1949threepence

Yes, possibly. Maybe an object lesson on how easy it is to be taken in by a forgery, due to over enthusiasm. Not that I would have bid for it anyway. I must admit on closer inspection, it doesn't look right, although you couldn't definitively say it's a fake. I hadn't seen your post in the e bay thread. There's something a bit strange about the lion's mane, compared to other coins of the same ilk. It looks slightly too detailed. I don't think there is anything wrong with the underlying basic coin, it's just the vertical mark to the left of the 5 and the slight misplacement that raise suspicions. It's probably a 1903 or 1904 with the number changed, most likely the latter given the angle of the gouge. Attached is a picture of one acquired on ebay a few years ago, or at least I was going to but the page refused to load fully so that I could add one. I wonder if the seller is aware.

Yes, possibly. Maybe an object lesson on how easy it is to be taken in by a forgery, due to over enthusiasm. Not that I would have bid for it anyway. I must admit on closer inspection, it doesn't look right, although you couldn't definitively say it's a fake. I hadn't seen your post in the e bay thread. There's something a bit strange about the lion's mane, compared to other coins of the same ilk. It looks slightly too detailed.

Yes, possibly. Maybe an object lesson on how easy it is to be taken in by a forgery, due to over enthusiasm. Not that I would have bid for it anyway. I must admit on closer inspection, it doesn't look right, although you couldn't definitively say it's a fake. I hadn't seen your post in the e bay thread.

I appreciate that this is slightly off topic, but it really isn't worth starting a new thread for. Has anybody seen this 1905 shilling on e bay at the mo ? It's got to be an EF, something you hardly ever see in this rarity, and will fetch quite a bit, I think (book price is £600 for an EF 1905, but I bet it goes for more). Just a bit of a dirty mark around the obverse lettering, otherwise pretty much perfecto. I'll willingly eat humble pie if it doesn't

Indeed - the secondary market for these items shows just how poor an "investment" they are. There's a glut of commems and the like (or there was, a few years back - I'm sure things haven't changed much?) - and the values in Spink are stagnant. And to make matters worse, the Elizabeth II pages in the Standard Catalogue have become quite ridiculous. I think they should confine them to currency issues only, including proof sets and BU sets, and move everything else out into a separate "Mint Issues & Commemoratives" booklet. Anything not issued for currency could go in there - from the 1972 Silver Wedding "Crown" onwards, i.e. all piedforts, all crown-sized pieces, all gold and silver Britannias, anything issued as a specimen in a folder, Baby Sets, you name it. And also it could then take in all those lovely fantasy pieces too, which don't get featured anywhere, such as the gorgeous pattern 1798 penny, with the Kuchler obverse and reworked Boulton reverse pattern. Totally agree. They really are pandering to the collector market in a way which is making the whole thing annoyingly artificial. One of the reasons I'm just not interested in post 1971 currency at all.

The following is a copy and paste of an e mail I received a few days ago from the coin grading service:- For adherents to the number system I doubt it makes much difference, but for those new to cgs numbering, the prefixes do help. Any thoughts ?

They didn't have enough ways already ? 27.3 mm - that's the new smaller dimension, right? Which means there are some older types, e.g. the 1973 EEC reverse, which will be effectively new designs. ...and as these will all be dated 2009 (as far as I can see), they'll be new designs anyway - especially with the obverse portrait not being the Machin version... Did you notice though that the gold piedfort coin had two obverse options, as follows:- All the others had just option (a) for the obverse design. Thanks for the link, by the way. Very Interesting.

I get the countdown clock sometimes, but other times it doesn't appear Not sure how I get it to appear all the time. and that buy it now has been around since at least May, suggesting that it's overpriced.

That's where the radio controlled clock comes in handy. I've found that if you make your bid on the 2nd button, with 12 seconds to go, you'll usually get in with just 3 or 4 seconds left, depending on how fast your browser is. I didn't bid on this coin in the end, though. Was going to, but getting too close to the end of the month. Payday is not until Friday Sorry you weren't successful, Peckris.

