can be so noticable that if you were to pile 10 average 6ds in one pile and 10 worn 6ds in another, the pile with the worn coins would be one coin less in height (particularly noticable with pre-1920 silver). Same goes for current 1p coins (although not as noticable because bronze is a harder metal) a pile of ten 1971s can often appear a bit smaller than a pile of 1991 coins (isn't always the case, depends hw much active circulation they've had and how many have spend several years snuggled up in a piggy bank).
  5. Sylvester

    1993 Large 10p?

    A mis-description is what I was thinking!
  6. Sylvester

    1932 Penny

    Do I detect that slabbing is inflating coin prices? Slabbing whilst it has it's uses (don't get me wrong I have some slabbed coins), in the long run it seems to encourage collecting for the slab rather than the coin. One slabbing company says a coin is MS65 it fetches one price, crack it out resubmit to another slabbing company and they give it MS66 and suddenly the price has gone up by half or even double. Where the difference between grades is the opinion of how many minor surface marks are allowed or whether the strike is average or slightly above average for issue. Let me put it another way, you're not actually paying for a grade but more eye appeal, but eye appeal is subjective so how can a grading company turn it into an objective science? Which I believe is the fundamental flaw with the slabbing industry. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As for value, well a coin is only worth what the highest bidder is willing to pay for it at any one time. Now pretend you don't have this coin and you saw it for sale for 200 quid, would you buy it?
  7. Sylvester

    Check Your Change 2008 Edition.

    That's one coin I can't find a small head 20p!
  8. Sylvester

    Check Your Change 2008 Edition.

    The earliest lustrous bronze I ever seem to find is late 80s stuff. I too found a lustrous and AU 1992 Pound coin the other day. Some mid-90s 20p's also.
  9. Sylvester

    Ebay's Worst Offerings

    The amusing thing is this seller has been more honest than most, having put clear pictures of both sides up. There's countless examples of 20p's with either just an obverse or reverse picture and the carefully worded 'no date on heads side' or 'no date on shield side'.
  10. With regards to the natural toning and AT comments earlier, i'm still undecided as to whether it is the case that most are AT. True there's the motive, coins with dazzling rainbow colours seem to attract a premium, but i don't think this means they're all AT. I think a lot comes down to storage and climate. Many US coins were wrapped in rolls and the paper in the rolls often caused coins to turn all weird and vibrant shades (from what i've been led to believe). Another thing, although not coins I do have a few silver spoons that i've picked up over the years. The ones that are wrapped up and hidden in the dark in a cool environment seem to still be silver coloured, those left out in the open in the kitchen (either in a drawer or in a cupboard) have all tarnished with the full rainbow (and the more you clean them the quicker they seem to retarnish!) I can only put this down to water vapour in the air, what with all the cooking and all. Americans coin albums (Dansco) leave the surfaces of the coins open to air circulating. Whereas coin cabinates, capsules and slabs cut off the air supply and keep the coins in a more fixed environment. Plus many US coins were cleaned with all kinds of chemicals in the 1950s and 1960s when cleaning was the done thing (as it was in the UK to some degree).
  11. Sylvester

    Hammered Coins

    Well yeah there is clipping. I had temporarily forgotten about that... (My mind's been away from coins for a long, long time). I suppose there's your answer Geordie, hammered coins are just too, erm individual.
  12. Sylvester

    Hammered Coins

    There are none that I know of Geordie. Which as strange as this may sound, i find quite odd. Hammered coins were generally accepted on their weight so you'd think that it'd be fairly standard weight within a margin of error, due to coins being heavily circulated, or buried within hoards and thus under weight due to erosion. Perhaps we're just gonna have to invest in some scales and weigh every one we come across...
  13. Sylvester

    Results

    Excellent results there Oli!
  14. I had forgotten about that one! My tin farthing was grey.
  15. Sylvester

    Henry viii penny?

    I've gone and pulled out the Coincraft on this. The size of the mintmark doesn't look too far of in my opinion (i think the fact that it's worn gives it the impression it's bigger). It is however definately moving over the inner circle which appears to be unusual. Initials are on the reverse so it could be a mule. It could of course be an unrecognised variety. The obverse dies might have had the star punched in later (before the coin was struck) with a worn punch, if done by hand it only takes a slight slip to go over the line.
  16. Sylvester

    Henry viii penny?

    No idea Geordie why they'd do that! As for where are the hammered collectors? I'm afriad the Tudors are way after my period of focus so i don't know much about them beyond the basics.
  17. Here is a catch 22 though. Tin coins with nice clean plugs tend to do better on the market than tin coins where the copper plug has fallen out or been removed. Applying that to high grade tin coins creates an interesting problem though. If you have an exceptionally high grade tin halfpenny (as per some of Colin Cooke's old examples) in EF with moderate tin lustre intact with the plug still in situ, but the plug shows verdigris or it is causing some slight corrosion to the tin around it, should the plug be left or removed? Obviously this lands into the 'ethics' behind removing a copper plug and vandalising a coin, but what is better a high grade superb specimen (minus plug) of a lustrous tin coin or letting it corrode into a bog standard tin coin with plug like other eaten away coins? A question i've often considered but never put to the floor.
  18. That's right Scottishmoney they were made simply to keep Cornwall happy. Although the added benefit was that (in theory) a bimetallic coin would be harder to forge. However forgeries turned up, the tin turned out to corrode far too quickly and was clearly unsuitable for currency, worse still is the fact that tin and copper don't make good bedfellows and the presence of copper makes the tin corrode faster (or so i read but can anyone verify this as indeed the case?). Besides the point though it was a fairly unsuccessful and a fairly pointless exercise in British numismatics. Which makes me love them!
  19. Sylvester

