Rob

We all have dogs in our collections. I remember when I was cataloguing Stewartby's collection for Spink. I was under pressure to keep the lot numbers down as far as possible because of the quantities involved. That raised a problem when I was trying to catalogue the Edward IV halfpennies as he had one excessively rare light coinage Canterbury coin with mm. Pall and trefoils at the neck (S2072A). The problem was the fact it was unique. The downside was unique or not, it was a dog. To keep the average lot value up, I decided to mix it with a high grade halfpenny and gave it a buy me estimate. As I suspected, the high grade piece did all the heavy lifting on the lot, but I already had one, so pulled out the stops and bought the pair. Having bought it, I immediately sold the better coin for nearly as much as the lot of 2 cost, leaving me with a cracked, bent, holed, worn, and just about every other fault imaginable coin that cost me about £9. Still never seen another. The coin in question was found in Hampshire near to the Delme-Radcliffe home, who acquired it when found, wrote it up in the BNJ vol.51 and sold it in her sale in 1985 (lot 288). An absolute dog, and one of the last things I would part with. I used it to tick the pall marked coin box. Here it is in all its splendour (?)

So do I. It will get the wife off my back telling me to stop doing all the things I enjoy. Rest assured all will be fine. I'm not giving up the ghost yet. I haven't yet created a box for Rob Pearce 1958-2026 to tick yet. Eventually it will be filled, but family history suggests I might be around for a while yet. My father's eldest sister was 96 when she died. Never married, ran a smallholding on her own, then had a sweet shop in Wells, rode a motor bike until she was 70 and refused to go into a home to the day she died on the grounds they were full of old people. The interesting bit was the bike. At 5'3" and weighing 5 &1/2 stone, one that she rode was an Ariel square 4. I guess she didn't want to conform to the insecure female model. By the time she stopped after coming off on ice one night, she was down to a 250, but was collecting her pension. I liked visiting her sweet shop.

It just seemed bit of a sweeping statement and reflected the personal searches of 2 people for different varieties. Had it been a survey of 30 or 40 collectors, all searching with the same level of intensity, either statement would have had more supporting evidence behind it. Both are unquestionably less than common, but I wouldn't like to assign a rarity of one relative to the other because I haven't done the spadework. My NGC MS65 1673 halfpenny was in a 65 slab when I bought it in 2006 and did so because I could see without a glass that it was actually a 5/3. To me that was obvious. Thanks to the work done by Nicholson identifying the various 5 over 3 dies with their different styles, I was then able to say that the majority of 1675 halfpennies were actually 5/3 and the straight, clear 5 from new dies was the rare type. At this point the yearly mintages fell into place, because if you believe the mint output figures, 1673 and 1675 were not particularly different and certainly not as rare as the 1672 in the case of 1675, yet listings in past catalogues suggested they were much on a par with far more 1673s than the figures suggested. That was my 3rd unassigned 5/3 to go in the collection, none of which was in less than a 63 slab. And all now out. Add the identifiable dates from images rather than cataloguers opinions and you arrive at not dissimilar numbers of 1673s and 1675s, and 1672 then becomes much rarer relatively. Which is what the mint said. Consequently I am happy with my analysis. This study also showed the existence of a doubly cut overdate, when close examination of my 5/3 showed it in fact to be 5 over 3 over 2. Totally unambiguous if you look at the pictures in the confirmed unlisted varieties section. It ain't going anywhere soon, but my sketches do allow others to identify the reverse die involved. Nobody would have considered it likely prior to my discovery due to the propensity of the mint to use dies to extinction.

Anything anyone finds at the first or second time of looking immediately becomes easy and not an issue in terms of acquisition, and immediately reduces the rarity in their eyes. Oh that life were that simple. The entire essence of collecting anything is serendipity. Right place, right time and you are on a roll. Miss out on something you could have bought with one more bid and you are forever cursing yourself. There are so many could have, should haves out there I've stopped counting. Don't forget every missed opportunity creates the funds for the next one. Win every one and your issue becomes funding, because you are likely to have overpaid at some point just to have it and I can confidently say you don't have unlimited funds. I wanted one of the the Henry VII sovereigns in Carrington recently, so made sure the money was on standby and placed a bid. I was one bid short, or rather David Guest was the person who outbid me on the day in the room. Dragon marked sovereigns aren't difficult to find, but the price makes them appear so. This one ticked the trade off boxes just right. Not buying that meant the remainder of the auction was now up for grabs. I bought the type 1 Mary Angel and the Triple Unite instead. Not what I wanted that day, but both ticked boxes and I was happy with that. And it left me with cash to spare.