The giveaway is the obverse legend and rim (I agree if it was 'in hand' I could tell in an instant). The rim is quite high, but the clincher is the distance from the legend to the rim. On Type 2's it is always further away - the Type 1 legend is about 1/3 to 1/2 as close. That's worrying about morgan9red. I just bought a BU florin which the photo suggests really is - I hope I don't have to send it back as it cost me not far from book price. You're definitely right. I've just compared, side by side, my 1920 & 1921 shillings, and the legend in the 1920 is palpably closer to the rim, than my (type 2) 1921. You can see the difference if you compare the two links above (the one you posted and the one I posted)

Actually, yes I did note that '1' was a bit strange looking. No, what I was referring to, is it's the rare Type 1 obverse (1911-1920). I've examined as close as I can and I'm 99% sure it is. Which makes it RARE indeed, especially in that grade. You may be right. Might be worth having a punt on.

Since the average browser wouldn't know a radio controlled clock if it bit it in the Refresh button, I'm thinking that wouldn't make much difference ! But ... this shilling is already over £50. Anyone spotted something else about it? (Someone out there certainly has). It may be an optical illusion, or I may be getting tired and past my bedtime, but there does appear to be something different about the "1" the 21 bit of 1921. Bit short, thicker & stubbier. Compare and contrast with this one which is like the one I possess.

I agree it's not UNC, probably GEF. I note there has already been some slight flattening of the lion's nose, which is a sure fire giveaway on all shillings of that era. I actually did manage to obtain a true UNC 1921 shilling off e bay. But it is dirty in places, with a bit of a stain on the obverse just below the King's head. Got it for £39.71 in a late winning bid. Anybody else ever sat there with a radio controlled clock, trying to time to the last few seconds, a late bid at a ridiculously un-outbiddable high price, to avoid being outdone by Hammersnipe ?

Interesting. I actually received an almost BU 1975 2p in my change yesterday. I always wonder where the heck they've been over the years.

I suspect though, that the pennies have been well and truly scanned by now and anything remotely valuable has long been whisked away. Indeed, those halcyon days are long gone, and alas, I was never a part of them

.........Not to mention scanning the lines of coins paraded in those "penny falls" machines in amusement halls, to see if there were any there worth trying to coax out (sad but extremely enthusiastic git that I am) On a saturday morning I would take my £1 2/6 paper round money and go into the Lloyds bank next to the paper shop and get £1 bags of 1d 1/2d etc until I could not make up the £1 any more Did you ever find any that were worth keeping, Gary ? (and have you still got any of them)

I'll post the response on here (1 - 3 working days, they say) Still waiting for a reply ~ so much for the 1 - 3 working days

.........Not to mention scanning the lines of coins paraded in those "penny falls" machines in amusement halls, to see if there were any there worth trying to coax out (sad but extremely enthusiastic git that I am)

You are so lucky to have lived in the days when lsd was circulating. If I'd been around then, I'm sure I'd have been making a nuisance of myself in banks, buying pound bags of pennies to sort through I bet that if an uncirculated example was auctioned it would easily fetch more than the £1500 book price.

Well I have now tried Googling it, and the wiki entry is the only reference to the "incident", as far as I can see. So you may well be right. I know if I had been collecting at the time, and I'd heard about it, I most definitely wouldn't have forgotten it. If it did happen, it could also have been a deliberate publicity stunt by the company concerned, in order to attract attention (as opposed to a real find)

On the subject of really rare coins, I wonder if the story contained in this wikipedia entry is true ? I would bet that it is How unlucky was that guy ?

Tell that to the collector trying to get an uncirculated 1926 modified head penny Seriously though, I know what you mean. As you say there are a number of "common" dates which are actually harder to find in BU than apparently "scarce" or at any rate "scarcer" dates, in the same condition. For me the classic example has to be the 1953 penny ~ obviously collected and stored extensively at the time, being the Queen's coronation year, and all that ~ but woth just £4.00 book value in uncirculated, notwithstanding the low 1,308,400 mintage. I think any serious collector is well aware of the difficult years for each denomination, which, whilst including the classic ones, like the 1932 florin, 1905 shilling, 1919kn penny, 1926 ME penny, but also much less obvious ones, like, as we mentioned in a different thread, the 1921 shilling. Hahaha - I should have specifically excluded the 1926 ME penny from my previous point. Oh boy, I would LOVE a BU one - wouldn't we all? For pennies, I would say 1914 - 1916, 1930 and 1931 are seriously underrated in BU. But also - judging purely on list values - the 1946 penny in Unc isn't nearly as easy as the book suggests. I'd also say that Unc 1958 and 1959 halfcrowns are somewhat overrated, especially in comparison to all 1950s florins. Actually, I wasn't really referring to Unc coins as the number of those saved from the Great Smelt Down was probably largely unaffected. And I guess that the 1953 penny was never really intended for circulation anyway, being sold only in those souvenir plastic sets. And a mintage of 1,308,400 for a commemorative is really high and beats the number of coin collectors quite easily. Similarly with the 1951 and 1953 crowns (and as for the Churchill, let's not even go there!). On the other hand, a coin created purely for true collectors, such as the Wreath crowns ... I've been collecting since I was 12, and the best 1926ME penny, I've even seen, let alone bought, was a VF example. Even if you've got the money, you would have to be very patient to get a high grade one, as they do not come on the market every 5 minutes The one I've got is barely fine, probably no better than fair, with the reverse lettering slightly rubbed.

