Rob

Usefulness has never had a unit cost. You either need it or you don't.

Not sure about that. Whilst there are apparently accurate mintage records available for every other year and denomination, we only ever read that as far as 1954 is concerned, there is "only one known". Not even sure why that was produced or where it is now ~ can somebody enlighten ? Same applies to the 1952, of course. I don't think the location is a problem for these rare coins as discussed in a thread a year or so back. The numbers produced and reasons for doing so are a little more problematical however. I'd also like to see a better image of the foil impression for example which fills the screen and is taken perpendicular to the coin face as images exist of the accepted unique item, so it would allow corroboration. The only reason people take angled views noramlly is to eliminate flash reflection, but you can easily cover the flash with thin paper to eliminate this.

I saw a 1954 last year which had to be a changed date or something else iffy about it, but I have to confess I couldn't see anything wrong with it and nor could the person (a dealer) who showed it to me. It could easily have been genuine. How do we know that is taken from the known coin other than to accept the vendor's word? Can we be certain the 'only genuine' 1954 is actually so? Actually, when it comes to tin foil impressions of coins, Lindt do a very nice SFr5 amongst other things. Yummy.

It only happens on book bids. If you bid in the room the auctioneer is in control and so either knocks it down to you there and then or you pass. If you bid live on line the same applies.

Reverse

It's only happened to me a couple of times, but when it does it's a very good feeling - I can feel an anecdote coming on. The coin below was lot 253 in St.James's 3 where Mark Teller bought it for ~£4K including premium. I wanted it, but not at that price because nobody pays that much for a York shilling under normal circumstances and so was outbid at the sale. 2 or 3 years later it resurfaced in a Goldberg sale. In the interim the pound had depreciated against the dollar, so for the eventual buyer in the St. James's sale to recoup their outlay in dollars it would have been necessary to go to about $8K. This was even sillier than the £4K of two years previous, so I put in a bid within the estimate of $4000-4500 which was effectively at the same level as I was prepared to go to in St. James's and crossed my fingers. I followed the sale on line and got a bit depressed when I found I had been outbid, but only by one increment. I assumed it had a reserve, but had no idea at what level it was set because obviously nobody else had bid. I waited for my other winnings to be invoiced but imagine the euphoria when I discovered that I was being invoiced for something I wanted but thought had escaped. Happy days indeed as it has wall to wall original dusty lustre and the whole coin glistens in the light. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does you get a hell of a buzz. Obverse

Happy days when it happens on the odd occasion.

Any of the above is possible. Tardis anyone to resolve it once and for all?

Despite his claim to the contrary, it's not the real thing. It's missing the final E in genuine.

Ditto that. Both have clearly been cleaned. The obverses look considerably worse than the reverses would suggest in both cases which seems a little odd. I hate to think how much someone is going to pay for either of them.

Today's releases are driven by the marketing department, or so it appears. Sets are produced for the beginning of the year so that they can make inflated prices for their packaged products. The currency ones are released to the banks as they ask for new supplies. There are far more coins in circulation than you might assume would be required, but so many are sat in piggy banks or the like that the mint has to keep on producing them. Look at the number of 1p's officially in circulation, which is far more than are required for normal commerce. I don't think that scenario would have been relevant in 1926 when currency would have been released as required purely on commercial grounds and agree with the idea that most if not all were sent to a small area of the country.

Let's throw another possibility into the mix. The ME was clearly intended to be the way forward in 1925 because the 1925 ME halfpenny was produced. What if the 1926 ME penny was the first to be struck with this date, but the die broke early on and so the balance of the order was made up using old obverse dies? This would leave an unquantifiable (but potentially very small) number struck unless the Mint Records could shed some light on the subject. Again there's no evidence, but with all options open it has to be considered.

You've got to crop the image. Somewhere on your paint program or whatever will be a dotted box icon or something similar. Usually you hold the mouse button down and drag the mouse so that the cursor draws a box around the coin. Do it so that the coin virtually fills the area within the box and save it. Then upload the new image.

Clearly I'm too late to make such an observation and in any case I don't have enough digits to count the mistakes. I suspect that his name isn't John Kendall. Random letters put together in a haphazard fashion, will on occasion form sensible words.

Now you've got me COMPLETELY baffled! Database fields only have the validation rules you give them, and the default is usually "Put something in here - but if you don't want to it's ok with me". Like an inflatable d... No no! NOT going there!! I didn't set up the access database for my collection, my offspring did. Unfortunately he's no longer at home, so I live with what I've got. He said it was something to do with sorting the data, but as I don't understand it anyway because my computer programming skills are non-existent, I just do as I was told.

