Rob

He left a month or more ago. Don't know what he is doing now though.

copper probably. Looking at it would be easy to determine as you only have copper with or without bronzed finish, silver, pewter/lead, gilt or gold as potential metals. No aluminium as it hadn't been discovered during the Soho period.

Blocked dies remove detail, broken dies give added detail. Although people use the term blocked (usually referring to the incuse bits getting filled with crap), it is in fact damaged, with a bit fallen off

Peck's nomenclature for Kuchler farthing type 1 in his tome. Peck 1186 & 1187 are gilt and copper respectively. Weight is not likely to be either an issue or very informative as you find the flan weights vary a bit on account of them not being for circulation.I don't have a crappy example to show for comparison, but attached is a halfpenny in fairly dire (for a pattern/proof) condition that passed through my hands a few years ago. You can see the high points have exposed the underlying copper, but the majority of the gilding is intact, basically because it is relatively thick (note the scratches above the trident which haven't exposed copper), which post mint gilding tends not to be. For your coin to have such widespread gilt removal, I would think it wasn't original. A few years ago at Warwick & Warwick, there were a couple of Soho pieces that were effectively gold painted. I think Colin G will remember them, but can't remember if the other one was a farthing and if so whether this was it.

It has been gilt, but possibly wasn't originally so IMO. I'd have to see it in hand, but genuinely gilt as struck coins are rarely if ever seen in this condition and the flans tend to be well made with the gilding holding fast, so only the highest points lose the gold. Any poor post mint gilding comes off relatively however. Based on the pictures it ought to be a KF1, but where is the ship?

Don't bother. Ever since the 1935 Silver Jubilee crown, there has been more struck than the market can absorb. They made just over 700,000 of them, and even today are only worth tens of pounds. The first George VI crown is not so bad, but the Festival of Britain crowns head a long line of things that are worth a few pounds at the most. Churchill crowns, Silver Jubilee crowns, how many do you want? I will sell you a bag of 50 at a bit over face. The main problem is that there is no precious metal content to encourage their melting down. By all means get an example of each, but don't imagine for one minute they will be a good investment.

See, now I would have thought a football reference was referring to the 66 World Cup, which they are forever harping on about (and it's getting boring) and not WW2. A bit ironic really that the inability to forget about the war is now almost exclusively the preserve of those with no experience. The wife's late uncle was on the Eastern front, my father got out of St. Nazaire, a fortnight after Dunkirk before going to the Far East and being a POW on the railway. They got on like a house on fire when they met. No axes to grind, despite one having half his jaw blown off and the other never being able to walk properly again. They were both happy to forget the past.

Germany needs to stop feeling guilty. There's only a certain amount of contrition that can reasonably be expected. Lessons have been learnt across the planet, nevertheless, history will repeat itself whether in the name of religion, politics or race - Srebrenica, Cambodia, Rwanda anyone? There will always be social stresses because there is always a section that feels hard done by, so open discussion is the only way to stop resentment becoming an uncontrolled problem as it is far more likely to lead to attempts at defusing the situation. If open discussion exacerbates a problem, then clearly it has not been responsibly discussed nor the situation addressed in the past.

There is too much tarring with the same brush going on here. The racist element in this country is small, just as it is in most other countries, but but does exist, just as it does elsewhere. You won't change that. To suggest that all those who cited immigration as an issue are racist is plain silly. Those who voted for the far-right in the last election are probably a good proxy for the genuinely racist numbers. When I was growing up in a little country town, migrants were a real rarity. We had a 3rd generation Italian ice-cream business until the first Chinese take-away opened at the end of the 60s. We had a Lebanese family move in after the 73 Arab-Israeli war and the first black family in 1974. Before that you had to travel to a city to see a non-white face. Many country areas still have virtually no migrants, so when the eastern counties have gone from zero to 20 or 30% migrants in some communities, it changes the whole mix. Relatively unprosperous communities inevitably see this as threatening because it is a genuine sea-change in the community. It doesn't make them racist however. This country has a long history of assimilating displaced groups, the most recent probably being the Ugandan asians thrown out by Idi Amin in the early 70s. To make any subject taboo will only serve to disguise any grievances, real or perceived.

Yes.

It is no good saying London rejected the motion, you have a vote and you live with the decision. If they want to stay in the EU, they are allowed to emigrate to Brussels and live there. Why do they conveniently forget the 17 million that voted the other way? It's alright saying London wants to be in the EU, but seem to forget that the rest of England and Wales thought differently. Also, a quick course in basic sums would help. The EU is only 7% of the world's population. The other 93% that this 'inclusive' bunch are trying not to engage with are clearly irrelevant. I blame it all on a dependency culture and the nanny state. Nobody says mea culpa any more and works to get themselves out of their own shit. And I would ban pink ties if I was in charge.