If you are willing to spend the money, this guy makes the best cabinets around for new ones. https://robdaviscabinets.co.uk/ It is fair to say he is a master craftsman. Will make whatever you want and does it for a living. He won't disappoint. Assuming you don't intend collecting by die variety, you already know the hole sizes required, so work out what you have in the collection, what you need and buy cabinets on a regular basis as the collection expands. That reduces the up front cost and you already will know what trays you need in the next order. You can even get a cabinet based on the reign involved, though the Victorian one is likely to be served by a few cabinets. Your choice, and welcome to the mad house.

Thanks Bill. Rob

Thank you Stuart. All in all it has been passable here, but a few incidents have caused a bit of grief. I have had ongoing issues with a few external adjustments made when sitting at Birmingham since the middle of the summer. Trying to upgrade the website at the moment. A few changes to stock that I honestly believed had gone through due to the reply received from the platform, had not in fact, leaving me selling most of the desirable coins for a second time. It has happened to a few people that are regular customers who are more forgiving than new ones. The second set are less forgiving because they don't know you. Accordingly, I have had to make orders manually processable only. A pain in the ass, but at least it eliminates me having to incur a second set of full fees just to refund the customer. Makes me look a twat, and I never see them again. All is explained in the message on the landing page. The question is, can you see it or would you move past the front page too quickly to register the message? Anybody interested, have a look and give me some suggestions for a revamped layout. Website landing page Doesn't rain, only pours. Next problem. In addition to the above site issues, on Boxing day the CH boiler broke down and leaked it's contents everywhere. I have now informed myself by experiment that the new trainers my wife bought me a few months ago, are in fact waterproof as claimed. A quick check suggests the volume they can hold is in excess of 1 litre, but, it's a write off. Ideal boilers have shown themselves to be less than so. All the HE series units have a manifold that consistently breaks and they have done so on this boiler at least 3 or 4 times on several occasions since 2004. It's plastic, but rather than make a replacement that will last, they are offering a full boiler brand replacement. That's shit. I like to buy something that can be repaired with the least landfill possible. I am going for a Vaillant this time. Next problem. I've not been in the best of health for the past couple months. I'm not sleeping at all. The wife thinks I'm slowly going off my trolley due to lack of sleep and generally ignoring any potential health issues. Pointing out that my basic health figures are better than hers, she chooses to ignore my comments. She swims 4 or 5 times a week and does other exercises but has high blood pressure, nearly 200 over whatever. I do sweet f a and have excellent numbers - 120 over 85. Probably because I also smoke too much (she doesn't), drink too much (she doesn't) and don't try to pretend I'm in my youth (she doesn't either, but instead spends most of her time worrying about me not being so). To sum it all up. In the lead up to Christmas she got totally p'd off getting no sleep due to me coughing and keeping her awake. I've been banished to the sofa, and now sleep when I feel like it. She also booked me into the quacks and worse still managed to impress on him her concerns, much to my consternation. I now have a prostate exam for Friday. A senility test for alzheimers on the 8th. A new CH boiler being fitted on the 9th, and a lung cancer check in a mobile scanner on the 15th. This is apparently going to appear in Tesco's car park as part of the national screening program for smokers and ex-smokers. All is capped off by a consultation with a sleep specialist on the 21st. Apparently there is a program for that too. Anyway, enough of my woes. Downstairs for a quick cigar and see who is wandering around the garden followed by a quick whisky. One thing my family has got right is that a bottle of Linkwood is a regular in my Christmas stocking. :) Happy Days. Please look at the current website layout and give me some ideas about what would make it work better for you. More drop downs? More info? Ease of use? It is currently 03:30 on the 1st Jan 2026 and I don't feel at all tired.