I think your second point (in purple) answers what seems to be the flaw in the logic of the first (in blue), Rob? The survival of both types in high grade being proportional to the ratio of mintage, only applies if both appeared concurrently. But as we know, the survival in quite reasonable grades of rarities such as the 1895 2mm and 1902 LT pennies is because - though both are varyingly scarce - both were also the very first of their kinds and so proportionally more would have been put aside than you might otherwise expect. However, in the case of the 1926, it was the commoner variety that appeared first and would have largely satisfied the demands of those just 'wanting the date'. Maybe a few (lucky) souls were aware of, interested in, and able to distinguish between, the two varieties and knew what to look out for. But, if the total mintage was - say - 100,000 then some of those few would have been looking forever with no luck of ever seeing one. I don't know if the 1st effigy dies were used up before the ME was used or not, as it is equally possible they were used concurrently if the mint was using more than one machine. In fact there would be a very good reason for running them side by side as this would allow the die characteristics to be properly evaluated. No newly introduced design would have been previously subjected to a test to destruction if that involved striking 50-100000 or so coins. That is why I was hoping somebody might have the mint records for this period on the off chance that it might shed light on the dates when 1926 pennies were struck and when the ME dies were introduced. Whatever date this happened, the pennies weren't struck until the second half of the year with either obverse design as per my previous post regarding the articles in the SNC, although modified effigy dies must have been produced in 1925 as the halfpenny is known with this date, but again presumably not until the end of the year as its existence wasn't recorded by Garside until the August 1926 article. Even if the precise dates are not available, it should be possible to make an educated guess of the limits based on the striking rate of the equipment in use at the time and total output. At the moment we are all hypothesising without firm evidence, so could do with a bit of research. Any members of the BNS in the London area could take time out to visit the Library in the Warburg Institute for example as they have probably got a copy of the Mint records for 1925, 1926 & 1927.

Shouldn't that be thong.

Prsumably the starting price is a reflection (sorry) of the labour time required to get it to that state. An hour and a bit at minimum wage rates is about right.

Looks machined to me.

I'm not sure I entirely agree here. Any fool can spot an H or a KN but it takes practice to isolate an ME from the ordinary effigy. Coin collectors are like anybody else and their level of interest and thence skill will vary widely. Only a tiny minority will have had the interest to buy or borrow a publication which shows them what to look out for. My change collecting of pennies as it related to MEs went in three stages; 1) I had no knowledge of there being two varieties of 1926, although I did know about Hs and KNs; 2) I found out that there were two types but initially thought they had a small head like 1928-36. I hadn't picked up on 1927 being a different design; 3) Somebody pointed out to me what I should be looking for and after a while I could recognise one at ten paces. As £400 and 1949 Threepence have pointed out, pre-internet collectors were often lone wolves and it took time to garner information about the subject. Many will have learnt more by borrowing Seaby's (now Spink's) from the library, as I did, but library books have to be returned and you can't learn everything in the two week period before the fines start to kick in. My point is that because of the level of skill involved there were always going to be less people looking out for MEs, although I suspect that like KNs (not Hs) the majority were eventually harvested from circulation but as this took a long time, they were typically in worn condition. On the assumption that nobody recognised the ME and the collector wanted the best example of a 1926 penny he or she could find, then the percentage of mint state pieces of either 1st or 2nd effigies should be directly proportional to the ratio in which they were produced. There is no reason to discriminate in favour of or against either type if both were freely circulated. If you did know of the ME's existence, then it is reasonable to assume that you would look out for both varieties. I can accept that conceivably there were few collectors in proportion to the total collector base who were aware of it, but the limited number of coins collected as opposed to freely circulated should mean that the first sentence is a very good approximation to reality. Once the existence of a rarity, perceived or real, enters general knowledge there will be a tendency to hoover up all examples encountered whatever the grade. KN & H pennies (or even the 20p mule) are good examples of this. The result is that they are relatively common in circulated grades when compared to actual mintage figures for all types because they survived the great melt at decimalisation. This should also apply to the MEs because they would not have been withdrawn from circulation until decimalisation. The key to the mintages should therefore lie in the number of mint state examples extant. In an information free environment the statistics are going to be as unbiased as you can get. Once you have the knowledge that there were two types of 1926 penny and have read about the differences. I don't think it is too much to expect that the collector looks for a date first of all and then the position of the BM. And if they don't care or can't remember these two features, then the first sentence will apply in whatever grade.