This is a hopelessly difficult question to answer. Coin collecting (and therefore prices) has different stimuli at different times : Late 60s (medium inflation, but impending decimalisation) : coin collecting fever, modern coin prices go through the roof Mid 70s (high inflation) : post-decimalisation, modern prices collapse, but pre-1887 values increase sharply (a "true" market) Early 80s (medium inflation) : speculation e.g. in silver bullion, pushes coin prices to 'silly levels' Mid 80s - mid 90s (low inflation) : gradual stabilisation (aka decline) in coin values, leading to stagnation Mid 90s - early millennium (low) : shortages of good material; a return to coin collecting by many of the '60s schoolkids'; the takeover of the Standard Catalogue by Spink - prices go up double or threefold or even more Currently : coin values stabilising from the dramatic increases, but shortage of good material persists Whether the economic recession will result in a 'flight of money' (leading to lower coin values), or see coins as a 'hedge against recession and better than shares' (which should stimulate the market), remains to be seen. But, it will be increasingly true that there will be more collectors than coins as the supply of pre-decimal coins remains ever-fixed. Never has the maxim 'buy the best quality you can afford' been so true. To give you a humbling lesson : 12 years ago, new to dealing and therefore still wedded to 'book price', I bid for a BU 1873 bronze penny at auction, pulling out when the bidding went past the then book price of £75. I should have known better, I should have hung on. That coin would now easily fetch £400, probably considerably more. I hate to say it but the biggest skew on coin prices in the last 3-4 years has been ebay. It's the only dealer in town with a daily average of 40,000 UK coins. It's has certainly made coin collecting widely accessible. It has made coin collecting much more accessible, and I would bet that those 60's schoolkids referred to by Peckris, have had their youthful interest in numismatics re-kindled by a tour of the coin pages on e bay, and with available money many orders of magnitude greater than the peanuts they had available to spend back then. I take on board all the criticisms and obvious weaknesses which attach to e bay, but at the same time, I would offer in their defence the fact that I have managed to find coins on there, which seem to be almost completely absent from the dealer's shelves. However there can be no doubt that much of the stuff is seriously over-priced, not to mention overbid for, by people clearly not experienced collectors. It's often possible to buy a better example of a given coin direct from a dealer, at lower than the winning bid price on e bay. There is at least one dealer on a bay (power seller), who I am absolutely sure consistently undergrades his coins. But he is in the minority. Probably a minority of one.

Tell that to the collector trying to get an uncirculated 1926 modified head penny Seriously though, I know what you mean. As you say there are a number of "common" dates which are actually harder to find in BU than apparently "scarce" or at any rate "scarcer" dates, in the same condition. For me the classic example has to be the 1953 penny ~ obviously collected and stored extensively at the time, being the Queen's coronation year, and all that ~ but woth just £4.00 book value in uncirculated, notwithstanding the low 1,308,400 mintage. I think any serious collector is well aware of the difficult years for each denomination, which, whilst including the classic ones, like the 1932 florin, 1905 shilling, 1919kn penny, 1926 ME penny, but also much less obvious ones, like, as we mentioned in a different thread, the 1921 shilling.

Not really a useful assumption - there are so many forgeries around of £1 coins that you can 99% say that a misalignment = a fake. I agree, with the proviso that if the forgers were so careless as to get the obverse and reverse misaligned, there would very probably be other giveaway signs of fakery, such as a blurred strike, or an incorrect reverse pattern for the year.