Rob

Therein lies the gulf between the south and north. I was thinking in local terms where 80K will buy a 3 bed semi in need of some modernisation. Otherwise, today a 2 up, 2 down in Blackburn starts at just over £30K according to zoopla. 25 years ago, a similar property was 3500 in need of repair, 5k done up. That when even in Manchester a 3 bed semi in a respectable part of town was typically in the 75-100 bracket.

Welcome to the club

A prime example would be the Petition Crown. Recently I checked and reviewed the provenances of these. Bergne no.7 makes for interesting reading. It also has raised a question which I haven't been able to answer yet of which later. A Edmonds from silversmith in the Strand - Wesley? T Dimsdale 1788, Soth 6/7/1824 T Thomas 387, 23/2/1844 £48 J D Cuff 1373, 8/6/1854 bt Webster E Wigan, colln bt Rollin & Feuardent 1872, sold after buying no.2 W Yorke-Moore 255, Soth 21/4/1879 £86 Webster Hon R Marsham 731, Soth 19/11/1888 A D Clarke 364, Christies 15/6/1891 H Webb 692, Soth 9/7/1894 R M Foster 243, Soth 3/11/1903 B M S Roth 348, Soth 19/7/1917 Lt-Col T G Taylor private treaty to A J Morris, sold privately to W C Weight 17, Glens 23-25/7/1923 E H Wheeler 500, Soth 12/3/1930 W L Raynes private treaty to Spink 1962 E M H Norweb 223, SCA45 13/6/1985 J Perley Storer 101, SCA111 21/11/1995 In the late 19th / early 20th century a number of collectors held onto the coin for a few years at most. Even in this period you were looking at a cost of up to £150-350 for it and clearly the short period of ownership reflected the outlay involved. It takes a collector with very deep pockets to sit on something of this magnitude for a prolonged period of time. An investor will likely get fed up in short order. Yorke-Moore, Marsham, Webb, Roth, Wheeler Raynes and Norweb were heavyweights, but on the whole even they didn't hang on to the coin for too long. Alongside that is the consideration that young collectors would never be offered coins such as this by private treaty. The question regarding the coin above concerns the first owner. Until the coin was repaired in the mid-19th century, it had CW 12th Oct 1799 very lightly scratched in the obverse field. I suspect that CW was the initials of the silversmith on the Strand in London at this time, but can't find reference to Wesley's first name. Anybody? He had an apprentice at the time called Lambert who set up on his own account in Coventry St/Piccadilly Circus(?) a decade later, from whom Edmonds purchased Bergne no.6 in around 1812-13.

Very true, but if Bill Gates or Warren Buffett decided, tomorrow, to collect coins I'm sure it wouldn't take a few well-placed and well-rewarded dealers long to acquire most of things they wanted! They wouldn't be having mine, just as I wouldn't expect someone to sell to me if asked. I might take up an offer to buy if asked, but would not solicit one from the seller without an indication they wanted to sell. I'm certainly not in a position to test your resolve Rob! Interestingly, on your other point, there does seem to be an unspoken ethic about not overtly soliciting the purchase of coins from other collections. It's not something I've seen discussed on here, but it's rather nice. It all boils down to the principle of you can't have everything you want, when you want it. Instant gratification is for the impatient only. Unless I am in desperate need of the cash, as I'm not collecting as an investment, why sell? It therefore follows that I have no reason to disrupt my collection unless it is a piece that I know I can replace with either a better example/higher grade alternative or is surplus to requirements. Several members have acquired coins from my collection on this basis following an approach from myself. In a roundabout way, this is why certain rarities also find their way into a few specialist collections because the number of people willing to buy something at the drop of a hat is a relatively small percentage. Money spent on coins is dead money unless you want to time the sale to maximise returns. When my time comes to sell, some will sell for less than I paid and others more. As a whole it will probably mean a gain but there is no guarantee. 20 years from now the market may have tanked for all I know. You shouldn't be spending money you don't have unless in investment mode. On more than one occasion I have been told that a run has been completed in top grade in a very short space of time. On inspection, no it hasn't. I was asked by a dealer for a 1922 halfpenny in BU recently. I told him I didn't have one and suggested he would be back in 12 months time asking the same question. He didn't want to hear that, I was being realistic. Patience is definitely a virtue here. If you are to have a meaningful hobby, it must be that quality is spread around different collections - otherwise one person will have all the nice pieces and everyone else gets depressed at the inability to procure things worth having. What goes around, comes around.

Tracking down things for a good price is a necessity based on the lack of funds available to complete a collection. However, that should not disuade you from paying over the odds for something you know is a Hobson's Choice piece, haven't seen before or at least not in that condition. Making a point of only buying below book raises a few questions, not least of which is 'Why am I able to buy at this price when others have said no?' An undesirable rarity bought cheaply almost certainly remains that on both former counts.

I'm 9 in May, though I did post as a guest prior to that in the good old days when guests could do so without registering and spammers were non-existent.

Very true, but if Bill Gates or Warren Buffett decided, tomorrow, to collect coins I'm sure it wouldn't take a few well-placed and well-rewarded dealers long to acquire most of things they wanted! They wouldn't be having mine, just as I wouldn't expect someone to sell to me if asked. I might take up an offer to buy if asked, but would not solicit one from the seller without an indication they wanted to sell.

There are both obv and rev unifaces. I need one of these too.

They should be weighed in, then he could buy some more and start again. There are quite literally tons of coins that need to go in the pot. cdesteve holds a measurable percentage of them.

cdesteve must have taken ages to find such good coins. Not as low as the usual quality which is normally best described as 'defective washer, with traces of detail disfiguring the otherwise 100% proof-like blank'

Yes. I guessed 250K hammer. I was only a small house short of the final figure.