The mouse over effect sounds neat, but is of no immediate use to me as I would normally go to half screen images with the unknown image on one side and the pre-existing stored images appearing on the other as each link is clicked in turn. Another advantage of Excel is the effectively unlimited capacity storage facility to the right hand side of the sheet. If I can identify a coin as an ABC123 but don't have an image, I can record the listing for future reference next to those I have imaged in the hope that one day a reference will tie the unknown listing to a specific illustrated coin. However, I still see n lines of provenance in a single Excel box preferable to n lines of Access fields when calling up the complete provenance. I can't see any difference between 6 column wide Excel data and 6 column wide Access data in terms of ease of use. My collection details are stored in an Access database, but I find the requirement to fill in all the boxes before you can move on a bit of a pain as I may not have all the info to hand. I prefer Access when it comes to sorting columns because Excel doesn't always sort things correctly if I remember correctly leaving you with an irreversible layout. Sorry, slightly off topic here.

It isn't rocket science though when all's said and done. You are only going to look for something you are aware of; but once you know, a quick check of the date and if 1926 a check on the position of the BM. I haven't got the slightest interest in pennies, but wouldn't have any difficulty recognising one. Whether a date collector or a full-blown variety collector, both would check the date first because it's the most likely gap in the collection. There seems to be a presumption that previous collectors weren't able to recognise the variety, but the information has always been there if they were so minded. The obvious conclusion is that either collectors took no interest in contemporary currency (similar to the attitude of many collectors today regarding current mint output), or that the coins were never that common in the first place. The former is more likely in my view as the great collections in the first half of the 20th century were focussed on hammered coinage of all ages with a smattering of milled thrown in. Lockett sold his milled currency at the end of the 1920's to concentrate on building up the best collection since Montagu and Murdoch. Would he have had a 1926ME penny? I don't know because I don't have a copy of his milled sale, so possibly, but the attraction would have been as great as putting a low denomination 2010 currency piece in your cabinet today. Most collectors of contemporary currency tend to be younger or poorer collectors as this is the cheapest way into the hobby. These are also people who may need to spend their collection on cars or other consumables as they get older or as fate dictates. Several factors mitigated against the hoarding of 1926 pennies such as economic depression, war and significantly, coin collecting became less popular throughout the 1930s compared to the 1920s, possibly as a result of the economic mess. All in all not a happy mix for collecting high grade pennies or indeed for ensuring a good supply of pieces for the future because fully two decades of potential circulation ensued before coin collecting became more popular again.

Spink Numismatic Circular. 1926 p.441 and 1927 p.413 refer. Unfortunately the pages are too big to reduce the file size to less than 150kB if you want image clarity. Another possible reason for their lack of inclusion in contemporary collections is that anybody who collected copper or bronze was considered a bit of an oddball. Even coins such as Soho patterns would be lumped together in bulk lots of dozens whereas today they would be given individual lot status.

Their presence was certainly known within the collecting fraternity from the start. Henry Garside issued a monograph on the subject of British Imperial bronze coins in the Circular. He added to this in the August 1927 circular listing both the old effigy and the new one described as quote " O. - Similar to the obverse of 1, but the King's effigy has been remodelled, His Majesty's hair is treated differently, the eye has a different appearance, the top of the ear is more rounded, the initials BM (Sir Bertram Mackennal, K.C.V.O.), on the truncation of the neck, are more to the right, with less space betwen them, and no stop between and after them. R. - Similar to the reverse of 1, but dated 1926" Garside's list was updated every August. In 1926 this update included only the 1925 halfpenny with the revised reverse. The 1927 update included both types of 1926 penny and the 1927 penny; 1925, 1926 & 1927 ME halfpennies; 1926 & 1927 ME farthings. Therefore we can assume that the ME pennies appeared in circulation after the August 1926 Circular went to press. This would be in keeping with the low mintage for the year irrespective of type and is not unreasonable given there were no pennies dated 1923-5. Rather more surprising is the inclusion of the 1925 ME halfpenny in the 1927 update as this should have been reported in the previous year assuming the update was timely. Whether this means that the 1925 coins were actually issued in 1926 I can not say as I don't know the date the ME dies were first used, but whatever, there is an inconsistency here which needs to be resolved. The Mint Records would be helpful here if anybody has them.

I'm still not convinced about the wisdom of having the provenance information (which is the raison d'etre for the entire exercise) stored in a separate layout away from the main page (or the concordance in yet another). It also begs the question as to what I would put in the main database. It seems more sensible to have everything under one roof rather than in several databases. The only things I store away from this are the images which are systematically named as the standard commonly used detailed classification (eg. Besly or Morrieson die pairings) together with the image sale reference, and stored in clearly identifiable folders giving the mint and denomination. This also allows me to run down the image folders and files in quick time without entering the database if I want to compare an image with one already stored. I don't know if the attached will show up adequately, but it illustrates the 6 columns as used with the individual coin provenance forming the link. As the full sheet displays all the examples I have recorded to date, a quick scan down the list (16 in the case of the Exeter C11 crown) will tell me what to look for. For example, Cumberland Clark 95 I know to be the C11 crown with the 5 legged horse. Click on the box with the provenance and the image pops up. It's simple, but quite effective.