Rob

NURSE!!! COME QUICKLY!!! Your sanity is precious, please don't abuse it.

Apologies for the delay in providing the evidence which was due to me requiring a sample size of 3 coins rather than two and the ensuing wait for the scanner to warm up. The first C of Churchill does look thinner on the left coin.

The difference alluded to in Davies goes hand in hand with two types of teeth. One set is notably further from the raised rim, whilst the other is more akin to a series of small pyramids. I'm sure there will be other differences.

Those figures are way too low. Copper is 8.945 ish. Tin is 7.3, so it could be tin alloy. That would tie in with the halfpenny being about a third thicker than it should, but only slightly overweight.

Fedex are ok on this. The post office isn't too bad, but usually I pay it and reclaim it from them before their return to sender policy kicks in after it hasn't been picked up within the specified time. This alleviates any problems of something you don't want to get lost in the post being returned and then dispatched a second time.

A very sad story later to be repeated with charles II WHAT! Was that taken from Wiki?

Coming from Hong Kong on a buy it now for £4.50. Whilst it doesn't say copy, it clearly is, and there's no intention to deceive in my view because they aren't trying to milk the market with an auction. If you are looking for inconsistencies, there is no die number that I can see.

I'm smelling a rat. Why does the E show up with a different tone to the rest of it on my screen? Scratches to the right of the E below the truncation? The lines emanating from the left side of the shields top and bottom is sometimes seen with a cast. The flan looks pitted. The letters look a bit 'modern' for my liking, but I'm not sure if that is wishful thinking, not having done a survey of the punches used on Anne's coinage. I wouldn't be surprised if the E was added later. 1709E is only recorded by Prevost et al with an Edinburgh bust and local dies with narrow shields reverse, the star having filled on the die. The bust punch is also different around the chin area to the other 1709 shillings I have images of.

The opening paragraph says it all. It is virtually impossible to find a representative hoard from over 50 years ago. That's why I published on here the results of a few hundred silver sixpences taken over a market stall before they were demonetised. Being culled by a businessman rather than a collector, he was in no way influenced by rare dates, simply wanting to save the silver bits as a hoard of wealth. That was the guarantee of it being a genuinely random selection. The same applies when trying to establish relative rarity using auction data or past records. My personal belief is that for common coins you should only include sales from the general properties section because named collectors will in most instances require just a single example of each type or variety depending on the depth of the collection. Unless they collect every example available to them, the data must be skewed. So for example, when I collected shillings, one would have had to conclude that Charles I Sharp obverse E2/2 & E2/3 coins with im. Tun existed in the ratio 2:1 based on my collection. Clearly this is nonsense when the evidence of random sampling would suggest hundreds of the former and maybe a dozen of the latter. However, one E2/2 had a legend error, so then half would have to be errors. Again, it's a non-starter. There are too many unknowns to accurately revise rarity figures, which is why documenting relevant research is so important. Every little helps is the best you can aim for.

What is the Cu-Ni halfpenny expected to make and what does almost BU mean in reality? I paid £350+ over 10 years ago for my Cu-Ni 1868 proof and sold it for between 450 and 500 in 2013, and that was with a mark in the reverse field, so far from perfect. If it helps to price the one you are looking at, here's the coin in question. Apologies for a scan. Personally, if the proof is seriously impaired, I would go for the token and save up for a proof later on.

It depends on how much you are thinking of spending. I didn't realise the token market was that buoyant. D&H only gives it as scarce. Am I missing something, such as D&H diverging from reality?

I think that's just a combination of a crap picture and reflection. The marks just indicate which side took more hits.

Polished

And illustrated using a halfpenny............................ So maybe you get a farthing, halfpenny and a penny. Great. Kills three birds with one stone.

I split them at the table and the numbers of people requiring either one or the other is roughly equal (thankfully) and split packs account for approximately half a box, so based on a not statistically significant sample, it suggests 1/3 for each half and the remaining third is the complete pack of two.

No, but work starts on pricing after the September sales and Phil's departure was at the beginning of the time when revisions are made. Given they didn't get out requests for advertising in time as a result of the change in personnel, it isn't surprising that individual inclusions weren't enacted.

