Rob

Thanks. I'm glad someone's looked at it. It went live last Tues/Wed. Blame it all on nos. 1 & 4 as they did the donkey work. It is still a complete mystery to me. Need to reimage most of it and ensure that I only add things with a decent pic. We are still waiting for a ring light for the camera. And I'm going to try to have a permanent setup for pictures. A lot of the cheap stuff won't get listed as there's only so much patience in today's buyer and given the rapidity with which you get people clicking on and off sites it may not be productive to have a lot of cheap items without images. If you find any problems, please let me know.

Haven't got a clue about the 3d, but the ESC provenance section has been well and truly cocked up. By the time you get to the bit you are asking about the ESC ref is 3 adrift from the reference given in the main body. The first coin missed in the provenance section (thus creating a mismatch of 1 in the ESC number) is 2840 - florin, 1858 proof not traced. There is an offset of 1 until 1880 when no provenance is given for ESC2898 (854A) which appears in the main text. So a displacement of 2 going forward. This increases to 3 when the provenance includes an 1884/2 florin which doesn't appear in the main body. They have then missed out a chunk of the 1848 patterns. Then I lost the will to live........................................ Anyway, it stays at 3 out for the remainder of the reign. The error is corrected at the beginning of Ed. VII when 3 numbers are missed in the provenance section after the 1901 Maundy set and both parts start with the new ESC 3560. A mess.

Yes I do and no it doesn't mention a RRITANNIA 3d. MS9557 in the March 2011 SNC is an 1885 Maundy Set. It is illustrated, but I would be reluctant to say it was RR given the small picture size. Where is the ESC reference to it being a RRITANNIA? I have a full set for the year here spare if you are looking for them.

From what perspective? Varieties? Mint operations? Mint records? Prices?

I've left neutral in the past. Someone sent me a 'high grade' piece which had the contrast sufficiently reduced to remove the scratches. I left neutral pointing out that it was hopelessly overgraded, but to his credit he did at least give a refund. He just left me a negative with no explanation. What is wrong with people? If you are intent on selling s***e, don't call it what it isn't. You can't polish a turd. If it is crap, say so. And if someone isn't happy, put yourself in their position.

A constant problem for half the time. Then at others I'm told to get it if I can afford it. You have to tread a very thing line on the Brownie point thing.

I don't have any figures for die axis, but suspect this is normal. They weren't RM products, so you would not expect quality control to be such an issue. FWIW my penny is inverted, my halfpenny upright. Is your silver one definitely silver? i.e. have you tested it? The insert is normally white metal (mostly tin), so presume you are misleading yourself. You need a copy of Peck.

To add to the above, a figure of 5-9 implies the dot was put on the die as made. If it is the result of wear, then it would appear with time and the number seen would be lower than this per 1000. The number of dies that had to be used suggests you should see a lot more coins with dots if applied deliberately, after all, why place a dot on one or two dies only out of hundreds. I still think it is the result of wear and tear and not an indicator.

Only seeing a handful is probably about right. If we take the mintage figures given in CCGB as accurate for 1855, then 5.27 million coins struck in that year all with the correct date and a postulated 30-50000 coins struck per die gives a figure of 105-175 dies used with that date. Assume that you get a consistent number of coins from each die pair and the reasonable assumption that the spot is not going to occur in the same place on two dies, this suggests that you should be seeing 5-9 coins per thousand with the feature. OK, a few assumptions here, but a fair back of the fag packet assessment in my view. You could just as easily get one spot as multiple examples.

Or for a more extreme case, the obverse.

There are a few of the "Dots" that do not appear in the legends. Here is a 1855 Penny, with a "dot" on Victoria's forehead! …. and here's one on George III's neck. He really should put a bit of ointment on that……. That's quite clearly a rust spot. If you get a spot of corrosion, it will eat into the surface of the die and when the die is used rust will flake off. This will leave a pit which could be either regular or irregular. e.g. this halfcrown. You can't eliminate rust spots as the cause. It may just be that all of these dies have just a single one.

