Gary D

It's the colour that would worry me. I had a fake very similar to that in colour although in a lesser grade. Apparently they rub them down on a piece of leather to reduce the grade

It looks to me like a piece of metal moved when the back of the 3 was dug out by a blow. Can't be a error as there is metal missing, errors cause matel to be left behind like a dot. If you look carefully, what appears to have have happened is that a chunk has come out of the lower 3. It's a piece missing. The question is, did it happen at striking which would make it an interesting (but probably not valuable) misstrike, or has been gouged out since? hi i know what you are getting at with the chunk but would pinching out after striking account for the leg sticking out at the back of the lower 3 in the middle some friends of mine suggested that it may possibly be a backwards £ sign

Yes Tom i believe a lot more people are investing in coins instead of putting it into banks, thus pushing prices upwards, i wonder if it will all end in tears like the housing markets and banks collapsing. I have my eye on a little something, so fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes later, whatch this space (or at least coin aquisition of the week ) I've been concentrating on maundy recently and the prices have jumped alarmingly. A year or so ago you could pick up singles for £20, now I'm regularly being beat on ebay at £35.

That works fine until the day your snipe just beats another using the same strategy. Then you find yourself having to pay the "stupidly high price" You only pay the price you want to pay Peck I was commenting on a strategy that involves sniping a "stupidly high price" - it COULD happen that your S.H.P. outbids someone else's S.H.P. by only a few pounds, and then you HAVE to pay! I used to deal on ebay in antique silver (still have a bit), hence the argentum in my business name. Anyway, back to Pecks point, one day I was trawling the sold prices on Irish dessert spoons (had just bought some and wanted to know what they were fetching on ebay) when I found a sold single spoon for £1113.85 (made up the figure as it was 5 years ago ish, but it was certainly more than £1000). The spoon was from a recorded silversmith of no great importance, in average condition and had no armorial crest or provenance. The only conclusion I could draw was that 2 idiots with snipes had pushed the price to the incredulous level it reached (winning bid was within 5 seconds of auction end). The true value of that spoon at the time was about £50. Snipe high at your peril! It's times like that you need to check their returns policy. lol

And lets not forget, what it will eventually do to the toilet bowl I think this guy should be given an honorary free membership to this site for his services in the advancment of cleaning old pennies. I'm sure you could write it down and sell it on ebay. Gary

I've got a halfpenny that looks silvery, it was done by heating it. Gary

Goofbay.com has an ebay snipe prog for free Interesting. Who are these people and where's the catch ? Better to read all about it 400, it has a lot of forums etc dedicated to Ebay, hammersnipe is subscription based, whereas the goofbay one is free, you can snipe with 2 seconds left, just make sure your bid is high enough or else you won't win https://www.goofbay.com/free_ebay_sniper.html You get 3 free snipes a week on hammersnipe, althought they are only at 10-15 seconds

Goofbay.com has an ebay snipe prog for free Interesting. Who are these people and where's the catch ? I use Hammersnipe. www.hammertap.auctionstealer.com

Yes you need to keep an eye out for fakes and over-grading but showing a high grade coin then sending a dud is just plain fraud in my opinion. I also hate stock photos, it's just lazyness. I expect to receive what is in the picture because that is what I have used to appraise the condition and used as the basis to make the decision on what I'm willing to pay. Gary D

Here's my bright 1944 Rev c and Rev d along with both a bright and toned 1945. I also have a bright 1946.

As far as I'm aware Centsles is a dealer in the States that slabs his own. The grading tends to be overly optimistic but I'm not aware of any of his coin being of questionable origins. Gary D

I've just been caught out. Not seriously, but still caught. I spotted a 1965 sixpence for sale and the photo was the rarer variety with the 'I' of 'REGINA' to a space. Checked with the seller whether this was the actual coin in the photo and was told yes it was. Arrived this morning and it clearly isn't the same coin and is the common old 1965. Only $3 wasted, so no sweat. Not worth sending back, but a good excuse to leave a great big negative feedback. Why these people do it, I really don't know!! In the long run they are the losers. Indeed they are, Dave. It's very difficult to understand such a mindset. For the sake of a minor score on a few coins, they are risking long term isolation as the collecting and dealing community soon come to recognise a seller who is effectively a crook. And the proof of the con is that the 'dealer' in this case hasn't come back to me to complain about the negative feedback, which has knocked him down to around 97%. I,m always on the lookout for 1965 sixpences and have often come across the rare variety on ebay. I alway now look at any other sixpences being sold by the seller to see in they have used the same obverse in several actions, they always have. Why take a picture of every obv if they are all the same grr. I ended up buying a Peter Davies piece. I have no problem with people using stock photos or a single one for a range of coins where the coin is a bog standard one e.g. the Eliz II cupro-nickel series. I don't even mind when they don't say so and I have to ask. What I do object to, very strongly, is when I ask the question, I am assured the coin in the photo is the one for sale, and when it arrives it clearly isn't the same one. These sellers are simply con-men willing to sell anything and lie blatantly just a for few miserable pennies - after all they don't go for much. Even more insulting is that they don't think I can tell the difference! There was a nice 1922 penny on ebay a couple of weeks ago, GEF, what turned up was about fine and he had the cheek to try the no returns lark. Got a full refund including postage. I send more stuff back now days then I used too, even if it was only a couple of quid.

