Rob

High grade gold is a nightmare. The number of uncs advertised with surfaces resembling the Somme in July 1916 is appalling. For my money, UNC only starts at a couple of tiny marks.

Talking in general terms, there's another side to the coin (sorry...). Grading and description are very much in the eyes of the beholder as we are mostly agreed, but human psychology and greed come into play. Advertising gVF or whatever coins simply won't attract the same number of eyeballs as an UNC which invariably means no sale. Everyone wants an uncirculated coin at a VF or even EF price but you are most unlikely to get it. Genuine UNCs are actually very, very difficult to find in most instances. The first filter in choosing which coin to buy is a visual one where you scan the list and in most instances look for the highest grade/most attractive description item. As the resulting shortlist will in most instances only contain UNCs with maybe a few EFs, the incentive on the part of the seller to nudge up the grade and/or glowingly expand the description's appeal is overwhelming. Whether this has been done in this sale's case I can't comment as I have only looked at the picture of the one coin I was interested in. In this instance it looked to be as graded and the description was accurate for the grade. It just didn't look very attractive. There is no substitute for your own opinion, which if built on solid foundations and you are honest with yourself is the only one to go with. Ask yourself how you would describe that coin as a buyer, but also how you would describe it as a seller. If you feel the coin is not as described, be prepared to walk away. If the price is too much, walk away. Nobody is forced to buy a coin.

I couldn't agree more.

Party pooper time. I'm glad I'm a contrarian and don't have any serious interest in bronze pennies. As I'm only looking for 3 specific pennies in the period covered by the collection and with only one of these in part 1 which isn't in the right condition, I will divert funds elsewhere. God knows how much material there is to feast on this month with at least a dozen sales excluding this one. Having said that, I do wish the auction houses would spread the material out over the year rather than cramming it all into one month.

If there is a hint of green to the tone, then they are probably 0.500

It's my website - RP Coins

That feature won't make any difference to the price as there are more examples with missing serifs in this issue than perfect specimens. 1822 is a common date and the coin is fine at best, so the value will be no more than a couple pounds. Here is an example from my website with the same faulty I as your coin in EF grade on the reverse, (the obverse is better than EF). There is minimal friction to the peak of the helmet, Britannia's breast and the drapery. As you will see, your coin has considerably more wear. Sorry to disappoint.

Correct. Far better to ensure that at least one of you gets the coin as you can always apologise after the sale. Both losing out causes a lot more grief, particularly if one of the interested parties bids on something else in the interim and is consequently spent up unbeknown to the other person.

This just confirms my belief that the question of small spurious dots is overhyped. A dot between two letters is clearly not part of the intended design and must be due to a random unintentional modification of the die for whatever reason. Noting and collecting dots as part of a die study is a different matter, but your average collector couldn't give a **** about that. Different punches can clearly give design variation as with the various obverse and reverse dies, but die degradation is surely just and only that. Roll on the price ramping of coins with varying states of a die crack or for the person who wants everything, a 1967 penny in Fair - much, much rarer than the common BU's seen. (Sorry, slightly off topic)

Silver threepences on a chain will be worth bullion value only. The coins are all 0.925 silver but the necklace or earrings may not be and so the actual value will depend on the weight of silver in total. They aren't rare and so won't be collectable as coins though obviously some people will always like them from a decorative perspective. In the case of the latter it may be worth a little more to the right buyer.

It appears to be an Ethelred long cross penny with the reverse legend BYRHTPOLD MO PILT indicating the moneyer was Byrhtwold and the mint Wilton. However, no moneyer of this name is listed for any mint in North which although not definitive, is a very good guide and googling Aethelred long cross penny and BYRHTWOLD gives various links to a character of that name in Ethelred's forces. An alternative would be a Scandinavian imitation of the issue which were plentiful, but I don't have any info on these. The peck marks are as one would expect on a coin from this era, but I'm not sure what it is yet. The hair is shorter than that usually seen, but there are regional variations in style. Perhaps Clive can add something useful to this.

