Rob

I've settled on an elaborate ermine mark. The coin below is acorn over ermine, but you can clearly see more than just the three tails as per the obverse for the underlying mark.

I think it is a blundered strike. No privy mark before ermine would fit, it isn't a castle, crown, portcullis, lion, rose or pheon. Maybe an elaborate ermine punch, or a reworked one?

I think it may be a case of no policy regarding initials. W Wyon died in 1851, but obverses continued to carry the initials until in 1858 we have the appearance of no WW obverses. Presumably it became necessary to produce a new obverse due to the old ones wearing out and the lack of WW reflected the responsibility passing to another engraver. Given the lack of initials at this point, they were clearly not a required feature, and one might assume were an optional extra, which may account for the inconsistency of application. This is also suggested by the decimal patterns from 1857-9, where J(ames) W(yon)'s initials are the exception rather than the rule, despite him being thought responsible for many of the dies.

Looks like the late news could be a bit longer than usual. I have been using this as a catchup. They tell you the scores, show the goals, and filter out the intermingled 90 minutes of melodrama. Doubles all round. Football's making a mess of coin fairs though. Wakefield was like a mortuary today. Not so good.

No reason why they wouldn't. If something is in a CGS slab it gets catalogued as such, just as they would mention NGC, PCGS, ANACS or LCGS and maybe a couple more.

It's the overwhelming volume of crap that has made eBay a non-starter unless you are effectively unemployed. In the past 15 years the number of listings in the British section has increased 40 or 50-fold. Most people have a life.

Try Baldwin's basement.

Nothing wrong with Martin

It would be a lot easier if some were a bit more presentable. The temptation to store nos. 4 & 5 under the felt instead of on top must be immense.

1 to 4 look to be as stated. no.5 I can't tell for certain but the leaves at the top of the wreath are in the right place.

I have one which I bought in 2005 for this very reason. It was in a NGC 65 slab, 2750257-017. I don't know if it is imaged on their site.

I have a rental property in Manchester with Latvian tenants. A lovely family that I would choose any day over the local hominids. Nearly 40 years ago I was working in Cologne and found the place to be teeming with Germans. So much so that I felt compelled to carry out an act of compassion - I married one to help reduce the numbers. Joking aside, there is a serious point to this. Human nature has shown time and time again that any insular community will be on the receiving end of prejudicial acts and comments from the majority population simply because they aren't willing to integrate. Whether the group is based on racial or religious grounds is irrelevant, the key is that there is little social contact outside of business transactions leading to resentment that they are taking 'our jobs', and virtually no marriages across the divides occur. On an individual level, most people will get on with most people because they are willing to communicate. Resentment is almost invariably against persons unknown, who may or may not have been responsible for the act that may or may not have happened, who have most likely been described via a third party. None of this precludes having a dislike of an individual or individuals, but once you single out a group for who they are rather than what they have done, you are well on the way to emulating such paragons (not) of tolerance such as the Taliban, the Turkish treatment of the Kurds or the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. It isn't a question of politically correct bs, rather one of common decency for another human being.

yep

Maybe eBay pay more attention to people reporting dodgy listings in the US than from elsewhere. It's a far more litigious society.

The late Grim Reaper? Powerful stuff, eh?

'Varieties are not common knowledge to common collectors. Further, there are fewer younger people that seem to connect with history, art and design and how that is memorialized on coinage. This is unfortunate.' This seems to be endemic and not only among the younger members of society. Last week we went to the inter-counties quiz at Crewe, and we were the only team to answer a question concerning the identity of a monarch sandwiched between two other. For a group of people that must refer to Spink/Coin Yearbook or whatever on a reasonably regular basis, that is a fairly damning indictment the attention many people pay to detail. If they struggle to identify the monarch, then a variety has no chance

It looks like a Charles I Briot milled 2d that now answers to the name Elizabeth........ darling

You can't argue with that. Both British and German coins offer huge scope for discussion. So too do French issues, ancients etc. The key is clearly diversity of design, which is helped immensely by hammered issues which are intrinsically different dies every time.

You also have to consider die bounce if you are looking at slight translational or rotational movement. The better the surfaces, the more noticeable it becomes. In the case of the Soho restrikes, you also have to consider the unreliability of Taylor's press which frequently suffered from the collar opening leading to multiple strikes, each slightly rotated from the next. When he acquired the tub of dies from the Soho Mint sale, the collars in particular were found to be worn to the extent that they were virtually useless. Clearly this wasn't something that happened after the mint closed, so we can reasonably assume that it was an ongoing problem throughout the Soho period. Dies wear out and get replaced, but degrading collars are less likely to be noticed until they no longer close properly. A loose collar would give rise to these slight movements.

I don't think there is any danger of people stopping collecting, but there does need to be some means of transmitting the info about the coins that can't be collected from change. After all, you do need that catalyst to start in the first place. The biggest pressure counteracting taking up the hobby is the proliferation of digital entertainment, which wasn't available when 'traditional' (whatever that means) hobbies were more popular. I don't think collecting as an activity is less popular today, but the number of things to collect has expanded exponentially in today's throwaway society, giving less time available to any particular topic. Detectorists find coins and might want to dig further (pardon the pun), but retail premises as a means of introduction are virtually non-existent. I personally started collecting both coins and stamps because my father did, as I suspect did a few others, but today that is a link which can be easily broken and only replaced with difficulty when instant gratification is the norm. Collections can't be sorted in a weekend. Exposure to the coins by whatever means is therefore paramount if people are to start collecting. People read far less than they used to, so conveying the information has to be done in a more diverse manner. Visits to museums can clearly help. Television might have had its day given the number of channels and the alternatives to TV, but clearly archaeological programs can help. However, the transient nature of today's 'must do' activity should ensure that the most effective inspiration will come from family members and their immediate circle, because they have the most prolonged contact.

Gradual adoption of contactless technology with a commensurate reduction in the number of currency coins issued. The next few years are going to see very low mintage issues with the exception of the commemorative tat because the banks are unlikely to request new supplies of small change. The widespread availability of machines which convert small change into something more manageable ensures that piggy banks will continue to be emptied. The only thing buoying mintage figures is the removal from circulation of cupro-nickel and bronze and their replacement with clad steel.

Why would you register interest with a website having a Chinese country extension? If they aren't careful, the replicas will be out before the official product. That looks like a Chinese company trying to farm contact details.

The estimate is going to reflect the book values of £275 Fine and £800 VF for the normal A1 or A2 die pairs with a premium for the novelty of it being a mule. It was always going to fly given I knew of at least one other person who would want it.

Not to worry. Plenty more exciting things to come from the collection. JH's collection was mostly not top grade, but numismatically speaking, a treasure chest, carefully built up over 75 years.