Sylvester

You nearly had me for a minute there, but the collar etc is wrong for that one. I was looking under class 4, (it's definately not class 5), and it's not classes 1a, 1b or class after 10a because the legend is wrong for those. I'm still hanging around class 4 but i'm at a loss.

and reverse...

Right i bought this a few months ago cos i liked the tone (not often i like oil spill tones but i liked it on this), i can't really get it much lighter, it's an Edward I penny, London mint but what class? I've yet to look myself properly.

oh and 1860 copper coins, they are always good.

I wouldn't think bronze was a fantastic investment material, not like copper is a big mover. I would have thought rare coins (like the 1934 crown), highly sought after but not particularly rare (Gothic Crown) or high grade scarce gold e.g 1858 sovereigns would be the best place to put the money into? The best bronze coin i can think of is the 1882 no H penny, for investment purposes that is one of the best i should imagine.

Lis, fleurs and trefoils are seemingly used interchangably... depending on how clear they are. If it looks like a French fleur de lis then either lis or fleur are used, if it looks like three blobs then trefoil. If it's for blobs then quatrefoil. Needless to say it can get complex, it's quite in depth stuff. You're not doing bad with that Spinks, it's a catalogue designed (especially the hammered section) for those that know hammered coins, people that know what fleurs and lis and cusps etc are. Not very user friendly i find and not very informative.

That's the name i was looking for, tressure and cusps. Tressures are the arches in this case 9 of them, and the cusps are where they meet.

i can't see any mention of the lis... But they might be part of the 9 arches going around rather than part of the bust, and from what i can see the lis turn up in some funny places on those arches... i forget what the proper name is. It also happens on the gold coinage too.

oh you'd already replied... i'm looking for the lis bit, there's three of them.

I reckon E44D-070, or S.2000, I think it's what Spinks refers to as a coronet rather than a crown, Coincraft just says crown. I'm not sure on this one though, i'll see what you think.

I think it's Edward IV, i can't see and Edward III with those crosses that look a bit like Pat Evans' earings...

From an investment point of view it is a very sensible thing to do, cos the market is not going to subside on them (well not that much), and with each one he acquires and doesn't sell it'll slowly dry up the market and the prices will go up. I dare say some collectors have more than he does. If they do he better hope they don't drop them all on the market at the same time as the prices will drop... (although that means he'll consequently be able buy more at a time his investment will have depreciated).

Is he trying to monopolise the market on the things?

And when you've done i've got one for everyone else on here to identify... cos i haven't identified it yet. And Spinks is very hard to use when trying to ascribe hammered coins to a class/type, it's a doddle with Coincraft.

Ah right... what that means is the coin will have just one of those mintmarks not all of them. If it happened to be a muled example (which yours is not), it could be possible to have up to two of them one on the obverse and one on the reverse. More often than not though there's just the one, so yours will just be anchors. Another coin might have a rose (33) on both sides (or was that a pansy?) I hope that makes sense?

Then it is definately a groat, incidentally so is my avatar.

I think Spink are getting lazy with the hammered section. Right i've just had a look try 2199A Which is class IIId. It's basically the same as class IIIc but the letters on the former are plainer. Anchor exists on the plainer letters variant which yours is.

Gradewise... now this is my failing on hammered Tom will shame me probably for getting this wrong. But top grade is VF, it's not that cos the hair is worn and there is some overall wear... but it's better than VG, i'd say it was AF-F, but grading hammered is a bit of a foreign language to me. Although in all honesty i get far more enjoyment out of owning hammered coins than i do milled. I'm slowly moving towards hammered, very slowly.

Oh that's better, yep that's an anchor alright. No it's not a penny or a halfpenny they look nothing like JMD. It could have been a halfgroat but it doesn't look right for one of those, i'm pretty sure it's a groat. What kind of size is it?

London mint, anchor mintmark, minted between 1485-1509. Coincraft reference number is H74D-040, Valued at £38 in VG and £75 in F. Thanks for the pic of the reverse cos it helped me ascribe it to a mint and a mintmark (hence the sceptical bit, cos i wasn't sure about the obverse one), the reverse one is much clearer. (Although they can be muled) Now i don't find Spinks/Seaby catalogue as easy to use at all with hammered... but i figure the Seaby reference is... S.2199 Class IIIc to them. (Or it was in 1993). Tom's the guy you need for this.

nope round i'm afraid. But the ones on my 1882 key wound silver one are on a square pivot, unfortunately for you that one works and i wear it with my suit vice wrist watch which then has the day off!

Mintmark looks to be an anchor, hard to tell though it's the only one that comes close.

I still need to see the other side... call me a sceptic.

Can i see a picture of the other side please before i say anything?

So you guys might have noticed i've been posting on here alot more recently.