There aren't many in the British issues, the majority being the 1804 5/- Dollars by the Bank of England overstruck on Spanish 8 reales. There is also a handful of trial strikes in the reigns of William and Mary and during his sole reign at the time of the recoinage for example. Below is the trial striking of 2 1689 farthings (P.564) on a Charles II halfpenny as mentioned in the footnote on P.155 in Peck.

This guy consistently comes up with both descriptive and physical garbage. link . It is rather disconcerting that you can get 99.7% on a feedback of over 13000 when so much mis-information is bandied about. How on earth did he establish that the mint moved from the Tower to Hereford in 1644 and then produced 3a2 halfcrowns there? The coin illustrated is badly clipped, but is clearly a 3a2 with the cloak flying from the shoulder and has i.m. triangle although you can't tell whether it has ground below the horse or not. The "Hereford" 2/6d has the garter reverse which his coin clearly doesn't. for the record, no Civil War coin has yet been positively attributed to Hereford although records suggest there should be some. This listing is complete bullshit.

The obverse isn't fine let alone VF. The reverse is marginally better than the obverse but with marks near the shield. Value - someone on ebay will probably pay £10-15 because the inverted 1 double florins punch above their weight as an error (which it isn't being a flawed I).

There is more material available than serious collectors of the series, though somebody with a fairly comprehensive British collection will probably get a few examples from Scotland, Ireland, and the islands to add a little diversity. They are scarce in top grades but not rarish unless you are talking mint state. I've got no idea of the quantities of proofs extant. The 1860s book at £2000 & £3500 compared to £350 for the 1839 in 2003. The BNJ index reveals no articles on Manx coinage up to 1999 which probably speaks volumes about the level of interest. The only reference to quantities in the 2003 book is to the 1733 copper issue which states that £300 in pence and £200 in halfpennies were struck. The bibliographical references for Manx coinage are P Nelson, 'Coinage of the Isle of Man' - Numismatic Chronicle 1899, and contemporary forgeries of the 1733 coinage in SNC 1901. Maud Lister's 'Manx Money' (1947); F Pridmore's 'Coins of the British Commonwealth of Nations part 1 (1960) and C Clay's 'On the Brass, Copper and other Currency of the Isle of Man' in the Proc. Manchester Num. Soc Parts I-V (1864-7) are the only other refs. Nelson and Pridmores areticle are likely to be the easiest to acquire, though there is a chance that the Lancs and Cheshire Society or Manchester Museum still have the last article. Keith Sugden at the museum or Bob Lyall who is into colonials might know. It won't be easy finding the articles, let alone accurate mintage figures.

It's a difficult one because the collector base is small. Seems like a strongish price to me, but if genuinely FDC is probably not too far over the top. In Spink's 2003 Coins of Scotland etc the FDC price is given as £350. 7 years on a near doubling is probably reasonable. It gives me an incentive to sell my 1786 halfpenny too. Anybody interested

This is true. The whole collection is a single item in many instances. The important thing is to keep receipts as this is the only evidence you will have that you paid good money to acquire something. It is also worth checking whether the collection is insured on a cost basis or current valuation. If the latter, you will need to have a regular reappraisal of value by a third party in writing.

Generally speaking, special items outside the scope of normal contents insurance seems to cost about 1/2% of the sum insured. Does this figure apply for all(?) insurers - so £50/£10K insured seems typical. There may be additional clauses requiring alarms (redcare or stand alone), lock types etc which boosts the actual cost but these vary from one insurer to another and with the sum insured, obviously the higher the value the more security features they want.

Nope

See my article in the Circular regarding these coins and relate it to the 1839/41 proof halfpenny in the confirmed unlisted varieties section. If you could PM me a really hi res scan of both sides or alternatively send it to my website, it would be appreciated. Thanks.

Presumably with an inverted die axis?

I quite agree, but you would have thought that your average bloke who is suspicious of anything on offer for a tenner in the pub would then be equally suspicious of an £800 coin on sale for £100 or less. Beginners always dip their toes in the water with a few cheap purchases before committing large sums, so the lack of books at this point is understandable. What is not is the readiness with which people spend ever larger amounts based on their success with minor purchases. If the value of the coins is worth insuring, then it is worth the purchaser ensuring to their own satisfaction that the insured items are kosher.

