Peckris

Yes, that's exactly it, Chris. I've tried both types of edit, equally unsuccessfully. When I click the relevant button to confirm my text amendments, a "loading" symbol briefly appears, then nothing. Yes - that's what happens to me too, so I gave up with it. I'm using Safari 3 by the way, running OS X Tiger. (I'm prepared to make a small wager that your web designers don't bother testing for Safari )

the It LOOKS like the reverse has been planed flat, but one way to be sure would be to weigh it - a planed coin would be underweight, and its width would be narrower too.

Not really a useful assumption - there are so many forgeries around of £1 coins that you can 99% say that a misalignment = a fake.

the dent is located at 5 oclock between FID as you can see the photos didnt bring this raised dent out It looks like a very small edge knock just after FID, but that's not what you meant I think? You mean an actual dent in the flan itself that shows up when you turn the coin and look at it edge-on, or as a depression on the reverse? If you could get pictures of the edge / reverse it might show more clearly. In any case, if it's a dent as opposed to an EK, that would be more serious, and I would be thinking about returning the coin to the seller and asking for a refund. Late Victorian silver isn't rare and you should be able to find a replacement without difficulty.

No, that's not what we meant Chris. What we meant was clicking the Edit button while it's still there, but not getting the edit to submit properly. It's borked somehow.

Me too. I've given up trying to Edit posts, it just doesn't seem to work

I'm sure that's right, but it's also true that once a coin is out of the set, it can 'degrade' quite quickly to the appearance of ordinary BU currency (unlike real proofs). I've had coins pass through my hands that came from sets (i.e. 'set only' dates), yet were quite impossible to tell apart from a 'normal' coin.

I've heard one theory that it is due to grease blocking the die detail. This will not compress when the die is used if an airtight seal is formed and so the design is either non-existent or only weakly struck up. I have a few pieces like this. Interesting. In which case, the error either survived only for a single strike and was missed by inspectors, or maybe there are more of each out there somewhere. As I say - it is ironic that if there were a number of identical coins they would have a high rarity value, but singletons do not. Though I think there was a time that unique misstrikes would fetch decent(ish) sums at the right auctions (maybe into 3 figures sometimes?).

Hi - those two pictures are way out of focus, but enough survives for me to see an underlying copper tint in parts of them. So my conclusion would be that this is a regular 2p coin that has been silver-washed or chromed. Keep it as a curio but if it is indeed a regular strike then it has no value above face.

[attachmen t=1867:1964_6d_close_up.jpg] Here's an interesting one. I suppose it counts as a misstrike more than a variety as such, which is an irony : if it was the only 1964 sixpence it would be worth tens of thousands of pounds; but something like this needs company - e.g. 99 similar examples - to be worth anything much. Anyway, here it is. A 1964 sixpence whose obverse legend reads "DEI GRAT A" probably due to a filled die. If anyone out there knows of one or two more like this I would be thrilled ...

Good point - let's not forget that the 1950 and 1951 pennies were probably the most over-hyped "rarities" of the 60s. I had a look back at 1970 prices for them, and they have no way kept pace with inflation. In fact they are currently not even double the 1970 prices. I predict the 20p will go the same way, only even quicker

I'm not sure that's entirely valid - if it's not a proof then by definition it's a currency (albeit 'specimen'). However, I would take the "highly polished" with a pinch of salt myself. I think that's the Royal Mint selling to complete lay people who would be more impressed with the phrase "highly polished" than "brilliant uncirculated". They wouldn't actually be polished or they couldn't sell any sets to genuine collectors. And don't forget that brand newly minted coins in change these days often have a highly mirrored finish, in contrast to the (to my mind superior) 'satin' finish you got in the late 60s. I think if you broke up a Baby set and stored the coins separately, no-one would be any the wiser in years to come. It's like the 1985 50p - no-one cares if it's from the set, or a genuine currency coin. They're all scarce.

Interesting mistrike. It looks as though the die has rotated slightly, or else the blank-and-collar has, giving an offset strike. Never seen that on a 20p before.

It looks genuine enough. Definitely worth keeping as a curiosity. My bet (hunch) is that it was struck on an unmilled (?Commonwealth) blank.

It's unlikely to be a fake as a faker wouldn't miss off something so obvious as a milled edge. As its weight checks out, it may be a coin struck on the wrong blank, or else something went wrong with the collar during striking and it got overlooked by inspectors. (Guesswork really - do you have a picture?)