I've just been caught out. Not seriously, but still caught. I spotted a 1965 sixpence for sale and the photo was the rarer variety with the 'I' of 'REGINA' to a space. Checked with the seller whether this was the actual coin in the photo and was told yes it was. Arrived this morning and it clearly isn't the same coin and is the common old 1965. Only $3 wasted, so no sweat. Not worth sending back, but a good excuse to leave a great big negative feedback. Why these people do it, I really don't know!! In the long run they are the losers. Indeed they are, Dave. It's very difficult to understand such a mindset. For the sake of a minor score on a few coins, they are risking long term isolation as the collecting and dealing community soon come to recognise a seller who is effectively a crook. And the proof of the con is that the 'dealer' in this case hasn't come back to me to complain about the negative feedback, which has knocked him down to around 97%. I,m always on the lookout for 1965 sixpences and have often come across the rare variety on ebay. I alway now look at any other sixpences being sold by the seller to see in they have used the same obverse in several actions, they always have. Why take a picture of every obv if they are all the same grr. I ended up buying a Peter Davies piece.

Boots the chemist used to have a coin collecting section where they sold a few coins Gary

To be fair VS, not many dealers and collectors know about or refer to these microwaves. Probably many are like me - they see a new coin with yellow/gold/red lustre, they think of it like a thin coating, and lo and behold it wears off exactly as if it was. "Sheen" is my own term, though others may have coined it also (pun intended). It is a prperty that any coin may have, though full lustre obviously trumps it. As I say, I have 3 or 4 high grade copper coins with no lustre (or only faint traces), but which have this wondrous silky shimmery surface. The coins are natural metal in colour, i.e. brown or reddish-brown, typical copper, but nevertheless they have this sheen. It is NOT lustre. That looks like classic "lustre" az - traces thereof. That's as good a term as any! Having seen pictures of coins being tumbled in weak acid en masse to clean them after the striking (probably where most of the so called bag marks come from) they start life pretty much as bare metal. I would suggest any lustre/sheen is actually caused by the initial formation of oxidation. This over a period of time builds up into what we call tone. Gary

When a coin is struck there will be flow in the metal which will cause heating, this heating and the polishing effect of the metal moving across the surface of the die if probably the cause of the final colour we see. Gary D

Another interesting offering, I say interesting as this coin has worn one side more than the other. Must be a poor mix in the alloy Error coin

OK, thanks for replying. The ones I have aren't that good anyway, I just thought there would be a trick identifying them Do bear in mind that the difference in silver value, in relation to silver 3d, is pretty minuscule! The face value is just over one decimal penny. You could try and check the ring, not easy with such a small coin. 0.925 silver lower ring. Best to compare with pre 1919 and post 1921

Well he must have been a brave man trying to take an imprint of that Not taken from one of the replicas available as it look too much like a real penny. A pity he didn't blow the felt hairs of the back before making the impression Gary

I was originally putting my collection under the normal house insurance but it was less than ideal. The way house contents works is that any one item, a collection in this case, must not be more than a certain percentage of the total cover, if I recall correctly it is about 30%. This means that if your collection is worth £10,000 you must have at least £33,000 of contents insurance, ok no problem. A £20,000 collection would be £66,000 and £35,000 which I had at the time would require £117,000. That's a lot of premium you need to pay for. Last year I insured my collection for £40,000, it was cheaper at that point to find a seperate company to insure my collection and find a cheap contents insurance. My renewal this year was £243 for £45,000 cover. I upped it to £60,000 for £320. I use Stamp Insurace Services in Exeter and the policy is with Sterling Insurance. Gary

Ok it's not a coin, but it is British. A work colleague has been clearing out an aunt's house and came across a bag of these medals, about 40 of them in all and all in uncirculated condition. I say uncirculated although I assume that's not really the correct term, I did find a copy on the web that was very worn. I know the victorians turned out medals quicker than the Isle of Man but does anyone know anything about these and are they likely to have any value?

I though current estimates are about 11-12. I have held the example in the British Musueum, had to wear rubber gloves though. As to the royal family holding collections, I suspect they do although may not actively collect themselves. A 1935 proof crown previously owned by Eddie VIII came up for sale late last year. Had been kept nicely polished by his housekeeper.

The largest "hoard" I was aware of was Roland Harris who had 6 sets of wreaths for his children. They were sold by London Coins about 3 years ago after his death. The printed cards are from a set of coin folders that could be bought in the late 60s early 70s. Bri-lining or something like that. I kept my collection in them at the time. You could buy the set one or more for each monarch Eliz 11 decimal down to Vicky. They held each year, all denominations except for gold. Depending on the number of coins in a given year you could have one or two cards, two cards to a page. Gary D

And someone actually bought it. What worries me though is I have a search for British coins worldwide which I check daily, and I missed this one. I wonder how many other gems have slipped pass me.