Rob

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.

So, if this dot among several dots is in a CGS slab then how are the masses supposed to differentiate between dots A, B C etc given you have to be a member to look at their site which means you have to cough up a fee to get the information. As a result of the limited access, this variety (and others) will effectively remain 'unrecorded' to the majority through lack of information and a ballpark price will be similarly elusive. Varieties need to be published in a printed volume to gain any traction.

Put anything into a reference volume and everybody wants one. There is a huge number of box tickers in the hobby.

Even with a unique item there will be plenty of competition from those who collect the series. It isn't so much a case of the demand not being there, rather a case of the elevated price reducing the number of people willing to fork out. I think a lot of people will view the rarities as an expendable luxury when the funds required would pay for a lot more of the pieces they want. Other than a lack of funds, there is no reason to exclude the rarities, as all contribute to the overall story.

Struck in Edinburgh, but sort of makes it into English silver.

I think it is pretty much uncirculated, but slightly weakly struck on the obverse. My reasoning being that the apparent flattening of the nose on the shoulder and to two hair curls is not backed up by the evidence seen on the legend. In the case of the latter, each character has slightly raised edges to the letter and I would expect that to show wear if the hair was as flat as it is. I spent quite a while to come to a conclusion I could rationalise. That's mine by the way, not the OP coin. Yours is certainly around the EF mark. Possibly just shy of full EF given the wear seen on the laurels and over the hair generally, but worth looking at in hand. There's a bit of obvious wear to the Garter star rays too

Too small for me too. Mine attached if it helps for comparison.

Or a caving acquaintance from the 1970s - Phil Dinn

For the same reason I put my foot down and wouldn't agree to our second daughter's middle name beginning with C. She is not a car park (NCP)

Anyone writing a numismatic book will invariably use their own coins if suitable given the cost of procuring photographs from places like the BM. The days when it was performing a public service are long gone. 15 years ago they were charging £30 for a picture of a coin. By 2010 that had increased to £50 per side or £60 for both sides on one picture. God only knows how much it would be now. It's always nice to use an image that features in a publication, but again, a collector specialising in a particular area will frequently have a smattering of the best examples - which are also the pieces that attract the most attention at auction. i.e. I refer you to my previous post. Any definitive tome on a subject will usually ensure the plate coins are sought after.

No provenance ever harmed a coin's value, but doesn't necessarily produce a premium because everyone tries to acquire things as cheaply as possible and in any case must be related to the popularity of the sale on the day. To my mind, the provenance/hoard/desirability issue is a small part of a greater circle. A collection of top quality coins is always likely to have more historical documentation for the simple reason that nothing happens in a vacuum. People often remember when the coin was last sold and the price paid. They are frequently aware of recent pieces that have come to market, the price they sold for and their grade together with any defects. All of this helps put a coin in context compared to its peers in respect of value and where it comes in the pecking order of available examples. So a good provenance is usually linked to a higher quality collection, and a higher quality coin is normally going to cost the buyer more in any case. It's actually very difficult to strip out any part of the price that is attributable to a specific provenance. When you say books or papers, presumably you are then able to tie the coin into a specific collection? Are you including catalogues in this? If so there was precious little illustration prior to the late 19th century and what there was tended to be a little stylistic from wood carvings. Sometimes there was an attempt to be accurate even with wood carvings, e.g. the Pembroke plates (1746) tried to faithfully reproduce the shape of fragments, and the illustrations in Ruding (1819-41) were sufficiently accurate to be able to identify some pieces, such as the Tournai 1513 groat as being that example formerly in the BM. I suppose you are mostly paying little, if anything for the name, but by happy coincidence and self evidently the best collections contain the best individual pieces, which typically sell for higher prices.

No things got cut short as they are a bit short staffed at the moment with people on maternity, so really only looked a few trays of hammered together with some the important crowns, i.e. Petition, Reddite, Oxford City View, various Cromwells including a Dutch Copy, Incorrupta, 3 Graces, Mills large head etc. I wanted to see the halfpennies, but that will have to wait for another day.

Despite the obvious assumption people would make; with no legend, there is nothing to indicate it portrays Victoria on the obverse. The reverse could just as easily be part of a campaign to ban men in cloaks. St. Andrew's Day commemorative medallion, issued in association with a religious get together? There is a large number of tokens/medallions extant whose raison d'etre is a complete mystery to all bar a few. This would easily fit into that category in the absence of any documentation.