There was one yesterday (I kid you not), with a Buy It Now price of £1,200,000.00 - I made a Best Offer of 99p but for some reason it was refused The listing also contained such spiel as "the coin may be viewed at my solicitors, viewing by arrangement" and "you may meet me to pay and exchange for the coin at my solicitors"

Interesting. However, the sorry fate of the 1961 halfcrown "no EF" comes to mind ... I was (still am) the proud owner of one of these, and it has totally fallen off the radar as being nothing more significant than "a filled die". But definitely worth putting one or two aside - you never know.

Look at this - a perfectly standard 'undated obverse' QEII 20p. BUY IT NOW for only £1.50 !! Note this (LMAO) : I HAVE A LOT OF THESE, MY COINS ARE GUARANTEED NO DATE ON QUEENS HEAD OR I WILL REFUND (Oh boy, I've news for him, I have loads of these too, wonder if I can undercut him by selling them for £1 each? ) Apparently (LOLOLOLOL) ... SIMILAR COINS TO THIS EVIDENDTLY HAVE RECENTLY REACHED A STAGGERING £7200 IN AUCTION ON EBAY Oh please, stop it, my sides are aching : IM NO COIN COLLECTER BUT You want the link? Ok, here is a public health warning - don't be drinking hot coffee at your computer terminal when viewing this ... http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UNDATED-20P-COIN-YES...-ON-QUEENS-HEAD

I agree. Those early bronzes contain so many date and even legend curiosities - different size, spaced and slant of dates, broken or half missing letters ... just keeping tabs on genuine (i.e. deliberate) varieties is difficult enough, but when you add failing dies and punches, well most people give up!

My own experience was of beginning with a coin magazine (the late lamented Coin Monthly) - maybe a periodical subscription would be the best way to start? My other thought is the famous Year Book (a title now owned by the Coin News publishers, I think? with the famous "Blue Pages" - no, nothing to worry about! - and started by Coin Monthly in the 1960s). There are other "Introduction to..." books, but they are usually too wide-ranging, skating in brief detail over a lot of subjects which the average 10 yr old might not be entirely interested in.

Somewhere I have one of those baby Prince Albert (SGO) pieces, only mine says "12 pence make one shilling" - attractive little thing. I'd rather keep it than let it go for £10.

I just had a look at Peck - he says : "In practice the Royal Mint found that the life of the dodecagonal collar was shortened unduly by the development of cracks in its sharp corners. During the early years of the War, when the quantity and quality of steel suitable for die making were on the decline, the corners of these collars were made more rounded, and this resulted in a substantial increase in the effective life of the collars." The shorter life sharp edge collars were therefore introduced for the last part of striking 1948s. With only a low run of 1949s projected, they must have thought a longer life round edge collar would suffice - it clearly didn't, and they must have needed a sharp edge collar (or more?) to complete the run. Interestingly though, Peck doesn't record the 1949 rounded edge, as he doesn't note any edge change after the 1948 sharp edge.

I'm not sure precisely how the brass 3d was minted. Was the collar for the dodecahedral edge separate? If so, if might be that - with only a small mintage required for the Colonies - they decided to re-use a rounded edge collar from an earlier year just to get the most out of it and save cost. Then turned to a sharp edge when the rounded edge was finished. If Bob's count holds up, we can deduce that they got pretty good use out of that old collar

You have to understand one thing very clearly - ALL coin catalogues are inaccurate with respect to mintages, and have been since 1971. There is no reason why the 1926 penny should be any harder to find than any first series penny. If anything, they should be easier, as everyone looked out for them from 1967 to 1971 and saved them, which no-one bothered to do for the "common" dates. (Ditto for 1922, 1932). What keeps these so-called 'scarce dates' valuable is that the coin-buying public still buys into the scarcity myth - no doubt fed by mintage figures which have absolutely no relation to any reality post-1971. In fact, I wish someone would undertake a widespread survey to establish just what is the precise relative scarcity of one date to another.

Barrington Smith (Leicester, I think) are suppliers to many hobbies. I got marked folders with hole inserts from them - one card for a single year, including plastic sleeve, cost me less than £1 a few years back, but you best buy several to make it worth while as they add P&P on top.