Rob

First of all it started life as a 30s ryal, but was revalued in 1578 to 36s.9d (that's what the countermark means). Prices on Scottish coinage are not particularly well documented and so the best indicator would be to have a look at past auction prices. The last Scottish price book from Spink came out in 2003 and priced this coin at £235 in fine and £525 in very fine. I would grade your coin at better than VF and closer to gVF, but the striking split is a slight problem. Recent strength in prices means it should be worth more than the VF price. Perhaps Scottishmoney can help as that is more his scene. As an indicator the 1984 Seaby price guide gave £85 in fine and £400 in very fine. However, looking at a 50 year old auction catalogue - Glendining 18/6/1959, a job lot of three Scottish ryals comprising 1566, 1567 and 1571 (the last two countermarked with a thistle) and all in very fine grade sold for £16 hammer. This is wildly different to £200, so it might be worth checking the acquisition dates as the sums don't add up.

I've heard one theory that it is due to grease blocking the die detail. This will not compress when the die is used if an airtight seal is formed and so the design is either non-existent or only weakly struck up. I have a few pieces like this.

That's quite a difficult one. Usually you need to look for a specific area of collecting and then find the books to suit. There have been a wide range of books over the years which have covered the topic generally, but it is difficult to say what you need. Clearly you need to identify coins, but if this encompasses the whole world you need something like Krause which would be overkill and prohibitively expensive for beginners. If restricting yourself to British coins post 1797 then Chris' CCGB would be ok, but any earlier and you need to go onto something like Spink's Coinage of England which is produced annually. Both of these have a glossary of terms which is useful if you want to understand what is written about coins. Most books tend to cover a restricted field but then go into some depth. You can look in the gallery to see the sort of coins people have in their collections. There is everything from Roman to the present day. Obviously the easiest to collect are those from circulation, but for older things you would have to do some research regarding what is available and who can supply.

Edward IV second reign

It depends on which part of the market you are talking about. The choice coins rarely find their way onto ebay for the simple reason that your avarage punter doesn't have the ability to recognise true quality for a given type of coin. It has kept the middle market up remarkably well with the assistance of photography sometimes showing what isn't there. The bottom end of the market has been stratospheric with most coins deserving to be melted achieving prices wildly in excess of this value. Agreed on that last point. The only problem is that more than 95% of what's on offer is dross. Finding quality is well nigh impossible and most people simply don't have the time to trawl through the lists. So you are going to end up with a welcome expansion of collectors, but whose grading experience is in the main derived from ebay listings and won't look at a coin described as gVF or nEF despite it being a grade or so higher than the UNCs in their collection.

her ya go obviously ive had to turn the coin so its the right way up I think we may be talking with our wires crossed here. When you say you had to turn the coin, do you mean the date is behind the top of the head, or is it behind the cut-off line on the neck? the date is behind the top of his head im guessing this is normal.lol That's normal. Until the Jubilee Head sixpences of 1887, almost all machine made coins were struck with an inverted die axis. There were a few exceptions to the rule such as the 1787 issues and some inadvertent errors. This inverted die axis is known as en-coin. The term en-medaille you mentioned at the start of this thread refers to coins where the two sides are the same way up. i.e. if you turn over a coin on the vertical axis from left to right it will still be the same way up. An inverted or en-coin die axis will be correct if you turn it over on the horizontal axis i.e. from top to bottom. I had assumed that the phrase "and noticed that my 1831 had been minted in medal alignment. is this the same for all sixpences minus pre 1787" was an accurate description of what you wanted to say. As all pre 1787 sixpences have an inverted die axis, by logical extension you were talking about a normal die axis otherwise known as in medal alignment.

her ya go obviously ive had to turn the coin so its the right way up I think we may be talking with our wires crossed here. When you say you had to turn the coin, do you mean the date is behind the top of the head, or is it behind the cut-off line on the neck?

And the reverse?

All the William IV sixpences I have seen have had an inverted die axis and there is no mention of this in either ESC or Davies, so this is clearly irregular. First of all, is it genuine? There are quite a number of Geo.III forgeries about, but I haven't seen any William IV. Post a decent picture to establish whether it is genuine and we can take it from there.

Yes please.

Thanks. I'd accept any reference which mentions them, even if it is only a paragraph or two.

I am trying to compile an article on the Weyl patterns and I am looking for references to any literature outlining the history, trading dates, products and any other info regarding Lauer, the manufacturer of various toy coins etc based in Nurnberg. It can be written in English or German. Chris? Thanks.

If you clean it you will damage it in any case, so best sell them on as is. Are you sure they are proofs and not just an early strike? People who own proofs usually know they are a special strike and the chances of them getting into circulation are therefore unlikely given they would only have been current for 35 years from production. Good hi res images would be needed to ascertain whether they are proofs or not as there is more than a polished field required for a proof.

I think he had got as far as Anne.

Is your 1967 penny full lustre? I will swap for THREE BU 1971 pennies... Done. 3x sod all chance of selling something is better than 1x.