Slightly off-topic, but still relevant. I think base coins have been collected throughout history. The lack of early documentation should not mean that numismatics was invented a few hundred years ago. e.g. The Bolsena hoard found 1890 in northern Italy contained several hundred Roman bronzes in top grade covering a period of roughly 170 years from Augustus onwards. There is no way that these were coins taken from circulation shortly before they were lost to their Roman(?) owner because sestertii and other bronzes were the currency workhorses that would rapidly wear with everyday use. Individual wealth was tied up in silver and gold. i.e. the bronzes had to be collected, and more importantly, they must have had a succession of owners, implying an established hobby, and by extension a rudimentary knowledge of coins from an historical angle. Everything unproven is by definition conjecture, but it would be unreasonable to either assume or dismiss a reasoned argument given we only know a fraction of what actually happened 2, 3, 400 years ago or earlier

It's difficult to be sympathetic as they both would have received at least a substantial 6 figure sum and possibly more. I don't understand what's wrong with rejecting a lot of money, particularly given the cost of fencing such a substantial quantity of illicit material would likely reduce the total proceeds to around half the value of the hoard - or about what they would have received anyway. Pure greed and stupidity, but I'm not sure in which order.

First bust has the hair circles, third has hair strands. 2nd needs no explanation. For what it's worth, mine only has the tie ends visible.

This has been discussed elsewhere on this forum. Consensus is that the term VIP was introduced for proofs struck in the years where there were no public sets issued, for the simple reason that with so few sets produced, any distributed had to be for presentation to specific individuals (for which read VIPs). For the frosted proofs in public year sets, my personal preference would be for them being early strikes. Possibly they were struck to a higher standard for a few people, but I would have thought this unlikely with it being more a case of filling the order for so called VIP sets first before mass production took over. Maybe a different presentation case could differentiate the two, if they were struck in the first place.

I think we have drifted away from the opening post. The 2015 sale was Slaney part 2. That name was always going to help sales and pre-sale estimates of the total were about £3m, which was in line with coin price inflation since the first portion was sold in 2003. This was not far off the mark. So the initial price paid at £4340 all in was too high against an estimate of 2000-2500. But, for a coin to have sold at such an inflated price is a good marketing point. If it can make this much once, then it could do so again. The second sale last September reflected the lack of hype associated with Slaney. The success of the first Slaney sale was down to a group of coins that had been off the market for a couple generations. That will always help prices compared to the usual offerings which are returning to market every few years, even though the grade of many items was not particularly brilliant. The second Slaney sale in 2015 flew on the back of the first. As for the grading, it is still just a matter of opinion. I noted a post on a US forum which said his agent dealer considered the coin undergraded in a catalogue and so bid it up having assigned a higher grade. As the person responsible for the grade in the catalogue I have to say I disagree with the dealer's assessment, but it is a question of each to their own. At the end of the day, everyone is happy - the vendor for achieving a higher price, me as I was paid for the cataloguing, the buyer getting a coin that he wanted at a price he was happy with and his agent was happy with his commission. As for the guinea, I haven't seen the coin in question in hand and cannot give my considered opinion of its grade. All I can guarantee is that if I assessed the grade, it will agree with some and disagree with others. TBH I'm not sure this coin is something a person new to the hobby is likely to be considering, so there is little danger of them getting hurt. Most people entering the hobby start with modern coins that are cheap in case they make a mistake. Gold or silver they usually buy close to spot. A William III guinea doesn't come close to fitting these criteria. Rather more pernicious is the marketing of 'collectable', 'investment coins' that are not coins in any way shape or form. Just this week I picked up around £1Ks worth of these private concoctions that cost the purchaser 4, 5 or more times their intrinsic or secondary market value. Paying 3 figures for a gram of 9 carat gold just because it says highly collectable investment in the advert is not very clever - and so another inheritance nest egg disappoints. There is the real rip-off.

But the point is that everyone has their own view on grades and how to grade. Nobody is 'right', but it is possible to be completely wrong. Ebay laughs highlights the latter, but I would like to point out that as far as I know, no listing has featured for calling a coin fine when it is quite patently uncirculated, even though it would be a legitimate post. Surely undergrading can be just as laughable as overgrading?