Sorry, should have also said that you would get only half the number of strikes per ton from YH copper dies, so a single die pair could strike a ton of copper pennies if it made 50000 or so. The other point about them being a deliberate mark is that the randomness of position would suggest otherwise. That they are found near the legend could simply be a reflection of the stresses on the die or flan when they are cut. Metal that hasn't been properly mixed will laminate in all probability. Inclusions cold easily fall from the die. The one thing it is not likely to be IMO is rust, as the mint was working flat out and so there would be very little time for a die to get rusty from lack of use. Rusty dies do exist for this period, but they are few and far between and the rust tends to cover the whole surface. A single dot is more likely to be a piece of metal separated, possibly enhanced by an inclusion in the flan. and if they really wanted to differentiate between dies, then all they had to do was put in the last digit or two with various spacings.

Excellent news. Have one for me too.

I can't see how these can be anything other than die flaws. People are getting overly excited about dots that appear on coins over decades and centuries. People are still getting excited about warts on QE2's face. The mint was placing numbers below the date, letters by the lighthouse (both sides), numbers under the bust etc, so why they would go to the effort of putting an obscure dot on the die beggars belief. We do know that they appear to have scratched numbers into the obverse to indicate tonnage, so that would have been sampled every 110000 ish pennies struck or 175000 ish halfpennies (3500000 farthings). I don't know how much the dies had improved from the situation they had in the second half of the 1840s, but I would think they should have got back up to 30000 struck per die pair if not more. So with only 3 -5 ish die pairs required before someone scratched a tonnage figure on an obverse, how much need would there be for an obscure and apparently random spot? Die numbers make sense, little raised bumps in the field do not. It's a bit like Gypsy Rose reading tea leaves.

No symbol as far as I'm aware, just use guineas or gn(s)

Accumulator has some, I have some (but not pennies), Vicky has some, so do a few others. The collection is widely dispersed.

Hmm. It's also missing a lot of what we in the trade call - detail. It's horrible unless you collect counterstamped coins.

I think it's just corroded with subsequent metal loss. The legend looks a bit thin in parts and the pitting is consistent with being in the ground for a long time. The range given in Peck is 9.42 - 10.62g, but there must inevitably be a few outliers. If it is 8.4 I wouldn't worry given the condition.

You should be able to. The edit button comes up to the left of multiquote, click on it and it takes you back to a reply box with the post to be edited within. The time limit is an hour or two for me, so don't know why you can't do it after 4 minutes?

Die cracks are a natural result of a fatigued die. A die is a tool which is used until it is no longer fit for purpose. A cracked die will be used until it physically falls apart and then it will be replaced with a new one and so the cycle goes on. Coins struck from cracked dies will be treated no differently to those from defect free dies because they will still pass as legal tender.

The guinea started life as a 20/- coin during the reign of Charles II. The price of gold fluctuated rising as high as 30/- for a guinea even though the weight remained the same due to the relationship with the price of silver. i.e. you had effectively two standards which didn't follow each other in price. Historically, since Saxon times the standard was set by the price of silver. Eventually we went onto the gold standard and the guinea was set at 21/-. It remained so until the introduction of the sovereign in 1817 which became the new standard of 20/- (one pound) with a compensating reduction in weight equal to one pound and guinea production ceased. The last issue was the military guinea of 1813. I was going to write this earlier, but you said you didn't want a complicated answer.

Mark it as spam then. We are plagued with spam links at the moment.

Probably half a dozen ish, maybe less. Some varieties are only known from 1 or 2 examples. They never circulated, so I suspect most of the original mintage still exists. Colin Cooke had a flat one for sale 10(?) years ago, but you couldn't confirm the variety with certainty. Considering their rarity they are relatively cheap, but then people don't collect halfpennies, do they. If they were bronze pennies you would be doubling the price and more. Coppers and gilt or bronzed coppers are more common for the original Soho pieces. There is only one original Soho striking in gold (P957) known and that was unsold in Selig (1999), but had disappeared by the time I went looking for it. Of Taylor's restrikes, Aluminium ones are rare, but that is because it was a precious metal at the time, only becoming commercially available in the 1880s. The gold restrikes are probably all unique and the silver ones unique or nearly so. Most are copper or more likely bronzed to hide the defects.

And the reverse. Pity about the marks on the leg.

A KH4 halfpenny in silver (P-). The appearance of a P1039 in the next Spink sale reminded me of this, as it was originally described thus, but has rust spots on Britannia's knee, something that my KH2 (P1042 in copper) is missing. As this came out of Baldwins basement about 9 years ago, it is one that Peck genuinely missed as he must have visited the dungeon a few times whilst compiling his tome.