Somebody complained because the coin had lustre? Too nice to list on eBay or what? That's nonsense.

Yes, but you are fighting a beast whose loyalties are far from balanced. If you have the slightest problem then you will be out of pocket because of their policy of buyer good, seller bad. Even when selling crap you get problem buyers. The wife had one this weekend who didn't want to pay postage at cost and then left her a neutral because he wasn't happy with the coins (which had nothing wrong with them). That after she gave him the option to cancel when he moaned about having to pay postage in the first place. It's twats like that which make eBay a very unpleasant place to do business at times. Couple that with eBay's random account blocking and general dictatorial attitude and it makes Putin look like a nice guy. The customers are the people who pay a business's wages. These are called sellers on eBay, not buyers who do not contribute a single penny to their coffers. Now when you screw your customers (sellers) and give free handouts to buyers by refunding them and allowing them to keep the goods, the system is broken. As Dave said, not only the above but the inability to leave negative feedback or even communicate by email to other users means that everyone has a bad ebay day. Maybe an option would be eBay 1 and eBay 2. The first you have to pay to list with minimal or no final value fees, the second gives free listing but with final value fees. That would eliminate the vast majority of the crap from no.1 and make viewing the quality section slightly more worthwhile.

It isn't the lack of competition that makes me stick with eBay, it is the occasional moments of having nothing to do. I can say without any doubt that I use it as a gap filler by now. I don't actively search for the coins I need because I have neither the time nor inclination to plough through the crap for what is a fairly esoteric list. Even a couple thousand in the hammered section takes hours to sift through. There is no point searching for names like Edward, Harold or Victoria because half the people listing call him Eddy, Harry, Vicky etc. Hammerd is a favourite too. Anything sold or still for sale was on a list I gave to the wife a while back and will be recycled by her on free listing days using their bulk relist facility. When it runs out I will reconsider the position, but for now we are a passive user and have no desire to be more than that. If it sells it's a bonus, but nothing more.

Why does it have to be any particular character? Given most of these are punched in error, it follows that the punch wasn't checked before use. i.e it could be anything, even just a short straight or curved line punch as opposed to a letter or number. There is no certainty that the digit underneath had to be genuine, or that it had to be valid elsewhere in the series. It does hint of a 6 to my mind.

How do you define desirability? I like hammered, Peck can't be ar*ed. There are too many penny collectors on this forum, many would disagree. Some like bright coins, others toned. Some quality, others washers. This is too subjective to give a definite number. Availability is an ok parameter because it is a simple census and so is demand as long as you don't try to qualify it.

Sellers will presumably resort to free listings only. What ebay don't seem to realise is the mismatch between their demand for income and the relatively extortionate cost of a regular listing. Couple that with a system that encourages you to list crap because you don't get a decent price for quality and it is clear the wheels have partly come off the bus. Sellers get fed up because the degree of competition for material is typically not very great with anything other than the exceptional either not selling, or going for opening bid. To avoid the masses and get more eyeballs you have to pay to list. That increases eBays take to about 25% which is a lot of dosh to spend on someone who won't back you up in the event of a dispute. Buyers also suffer from the poundshop mentality where everything has to be a quid, whether good or bad value. Buyers get fed up because of the amount of dross listed. Virtually everyone I know who buys on ebay does a very limited search within what is already a fairly small subsection. List on a free listing day and the number of things available leaps to gargantuan proportions. Nobody has time to view them let alone bid on more than the odd item so you have to list at the minimum price you are willing to accept. There is no point listing if you are only going to get 3 or 4 views, or a single digit purchase rate relative to listings. Ebay is rapidly becoming passe. 10 years ago you could find quality within a relatively small number of listings. Today you find numerically fewer quality coins than ten years ago coupled with quite literally 10x the number of listings which are almost exclusively sh*te. Until eBay realises that less is more, it is best avoided. Note to ebay: there is another parallel universe out there which doesn't have ebay at its centre.

Cool. Nice spot. There's more than two known. I've got 4 on the list which I haven't updated for 5 or 6 years and I'm certain I've seen at least two more, one coming out of Baldwin's basement. Peck only noting 2 doesn't mean anything other than he knew of two that he came across when compiling his book. Peck's obverses 1 & 2 are the same. I've got Nicholson 116 which isn't wonderful, but you struggle to find much better. There are at least two obverse and two reverse dies used for this variety.

Hmm. Weird.

It's a mule of the first obverse and last reverse. http://www.colincooke.com/coinpages/nicholson_part2.html Item 116 refers

I think the greater problem is that of availability. You can have all the money in the world, but you can't force the reluctant owner to sell if they choose not to do so. There must be quite a few on this forum who have been asked how much they would accept or who have asked that question themselves.

Yep, but you might pick up a fine GEORIVS 1/2d for a fiver on eBay today if you're lucky. Not everything has increased uniformly. You can use comparison price multipliers to give yourself a ballpark bid for the better items.

1685 halfcrown in Fine Lima halfcrown in EF Proof halfpennies 1799 or 1806 1772 GEORIVS 1/2d in Fine

Seller is from Leeds, it explains it all. Nowt so queer as folk. Reminds me of time when a local group targetting minors had operated in the Blackburn/Burnley area and the local TV canvassed views of the event. One elevenpence halfpenny interviewed commented that there was too much paedofiddlia going on. so on that basis, maybe the pair need introducing to each other.