Rob

The fair is organised by Mike Veissid who ran the shop in Shrewsbury and whose business was taken over by Spink. There is a waiting list and if you do manage to get a table it will only be on an occasional basis - say once every few months. Ideally you want a regular table so that people know you will be there every month, but this isn't an option. I know of a few people who would take a regular table, but don't bother give the uncertainty. If you do get a table, you might not know until the day before. Not ideal. I too find it a bit unethical to hijack someone else's forum to advertise my wares. Nothing wrong in having ethics.

That in itself doesn't make it a BBITANIAR shilling. Bloomsbury no longer do coin auctions. I possess 5 lots bought at Bloomsbury, 4 of which I could identify from elsewhere prior to the sale. The problem is that I only ever won 8 lots in total in their sales and 3 of those had to be returned as wrongly described. You wouldn't dare bid to blind on lots, so something as esoteric as a BBITANIAR shilling I would want to see in the hand.

I have recently carried out a survey of Exeter & Truro crowns which has thrown up the interesting fact that all bar one of Brettell's Exeter crowns together with most or possibly all of his half crowns have numbers scratched in the obverse fields. Notwithstanding this desecration of the coins, it has also been possible to reference some of the engraved numbers to lots purchased by Simpson at the Morrieson sale in 1933. Simpson's collection was purchased by R P V Brettell in 1955 post-mortem and over 140 coins in Brettell's sale in 1970 came from this source, any or all of which might be similarly engraved. I therefore would ask anybody with coins from the Exeter mint of any period which are in decent grade to examine them and check for numbers scratched in the field as there is just a chance that you may have an ex-Brettell coin and the catalogue was fully illustrated to corroborate the provenance. It looks like Simpson was responsible, but what is done is done and now we can at least make use of the evidence to help establish where the coins were originally acquired. Brettell also had a Dovey Furnace 4d & 3d together with some coins of Bridgnorth(?) as they were assigned to Coombe Martin and Lundy respectively at the time, so you can also check any examples of these that you might have. Also, anyone having an Exeter crown in their collection - an image of it would be useful as it may be an example I don't have recorded. Thanks in advance.

It isn't BB because the bottom loop of the B should extend further to the right than the top loop of which there is no sign. The top loops of both B & R appear to be the same size, so would expect to see something obvious there was a second B.

Time to get a new set of women then. My wonderful better half has just instructed me to buy a coin or two in the forthcoming sales. It's one of those rare occasions in life when you really want to fulfil the promise to love, cherish and most of all -OBEY.

It's a Peck 1778 with no rocks to the left of the lighthouse. It is somewhat less common than the regular type with rocks present. I've got a slightly toned but otherwise mint state piece for sale here

Very true, some of the South African farthings are really poor in relation to depth of field As promised here are links to King norton's Half Crown Image 1 Image 2 The image doesn't suggest a proof, but if it is it looks to have been badly mishandled or has seen a little circulation.

Sent to Coventry for a weekend away? Surely not. My wife views them in the same way. It's only a short mental adjustment for her to tar me with the same brush.

It isn't the same coin, or if it is it has been dipped and dropped. There are a few toning spots on the Bloomsbury piece and the rim bruise is not clear either. If Azda's coin is a BB, then it must be a very late striking as the R over B of BBITANNIAR and the last A both have associated flaws which are not present in the Bloomsbury picture.

More hijacking. I went to the Midland yesterday too. Don't remember hearing anyone trying to sell 1825 farthings though.

It has probably been done by a few people over the years, but unless published remains an unknown quantity. You tend to focus on the really rare ones if you are trying to complete a series because the others come along in time and so very few people will bother to do the spadework. It's a lot easier to quantify the rarity of the rare pieces because they will usually be noted as a rarity. In comparison, the common ones may not even be described if in a bulk lot.

I think you probably will at some point, but... When I tried to get some images of 7 coins in the BM for an article, they wanted to charge £50 per uniface or £60 for both sides on one picture. I offered to take the pictures myself and let them use them for their own purposes but that wasn't allowed. The reason given for the huge increase in fees from say 5 or 10 years ago is that they wanted to raise funds to pay for imaging the entire collection and make it accessible from the website. Failing to make use of goodwill where a private individual is willing to provide free labour to help do the job is probably not the best way of doing things.