That's because he is a long term collector with a genuine understanding of claimed versus actual rarity. If you know your stuff, a lot of questiions are easily answered or never get asked in the first place

Also not helped by the 5/3s which leaves people wondering what the hell they've bought.

As the label says. Good luck to all

Wot about Briot?

I was going to reply to all these but too many to do - I'll give you the task of finding a D&H. Life is so much simpler with one as all the varieties are illustrated. Punctuation, present or missing is important, as is the position of the legend relative to itself or other features as this will determine the die(s) used and hence the variety. For this piece: Milled edge will be D&H 351 - common. 351a edge reads 'AN ASYLUM .......NATIONS' - Rare 351b edge 'BIRMINGHAM OR SWANSEA' - Very Rare. 351c edge 'PAYABLE AT LONDON LIVERPOOL OR BRISTOL.' - Rare. And for any 19th century tokens you might acquire, a good reference you will find is 19the Century Token Coinage, by W J Davis. Sorry, I will lose the will to live if I do many more. I don't have any copies of either in stock, but do have the references in an emergency and if all else fails will help. Every collector added to the list of known people in a certain field helps.

This one is a Coalbrookdale 1/2d token. The birthplace of the industrial revolution. Dalton & Hamer Shropshire 10, identifiable by the position of the obverse legend and the reverse date 1 relative to the K in KETLEY and the 9 being under the limb of L. Obverse is the bottom image. D&H rarity is scarce. If you are interested in tokens, you can get a reprint of the volume. The originals were printed in 1910 and somewhat hard to find.

Similar for me. And if you live within an hour or two of Galata's address, have a day out walking in the area and pick them up. You will probably be offered a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Paul and Bente are nice people.

I think that's what the last person had in mind when I sold a kg or so on ebay last time.

If I get enough, I might put them on ebay as material for an art project. Only the 84s sell individually.

More obviously there is no sign of a quatrefoil on the reverse to make it Irish (or possibly episcopal English). Don't worry about the small flan reference as many coins were clipped, focus on the detail you can see.

And my 1694 upgrade. Quite chuffed. . Thankfully people focussed on the description which said pitted flan, which is due to it being cast rather than rolled as per spec, but as that accounts for half the halfpennies or more of this period, should not be something to worry about.

I still think there is only one die for these, as that was the 4th I'm aware of, and they are definitely the same obverses. There are 2 different reverse dies however, which is probably to be expected (see alignment of 17 and final A). My current example is the third coin, which I picked up in DNW 76, lot 287. My first one came from ebay in 2004 and both cost a tenner. Excuse the GV/B 1694 which was added to keep things neat. That was the discovery piece by Colin Cooke in 2004. I have since upgraded that with the superb example in London Coins 168, lot 1407. I saw it, GV/B not mentioned in the description, compared with mine and promptly put a very large 'must buy' label in my shopping list. Those are the only two I have recorded, but there must more out there.

Not particularly flattering, is it? Having said that, my all time low is probably the 2002 Queen Mother £5 portrait. The first time I saw one of those, I had to do a quick check that it was a Royal Mint product and not some private enterprise output. Give Anne her dues. She is probably the hardest working royal of the 4, and I suspect has a greater sense of duty than the others.

That was the father. He passed away about 4 years ago. I don't think Dennis ever got over it.

Just had an email from Lu Veissid that Dennis Dunkerton died peacefully at home earlier today. Sadly, one of life's casualties to the excesses of alcohol. He has looked like death on legs for the past year and couldn't keep off the pop. Still a nice guy though. RIP Dennis

It's always good to learn. We all do, albeit mostly through mistakes, not having gone to the effort of preparing ourselves adequately for the items in question. It is always helpful to acquire a few higher grade items in your areas of interest as well as being cleanly and clearly struck. If correctly identified, then you can use those as a reference for the various design features you need to check to drill down into the sub-type. Don't be afraid of spending decent money on a good coin. It doesn't suddenly become a 50p lucky dip item worth nothing just because you paid more than you normally would.

If it had liv as the last three characters, it would have been worth a couple hundred pounds, or whatever someone was willing to pay, even in that condition

Anyone with a correctly spelt legend on William III obverses, please make yourselves known now. It seems easier to find an error than a correct legend in this time period. Yet another to add to the list.