    Roman? Gold? coin

    Charles IX of France.
  20. Sylvester

    Slabbing in Europe

    I think your last point holds much truth Josie. The US market for Brit coins will probably readily accept and welcome a Brit slabbing company (on the whole).
  21. Sylvester

    Slabbing in Europe

    I'm not sure on the particulars with the US but in the UK Coin collecting was a dying hobby until recently. The internet might have saved it, but regardless of whether it has or not, coin collecting is still seen as a marginal 'uncool' hobby to partake upon. Depending upon your viewing angle, naturally. coins/stamps/trainspotting are seen as one and the same by the average Brit. As far as i can envisage there would never be enough demand to warrant the government to take any notice of the coin collecting fraternity. Indeed, when new designs are submitted by the Royal Mint you may (or may not) get dissatisfied customers writing in saying the proposed designs are terrible and object. In the end though the Royal Mint will issue what designs it sees fit to issue whether it gets complaints or not. Now i've recently been reading a topic over on the US biased coinpeople forum about the new Presidential Dollar coin series and there's some statements there about some of the new designs being opposed by the coin collecting fraternity and perhaps the mint might be forced to alter the designs. It seems the US fraternity has clout. That would never happen in the UK. At the end of the day the US coin market and the UK coin market are two very, very different creatures and what works for one isn't automatically applicable to the other. This is all before we go on the bring the rest of Europe into the equation which would alter all the answers yet again! At the end of the day slabbing is an American phenomenon in an American way of thinking. Where emphasis on grade and who's is best outways emphasis on history. More paramount though is the role of capitalism in the US way of thinking, 'profit, profit, profit', is the thing that's emphasised time and time again on US coin forums it seems. Sit on a US forum long enough and it's generally all about; 'low mintages', 'how to spot sliders to crack and resubmit', 'is this really an MS63 or is it a possible MS64?'. That is pretty much all that ever gets asked upon US forums outside of toning questions. It's fairly dull to be honest. The time scale of US coinage is far more restricted which means the only way to create more areas to work in is by scrutinising the full range closer and subdividing it. Which is why there's such emphasis on quality and grade, and that's what slabbing needs to thrive. British coinage is so vast over an historical timeline that scrutiny on the American level (errors/grades) tends not to be really much of a driving force behind collecting because there's probably too much space for working. There are only two areas in British coinage where i think slabbing would be viable, first copper/bronze coinage (George III +) with particular emphasis upon Bun Head pennies and after through to George V, thanks to Peck and Freeman, these fields are the only fields which come anywhere near the US way of collecting by minor varieties, die types, errors, mules, etc. The second area would most likely be proofs. I can forsee no real demand for slabbing outside of those areas to be honest, the hammered fraternity would most likely strongly oppose it, the early milled likewise probably wouldn't be that bothered about it, and the modern stuff its a mix of opinions. Most post-1937 stuff isn't worth even doing.
  22. Sylvester

    Slabbing in Europe

    Has anyone brought up the other point here? I presume London Coins sell coins, and they're slabbing them? Now to get the best reults out of slabbing shouldn't it be done by someone without a vested interest in the end grade? What do they do with borderline grade coins? I suppose they mark them up, if they bought them from you though would they say 'sorry the grades wrong on that?'. Now of course yeah they do that without slabbing, but with slabbing part of the advertising gimmick is that 'it protects the buyer from dealers over grading coins', the question is does it though? Now i'm not saying London coins do that, but you can bet your bottom penny that if this grading company take off there will be others and they'll be a boom of grading companies all trying to out do each other and some practices of future grading companies mightr be less than ethical. Thus to quote another member 'who grades the graders?' The only way slabbing would be hugely beneficial to the collectors market would be if it was totally neutral and probably a nationalised company that's not allowed to make a profit, so they couldn't care less what grade the coin came out. A private firm will always do what is in the best interest of it's customers to ensure they come back again, which is the people sending the coins in that pay for the grading service. They're not going to send them to XYY service if they know XYZ will give them a higher albeit less accurate grade. Hence the crack out and resubmission culture that follows slabbing around. Excuse me if i'm cynical but i don't think it's in the hobby's best interests in the long run. It's in investor interests and investors are something the hobby is better off without as they put the prices up on nice collectable pieces that other collectors need for date sets etc.
  23. Sylvester

    Damnable Spam

    I've picked up upon three spam posts this evening, two of which i've deleted. The other is in this area about furniture of all things from the look of it but i'm not in control of that area so there's nothing i can do about that one. Someone bet me to the other reported one this morning. There's does seem to be alot of spam around these parts lately!
  24. Sylvester

    Slabbing in Europe

    I hope you told him so!
  25. Sylvester

    Slabbing in Europe

    Of course slabbing brings price rises but if people want it it'll happen, it all depends upon how good they are at advertising the product. If slabbing does take off i'll set up business as a professional slab cracker. £10 to have a coin professionally cracked out and £5 for every subsequent coin sent with it, each customer recieves an exclusive gold trimmed certificate of authenticy with every purchase. Feel the history not the plastic!
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