You are confusing the halfpenny with a penny. The halfpenny is a straight 1860, not over 59.

there's one here if anyone needs one, bit like buses David In that grade, "possibly cleaned at some time" is somewhat irrelevant.

Here is the link to the one on the CC site: 1860 copper halfpenny I don't think there is any doubt it's a fake. Worn coin, clear date like it was added yesterday (as it probably was) in numerals that look thicker than normal. Looking at the hair detail, much lustre presumably refers to the quality polishing that has most likely occured.

It's probably been over-dipped which has removed the somewhat more extensive toning in the previous listing. It makes it go a very dull matt tone and has exposed what looks like a previous scraping for want of a better word.

I like the 30 tray size too. A good chunky cabinet that is in no danger of being knocked over or off a surface.

It's difficult to assess the relative rarities because you need to consider only those that crop up in general sales. Complete collections coming to market distort the numbers because a collector will only want one example of each variety rather than a number in proportion to the numbers extant. The provincial mints are not very common in high grade and so most examples must remain hidden within the numerous bulk lots at the end of the auction catalogues. The only individual examples in a sale will be high grade unless exceptionally rare which will also skew the data. I have a feel for what seems to be difficult in high grade, but whether that is representative of the populations as a whole is open to debate. In my opinion, Bristol is the commonest followed by York, Chester and Exeter of similar scarcity with Norwich being the hardest in desirable grade.

The E's in this period often have a thin line linking the serifs and I'v e often wondered if the die sinker put in a thin guide line prior to making up the letter from a few different punches. You see it from William 3rd onwards, so I'm not convinced it is an underlying letter because it occurs too frequently. The O is over an R however.

First come first served? Yes

Sold

It looks like yours are all unique. I've sent the article off and just need to hear from the editor and referees that everything is ok.

The 1663 1st bust shilling listed as being A/G in FRA is in fact also R/A. The bottom of the G fills the space between the feet of the A and there is a curved line for the left side of the G. The square ended tail of the R and the bar filling the indent half way up on the right confirm the underlying A. There is no sign of an underlying M below the F to suggest that MAG was entered twice, so we can assume that having entered the A after the F the die sinker thought that he was entering MAG - hence the following G. Seriously rare and the first one that I have seen. Up for grabs if anyone is interested.

I think you will find there are insufficient people with the necessary resources to do such a study. We all have gut feelings for relative rarity, but very little concrete evidence resulting from systematic study. Most of us will do some sort of number crunching in our respective field of interest, but unless the statistics are collected under standardised procedures it will be comparing chalk & cheese. You shouldn't underestimate the amount of work required to do such a study. I've just completed a study of the Weyl patterns for publication in the BNJ which has taken me about 2 years off and on. Looking through about 4000 catalogues and lists I've located somewhere in excess of 420 records for the approximately 100 varieties. Tedious - yes, and that is for a series of unique or nearly so coins. If you do a survey of the coins listed above you will have many, many more data points to consider. If you don't get an adequate number the statistics will be meaningless. It isn't just a question of recording the number of times examples of a particular coin come to market, you also have to establish which coin is which to avoid double counting. This is easier with hammered because of the variation in shape and strike, but milled is a nightmare as you only have toning, spots, flaws and other imperfections to rely on when identifying specific coins prior to the introduction of colour catalogues. 50 years or more ago the illustrations were taken from wax impressions, so the first two items above don't apply from before say WW2. You also have to contend with those coins that have been dipped. Welcome to the world of provenances. Who has access to sufficient reference material other than myself and who is going to do the donkey work? I could do some given the time but it would take an eternity and in any case my library is nowhere near complete. I'm not aware of anyone else on this forum with a large enough library and if there is an individual out there, they are keeping very quiet.

For currency coins just about every rarity attribution underestimates the quantity available. For patterns and proofs the numbers tend to be reasonably accurate but with a few glaring exceptions. Many rarity values assigned by Peck, Freeman, Rayner or whoever are numbers plucked out of the air and should be disregarded. It is worth doing your own research from past sales because you will be surprised by the results obtained. Rare currrency pieces in high grade will almost always be recorded and illustrated which helps. I know of R7s in ESC where there are many more known and equally an R rating where I can't find a single example. The job is harder for base metal because until Peck and Freeman published, you were an oddball if you collected pennies et infra and they were rarely listed in catalogues, rather lumped together as job lots sometimes running into hundreds of coins. So to answer your question, given they are all inaccurate, correlating the different numbers is a pointless task.