The plumes I mentioned simply because it is on the same page. Looking further afield, there is no image of an Exeter crown in any form which is unquestionably distinctive, nor a whole host of other Civil War coins including the Bugle halfcrown, the Bristol flat-crown halfcrown, the York types 1-3 halfcrowns, nor the Tower mint group V halfcrown or most shillings from the same period. Some of these are major types, common too and all would benefit from illustration if identification is the reason for doing so. Then you have the regional die variations of the Saxon coins. The list is actually quite extensive because a picture speaks a thousand words. I don't disagree that it should be illustrated, but I suspect the same could be said of any period covered by the book. The biggest problem has to be one of space versus production costs and selling price. A good number of collectors don't buy CoE because of the cost, preferring to have one of the cheap volumes, but that comes at a price with one listing all (100+) Oxford Civil War halfcrowns under a single heading for example. I note that this year there were fewer dealer adverts than previously which was a result of Phil Skingley leaving and the new editor taking over. These also take up space which could be better employed providing illustrations. I also think there could be some mileage in splitting the pre-decimal into hammered and milled as well as having the decimal portion, given the number of collectors who restrict their habits to one of the three. It would be cheaper for the collector than the combined volumes which ought to increase sales.

They have long had inconsistencies. I'm a believer that you either trim it down to the currency plus the proofs issued for the masses, or you include everything. The main problem if you do the latter is one of space because the book would weigh at least 2kg and be too heavy to lug around. Currently they supposedly don't include patterns, yet include the 1848 florins (listed as patterns!) and the 1807 proof halfpennies (only produced by Taylor and never at Soho) for example. An added bonus of trimming out the esoteric and a slight reduction in font size would be a possible reduction in weight to under 1kg for the pre-decimal section which would reduce carriage charges. Some of the oddballs included in the past have been the result of pleasing favoured collectors, or a little marketing activity to provide a price for some coins. A third of a page is taken up by the Petition and Reddite pattern crowns which are definitely in the realm of the unobtainable for most and consequently irrelevant, and in the past the 1513 Tournai groat of Henry VIII was listed at the instigation of Patrick Finn who had the coin sat in the trays at Spink for a while. Once listed it sold. It has subsequently been culled, so things do work both ways. The salient point here is that an esoteric variety is difficult or impossible to price for the majority of people, so is ignored. Once a coin is included in a reference volume, people will queue up to buy it, so listing as many things as possible is therefore a positive in expanding the hobby which is in the interest of both dealers and collectors. If you ever needed proof of the power of inclusion, things like the 1897 O'NE and 1946 ONE' pennies are only die flaws and in my opinion not worthy of inclusion, but they are listed and so people chase them. I don't have an issue with using a silver proof to illustrate an example if it is identical to the copper currency equivalent, as it is likely to be better struck than a currency coin and so provide clarity of detail, which is the main purpose of illustration. I agree that it remiss of them not to include illustrations of the second and third issue halfpennies, but these are not the only examples, as on the preceding page there is no plumes in angles sixpence. To paraphrase, 'other examples exist'. It is a situation that will never satisfy everybody because there are many levels of collecting, each of which requires a different degree of cataloguing.

Manville & Robertson. 3 volumes. The first lists British numismatic auction catalogues from 1710 to 1984 with the names of the vendors given where known. The other two volumes cover British and Irish numismatic periodicals up to the early 1990s.

Struggling. No Gale listed in M & R for the 20th century. Henderson should be easier to trace as he ought to be a museum employee.

Wot? One careful owner? - The back garden of 72 Acacia Avenue?

Interestingly the 1817 and 1820 I/S dies are different. I guess the engraver thought he was making the word PENSE?

No it isn't. The I has lost its serifs. I don't have a sixpence, but the shilling is similar and looks as below.

It will throw a spanner in the works for a lot of people if we do. Most collectors go to fairs armed with a wad of cash. I wonder if this is historical and a reflection on the time required to bank a cheque and receive funds, as it's only during the last 10 years or so that mobile payments have been feasible. Any bookie will suffer big time. Can you imagine using chip and pin at Royal Ascot?

I think it is badly mixed metal. Silver in purified form has to be alloyed to reduce it to the correct fineness (92.5% is sterling silver). The normal metal added would be copper. I have noticed a far greater tendency for silver to suffer from haymarking than gold. I think this is due to the difference in melting points between the three metals. Silver melts at 100 degrees below the melting point of copper, so the pot needs to be heated far beyond the point that liquid silver forms in order to melt any added copper. Failure to melt the copper would result in specks of sold copper remaining as it is likely the lighter particles would be in suspension. Gold on the other hand melts within 20 degrees of copper and so there is less chance of the copper failing to melt. Time allowed for melting is another factor. Once poured and cooled, any copper will react with the air to make copper (II) oxide, which is black.