Up to 2789 listings now, including a 2006 with no date on the obverse going off shortly with 2 bidders Most seem to be going in the £200-300 range, though I see one is over £400 with 5 days to go. Bizarre. Given the mentality of these people, it is little wonder the Royal Mint manages to offload vast quantities of overpriced bling. Or for an alternative investment - 1967 1d anybody? Only 100,000,000 left.

Firstly, congratulations on getting the kids to clean their rooms - we've all been there. All of the regulars or semi-regulars on this forum are collectors, Chris Perkins who owns the site is a dealer who also has a collection of oddballs as I understand and a few of us, myself included, do a bit of dealing. The balance is mostly people who register in order to post a query such as yourself and that is the last you hear of them. Banknotes are a different matter and not my department. I do know the condition is even more important than for coins unless the item is exceptionally rare. So pin holes, foxing, creases or any other marks has a profound effect on their value. A lot of collectable notes have been ironed to make them appear better than they really are and which definitely detracts from a collector's point of view. I haven't the foggiest idea about Lira banknotes and don't know anyone with any knowledge about them, but would suspect that unless they are particularly old or had a very short issue period they are unlikely to be valuable. Most currencies post-war are readily available from what I have seen. Hope this helps. Rob

Hi David, auction has finished. We got £240 for it. We are off to Argos now. My son is so pleased that he can buy a PS3 for £50 and of course 20p! Thanks for all the advice given by you guys. Anna Crazy

To put this particular coin into context, there are only 2 examples available to collectors. The last time a 1933 penny was sold appears to be the one on Mark Rasmussen's Spring 2006 list for £45000. I think I would prefer to have a single 1933 penny to 10 or even 200 undated 20p's even if they did cost the same amount.

It will always be a collectable coin as long as there are people collecting them because the Royal Mint makes very few errors and this is a true error coin as opposed to a faulty strike which would be a random event. Having said that, 2 minutes ago on ebay there were 563 undated 20p coins listed. These have been known about for months and have had a continuous presence on ebay since their discovery, so ebay listings alone must run into thousands. The mint estimated 100,000-200,000 were struck. This is NOT rare. The general consensus is that they are worth about £30 or so based on coins of similar rarity. If you can find someone stupid enough to pay £300 or whatever for it then I suggest you take the money and run. You can always find another one to replace it, and if you really want one for posterity you should be able to get one for a few tens of pounds by waiting long enough for the hysteria to die away. This is a ludicrously overheated market.

It looks like an F but is probably an E as this is the following letter. It will make some difference to the value but will depend on overall condition and whether there have been any others noted which have passed through a sale room to provide a price reference. Should be worth at least double the standard type though. There wasn't an example in the Adams sale and I know he ploughed through mountains of William III half crowns, so it is almost certainly going to be rare.

Gary, This is a subject I brought up many years ago, when the Royal Mint ran a forum, but then closed it never to reopen when some idiot started posting all sorts of rubbish on it. I have a 1937 proof set, the coins of which I understand to be standard proofs i.e. polished finish all over and not cameoed (not sure if this is a word!). The crown in my set is exactly like this one, i.e. it has frosted devices, as has the Scottish shilling, unlike all the other coins. I tried getting an explanation for this, but opinion on the forum was divided over whether mine was a VIP proof or whether it was a fact that the early proofs were cameo and as the dies wore, the effect was gradually being lost. I don't personally buy this latter explanation but have never been able to figure why my set has a combination of two styles, unless, of course, it was a re-constituted one. However, this would still imply that the mint was producing both standard and cameo coins at the same time. Anybody got any ideas? DaveG38 A moot point. I am inclined to buy the frosted = early theory in general. VIP proofs can come in both frosted and unfrosted styles, so this feature is not specific to VIP proofs, nor is it an obligatory feature. I would suspect that for a year when there was a large issue of sets for the general public, a VIP set would be accompanied by a different box or some other notable feature. Human nature being what it is, VIPs tend to appeciate being identified and treated as such. Lot 187 in the April sale at DNW was a 1953 set in a roughly square box instead of the normal rectangular one and described as almost certainly a VIP presentation set. In the case of those years where no general issue sets were made, they must by definition be classified as VIP issues. Possibly it was a matter of chance whether the design was frosted or not, though there are notably more unfrosted examples amongst the smaller denominations and these seem to be the later issues.

There weren't any dated 1849. Possibly it is 1843 with the last two digits struck over 34 giving the impression of a 9 on the last digit. Post a picture and it will be possible to say what it is.

1720 isn't a rare date for the plain angle shilling, so I'd say it might possibly make £50ish in that grade. Ebay would be a total lottery as the prices paid are frequently over the top or way too low. The obverse is only scraping fine, though the reverse looks a bit better - as always.

Hi, I know it was 3 years ago she was banned from eBay, but has anyone got an address for CAROLINE BROWN, who was INVESTCOINS 2003 , on eBay? This seems quite a long time ago for a follow up. Any reason why?