Which is why I said read the documentary evidence. If you know what is out there you are less likely to get your fingers burnt. Even die struck modern copies in the right metal will have some tell-tale indicators which mark them out as copies. It might be a small flaw, it might be a number of pits in the same place on all coins, but all copies will have something that identifies them as such. It isn't only ebay. Some of those copies are going to get into dealers' general inventory. Anyone spending money ought to at least check what they are buying. It's not unreasonable.

I think provenance is a good start, although how do you do that with every single coin Rob? You also stated 2 things, 1 Do your own research, which yes can be done, but then you 2nd point lead to a slight hitch is the 1st point, if auction houses are having difficulty telling these apart then how are the more general or weekend buyers going to achieve this? Some people just don't sit and look at coins all day as their business, only as their hobby, we tend to rely on dealers and acution houses to give us the real deal. So what now? I've seen one on ebay.co.uk (850 quid) and to be honest i don't know if its the real deal or not, personally it doesn't look real, but again i really don't know, so if anyone could shed some light on WHY these coins are not genuine i think it would help others on the forum other than having to dig away and perhaps come up with the wrong conclusion You don't have to look at coins all day to learn about the various forgeries in circulation. Ken Peters wrote a very useful tome called the Counterfeit coins of England and the United Kingdom which lists hundreds of references for various denominations and issues and retails at £25. It is one of the best uses of £25 that I can think of. Complete? - never can be, but there is more than enough information in there to point you in the direction of what you need to read. How many have I sold to date? Answer 1. Spadework isn't sexy. Buying £1000 coins for £10 is however. There is a seeming reluctance on the part of people to do anything other than trawl eBay for apparent bargains and then complain when everything isn't what it seems. Sure the plethora of 1933 penny copies is obvious to all and sundry, but many iffy coins are not so obvious. Most sellers are basically honest, and so if you decide you have bought a dud for whatever reason they will take it back. If you have bought a gVF George IV crown for a few hundred pounds for example, it should be incumbent on you to at least make some rudimentary checks such as weight, appearance etc. The best way for individuals to protect themselves from forgeries or copies is to spend less time complaining about what is or could be out there and more time reading so they know what is out there and documented. You can't rely on others to sort out all the problems. If that was the case you wouldn't even bother looking at images before buying as a description would be adequate. When you buy a coin you assess it for grade and any problems; checking that a coin appears to be genuine based on the knowledge of what forgeries are out there is only an extension of that way of thinking. Put bluntly, I don't understand why people are prepared to blindly spend thousands of pounds on coins, but won't spend a few hundreds on literature. Anyone can miss a forgery, even people who have looked at coins all their lives, so surely the onus is on the individual to fully implement the phrase caveat emptor and cut out another individual's opinion/personality/behaviour etc - something over which you have no control, and grasp the nettle yourself. We aren't talking about the kid spending his couple pounds of pocket money here and being taken for a ride, we are talking about grown up people with disposable income who seem to be more intent on spending that surplus come what may than ensuring they are purchasing a sound product which they would automatically do if it was a car, mobile phone etc. At the end of the day, nobody is forced to buy a coin. Most people get stung by the purchase of something that seems too good to be true. Greed overrules common sense (something that is flogged to death by eBay) but then that same individual claims to be aggrieved that their 1933 penny which cost them a tenner isn't the real deal.

As I have said a few time before, a decent provenance never harmed a coin's value. If you have a 1763 1/- with a provenance predating the recent issues, then you are pretty much onto a winner. I simply don't understand the indifference of some collectors to a good provenance. Yes it will require you to pay full market value for a coin in all probability, but if you look after your own interests (which includes doing your own research) then there is no reason why the "dodgy issues" shouldn't be collected. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN COLLECTING HABITS INSTEAD OF LIVING IN A NANNY STATE WHERE NOBODY SAYS MEA CULPA OR TAKES THE LEAD There have always been forgeries, even in the Montagu or Morrieson cabinets for example, so clearly even the experienced can be taken in by a good one. They did tend to be weeded out fairly well though. The recent spate of copies has moved the goalposts by orders of magnitudes.