Rob

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.

Went for 1300 hammer. I was having difficulty justifying spending more than 1500 on it given it isn't better than good fine, even if the coin is unique. I was against a telephone bidder.

I won a few lots, but had to let the one I really wanted go when the price got a bit high. Doubtless I'll be proved wrong for stopping in the future. It may have gone to a forum member. This is the coin I wanted, having been on the list ever since I knew where it was. It went through the Circular at £350 in Sept 1998. Worcester 3d obverse paired with a 2d reverse.

The A is more likely the crossbar. We are still in the period when the V punch covered both V & A, with the crossbar added when required.

I'm not sure evolution works that quickly, more a case of them not being interested in old gits like you and me (with our expectations massaged down accordingly).

Opposite poles attract, like poles repel

Just as a magnet moving in a coil will produce electricity (called a power station) and current will flow, so an electrical discharge (current flow) will induce magnetism in a ferrous object. It works both ways.

For the Chinese. Material cost 5c, selling price a few dollars. You don't have to sell too many to recoup the setting up costs. For the dodgy dealer. Cost a few dollars, selling price tens of dollars. Seems like a good plan as long as you don't burden yourself with a moral compass. For many ebay buyers, an outlay of a few tens of dollars will easily be offset by the hundreds of dollars accruing from the sales of said rare items - all old coins are incredibly rare and are valuable. After all, they were missed by Gouby, Peck and Freeman

Yes, the resolution is set too low. Needs more pixels. Actual rather than imagined evidence is far more convincing.

I don't have an issue paying for work done, but think the threshold for paying import charges should be raised so that the RM would need to check fewer things, and to the end user the charge would seem less egregious being a smaller percentage of the total. The fixed charge on top of a couple pounds import VAT is disproportionately large, but on a couple hundred is neither here nor there.

Is it silver plated? What is the weight? If it is in 'white metal', which is essentially mostly tin, the weight will be 15-20% less than that of a normal bronze piece assuming dimensions are the same.

Looks like crud. There's enough of it everywhere else.

Yes

The die axis on a hammered coin can be anything from 0-360 degrees.

It's ok saying synchronise Chrome with Google and Firefox etc, but where does it store the bookmark info? The safest way to protect info surely has to be when you do it yourself? If I let Google save it, they will just spam me with crap related to my deposited data, just like any other digital company that gets its revenue from advertising. No.1 has already changed the email account to gmail and changed the internet explorer program to Chrome from Firefox, but will have to ask if they are linked when he is back on shore as I don't have any control over these things.

Good news! I just had number 4 here on a surprise visit and he has restored the old bookmarks by somehow resurrecting the old ones used with Firefox before the update - hooray! Downside though is that I can't log into the wife's eBay. It thinks she is logging in but won't recognise her password. Bring back Windows 7 with its cookie clearing facility so I can start with a clean sheet. I'm losing the will to live.

I have always put haymarking down to insufficiently mixed copper to make the alloy, this being the usual admix to obtain the required purity. The melting point of copper is about 100 degrees C higher than that of silver, so it is not enough just to melt the silver, throw in the requisite amount of copper and expect the alloy to be thoroughly mixed because the temperature isn't necessarily high enough. Whilst I have no definitive proof that this is the reason for the black spots, it is probably significant that there is far less haymarking seen on gold coins which can be explained by the fact that the two metals are only 20 degrees apart in their melting points. Copper (II) oxide is black. If it was due to a process other than mixing metals such as the treatment of blank flans, I would have expected to see similar percentages of coins with haymarking irrespective of the metal.

Excellent, the internet will presumably have also thrown up a lot of talk about copies of Caesar's elephant. There's a touch of Nelson about this excuse.

It is the same handwriting both sides and is a Boyd ticket. The GHG signifies that the coins came from Boyd's maternal uncle, George Henry Gaviller and were probably inherited on his death in 1880. Further reading can be had in the extensive foreword to the Boyd catalogue. The price code is made from a mixture of archaic Greek and Runes. This presumably was Boyd assigning a value to his coins.

It means the positions of the two shields in question are reversed. e.g. This is my York 1697 first bust shilling with the French and Irish shields the wrong way round. Normally for William III coins the English arms divide the date and going clockwise is followed by the Scottish, French and Irish shields. In this instance the Irish shield is opposite the English shield, but furthermore, it also tells us something about the person who set the dies in the coining press as the only arms in the correct place are the French, these normally sitting behind the base of the obverse. All the other three are in the wrong place with the die axis 90 degrees out, so we can deduce that the dies were aligned in the press using the French ones as the guide relative to the obverse. A seriously rare variety, with the only other example believed extant being the ex Parsons and Jackson Kent specimen in VF.

Halse, A 29mm diameter pale yellow written in ink on one side only.