Rob

I've screwed something up somewhere. The top bar with the close cross only appears when the cursor goes off the top of the screen, and the bottom bar is permanently awol. Ideas please. Forget it, seems to have cleared itself by closing the program and restarting.

So two questions for me are: 1. is it a penny (based on the position of the middle prong on the trident and the N)? 2. Is the reverse die a copy of the Soho Britannia , or a modified Soho die sold by Taylor to Heaton. As Taylor acquired the tub of dies at the Soho auction following its closure in 1848, the options are it must have come from him after 1860, or undocumented dies must have left Soho before closure, or a second lot of dies was obtained by Heaton at the auction. Given Taylor was also striking tokens for various people, it would be surprising if he passed work on to a competitor, including the supply of dies. And as an afterthought - is the edge plain?

Is this any different to the number of shops that won't take £50 notes, despite them being regular circulating currency? Sure a £50 note is a bit large relative to the average purse contents even today, just as the case is being made here for the crown to be too large for the masses nearly a century ago, but there will have been a considerable number of people who wouldn't have an issue with them, just as I always have a good number of 50s here because people buying coins for cash at fairs regularly pay with them. I think we ignore the amount of wealth in peoples' pockets in the past at our peril. When some (admittedly rare) coins were changing hands for decent 3 figure sums in the Victorian era, a crown would be a trifling sum for a good number of people - certainly enough for them to be used. On a more mundane level, most lots were selling for at least half a guinea. Even my Philip & Mary portrait penny sold in Cuff (1854) for £6 - which is a lot of crowns. Given numismatics only occupies a niche in society, the population overall must have had ample scope to use them.

I've never clicked on the unread content button, so a new experience and can't comment as I don't have any unread threads at the moment.

If by condensed you mean an unread content marker by the side of the forum section, then this hasn't changed for me. Click on the forum section and it expands to give the list of threads within that section with the unread ones highlighted.

And you too. Less than 24 hours to yet more alcoholic consumption

Judging by the spelling, you drank at least all four, and probably more. Repeat after me - Adnams Broadside, Adnams Broadside.......... Then say it again in the morning.

The sheets are rolled to reduce them to the correct thickness, but whether it is from creating a void through folding material into the sheet, or rolling at the wrong temperature, I'm not certain, but it can lead to layering within the sheet from which the blanks are cut. When the blank is struck it then starts to break apart. e.g. A brass 3d which clearly had a void contained within the blank, which subsequently fell apart because it was only held together at the extremities, as defined by the toning. And the edge of the F689A pattern halfpenny showing lamination along the edge. The same thing is seen on other decimal patterns, but is notably prevalent on flans that were thinner than the old copper ones, which is why the issue may have been with force used to strike the coins and or metal composition. So many variables.

A few years ago a Chinese take-away in Wigston, Leicester, had Shrimp & Mushrooms at 69 on the list.

Lamination of the thinner flans appeared to be an issue with the new bronze coins as many of the decimal patterns struck between 1857 and 1859 suffered from this. Whether it was due to sheet preparation, metal mix, force applied when struck, or something else - I'm not certain, but I'm sure that was one reason for the delay in production. As for the rotation in die axis, this is often seen on all things produced using the Soho apparatus; both at Soho on the George III coppers, and on Tower mint products which used Soho presses from 1816 to 1882. Without knowing the full mechanical operation of the equipment, I can only guess at whether it is due to inadequate clamping of a die, misalignment of the clamped dies, wear to a die locating socket, general slack overall tolerances, or something else.

Remarkable. How can so much drivel be written by just one person? Must stop wittering.

Thinking about it, given the coincidental timing of the program and my graduation, that might have provided the inspiration.

The day before graduation, our student accommodation was furnished with brand new signs saying Housing Units 1-28 and Housing Units 29-64. Unfortunately for the uni the letters were peelable. Come half ten that evening directions had been provided for 2 nuns 69ing in 8, sh*t housing and shi**ing nuns amongst other things. Every resident was fined a pound from their £10 deposit after the signs had been hastily removed.

It's horses for courses. If it appears on a common type coin, then it will do no harm to wait if you prefer one without adjustment marks. If the coin is difficult to obtain in high grade, then marks are likely to be increasingly acceptable. Once you reduce the grade to VF or so, then frankly it doesn't matter unless the coin is really difficult as an EF of most types should be available with patience.

It boils down to aesthetics. Can you live with them or not? I would choose to not have them with all other things being equal, but wouldn't refuse a coin just because it had adjustment marks.

I can't see why opposing thoughts should be so problematic, yet it seems it was ever the case. Thrust and riposte are fundamental to not living in a reciprocating, back-slapping, echo-chamber. The whole point of not agreeing with everyone else is that alternative views can be espoused, taken on board and argued for or against. That's why open debate is so important. Anyone who frequented student unions in the 1970s will be fully aware of the way any dissenting ideas were shouted down by the left. I suspect nothing has changed given the tendency for youth to be left of centre.

7.8 billion Jose Mourinhos! Perish the thought.

It's wrong in just about every way possible. Beautiful - not. Nice color for the year - I prefer the green ones they made in 1964. Collectible coin - not. Desirable - not. The way they are supposed to look - not. Never met a toned coin collector - presumably means tanned? Why does he studiously avoid the warning on the label and make statements to the contrary? Only true bits are every collector loves beautiful coins, and to some extent, loves rare coins.

Ah, so in an active post? I thought it might be something done previously that was stuck in memory somewhere and then came back to bite you.

An explanation of how to get around this would be helpful in case it happens to others.

The top of the bun looks to be thinner on the new one - which again suggests polishing.

Merely the latest event in a congenital problem for almost all politicians - living in their London-centric-Westminster bubble being the norm. Before the referendum in 2016, if they had gone into any Dog and Duck up and down the country and asked the people beforehand, they might have realised the need to make a real case for remain and persuade voters rather than assuming the masses would blindly follow their belief in armageddon and reject leave. Come 2019 the parallels are everywhere. No need to ask the people who aren't politically active, because we know they will vote for us as they have proved time and time again. They rest assured that the thousands of members will vote for which ever, whilst ignoring the volatile allegiances of the millions who are politically unaffilliated. One day they will realise that outside party constraints people are not on political auto-pilot. The referendum was only 3 years ago, not a political myth lost in the mists of time.

I think it is an illusion. Taking a straight line from the bases of various letters to the same points on the bust, the only (marginal) difference appears to be at the top of the head. It may be that the die field on the left has been polished to a greater extent than the one on the right. This would agree with there only being a vestige of the hair curl below the bun on the LH coin compared to the right. Alternatively, you could postulate that the left hand bust is sunk to a lesser degree on the die than the one on the right.

Our constituency scraped home thanks to the (suspended) former Labour MP standing as an independent against them and also recommended people vote Conservative when canvassing. He resigned the whip over the anti-semitism question because he is Jewish and we have a large Jewish population in this area (which is why he has always enjoyed a substantial majority). Last time we had a Conservative MP was prior to 1997, when the incumbent had a majority of 11. Needless to say, he lost. But hey-ho, miraculously a job appeared in Brussels to compensate for the loss of income.

From letters to the editor in the FT a few days ago.