A picture of the actual coin would be of interest. See how close to the nearest millennium he is, then we can worry about the century. 3/1 its a wrl Elizabeth I?

If there was ever an odds on bet it is that political shocks arise because the ruling parties have left the electorate behind. If Brussels mandated a referendum on membership in each country I would be surprised to see at least one other leave. Sadly, I suspect that the only thing the EU will take from this is to ensure opinions are not sought through the ballot box as the results can be disruptive. Better not to involve the people.

Hopefully the US public will vote for the least bad option, but I wouldn't bet on it. One saving grace is that the Republican party are unlikely to unite behind him if he does win.

In that case I would like to acquire as many void notes as possible at a 90% discount to face and generate my own income for the cost of a ball-point pen. If am will to pay postage for delivering them to me.

The most comprehensive one is Spink's Coins of England. It includes a selection of varieties within types which other catalogues don't cover. e.g. Coin Yearbook starts with Roman, but the limitations are clear when it only gives a single price for say Henry I pennies when there are 15 classes for the reign and nearly an order of magnitude variation in prices within those 15. Spink also has its limitations, but is comprehensive enough to cater for anything other than specialist collectors of a particular area.

Happy birthday

Welcome back Debbie Not convinced about the love token description though.

Email received from no.1 son. Puts Yes, Minister to shame. From the Guardian I believe.... reposted on the FT So, let me get this straight... the leader of the opposition campaigned to stay but secretly wanted to leave, so his party held a non-binding vote to shame him into resigning so someone else could lead the campaign to ignore the result of the non-binding referendum which many people now think was just angry people trying to shame politicians into seeing they'd all done nothing to help them. Meanwhile, the man who campaigned to leave because he hoped losing would help him win the leadership of his party, accidentally won and ruined any chance of leading because the man who thought he couldn't lose, did - but resigned before actually doing the thing the vote had been about. The man who'd always thought he'd lead next, campaigned so badly that everyone thought he was lying when he said the economy would crash - and he was, but it did, but he's not resigned, but, like the man who lost and the man who won, also now can't become leader. Which means the woman who quietly campaigned to stay but always said she wanted to leave is likely to become leader instead. Which means she holds the same view as the leader of the opposition but for opposite reasons, but her party's view of this view is the opposite of the opposition's. And the opposition aren't yet opposing anything because the leader isn't listening to his party, who aren't listening to the country, who aren't listening to experts or possibly paying that much attention at all. However, none of their opponents actually want to be the one to do the thing that the vote was about, so there's not yet anything actually on the table to oppose anyway. And if no one ever does do the thing that most people asked them to do, it will be undemocratic and if any one ever does do it, it will be awful. Clear?

I would use that uplift wisely. The EU is not as robust as it would believe. What you can't control has the ability to destroy you and it is not in control of the destabilising mass immigration, nor does it have any desire to engage with any disaffected EU citizens and parties. Head in the sand attitudes usually result in a kick up the backside while you are bending over as this country's politicians found to their cost. On a lighter note, in Sunderland - from the BBC website.

Thanks chaps. A rather inauspicious start to the new reference having failed to make things clear on only the 3rd identification exercise. Must start collecting thrymsas with their somewhat simpler runic legends.

rock by the linear circle as ja, rock standing up to right of lighthouse as per k, rev m doesn't have either of these rocks showing in Gouby

Yes, but that makes the lighthouse wrong which is thinner than m and has distinctly separate rocks by the linear circle and standing proud to the RHS as per ja

Presumably this will come naturally to most people here, but what is the Gouby reverse for a narrow date 1876H? Reverse j says 1874 only, rev. m doesn't have the rock by the linear circle, nor the protruding one on the RHS. The trident is closer to the linear circle than the top of the P as for rev.k. The lighthouse looks like rev. ja, which is only for 1874,5,& 7, but Britannia's hair is in any case longer than for ja and more like j whilst the back of the helmet is more like ja as well. And one final question, who nicked rev. l? All this makes sense as a Freeman reverse K however. Ta.

Virtually nobody believes Germany would return to its military dominance, but it would be naive to suggest that they are not the strongest country economically and by extension the country with the largest responsibility to ensure stability within the EU. It needs to cast off its cloak of guilt and act as a true leader amongst equals. In Angela Merkel you've got the only true national Leader in the EU, and no, I don't believe for one minute that she is going to advocate invading Poland.