Peckris

Thanks Steve, Well thats the bulk collection of pennies I had well and truly sorted now! No other varieties to be had, just one question, why the hell do I keep looking? :P Regards Why is the sun hot? Water wet? The Pope a Catholic?

And equally can't spell - note "luster" for "lustre" Blimey, even at the quoted 'aUNC' his asking price is a tad on the high side!

Yes, those are both recessed ear varieties. The points to look out for (apart from the preternaturally recessed ear) are : 1. the broken tooth which is the clincher 2. the fact that Britannia is usually fully struck up on the reverse, particularly the face and chest areas They are scarce rather than rare, the 1915 more so. A lot more scarce in high grades, but easier to spot in lower grades.

It's utterly astonishing how cheap Roman silver can be. For example you can pick up EF silver of the commoner types for less than £100, which for 2,000-year-old coins is pretty amazing. As a general rule of thumb, the earlier emperors, and the last few, are usually worth more than those of 2nd-3rd Centuries. If it's not a rare type (and PROVIDENTIA reverses usually aren't) then it would fetch anywhere between £30-£75 as a guesstimate. Better to hang onto as a historical piece. I couldn't agree more Peck, I know it's all supply and demand but what a piece of history at an affordable price! And the condition of them can easily rival coins that were 'minted' 1500 years more recently! And actually better than some of the - e.g. 20p's - recent issues of our own Mint

Oh don't worry - apart from the pictures I post, the ones posted by everyone else are just library pictures trawled off the internet

Erm. Harrumph. Um. Was there.. Did you.. Er.. Is it for sale? If so, I might be in the market for it!

I would really really hate to lose the notion of the 'penny' - it has a long and honourable history going back to Saxon, if not Roman, times. It, not the pound, is what the British coinage has always been built around. There's such a romantic association to it. But, isn't it time we got rid of our base metal coins altogether? Here are some interesting facts: - when 1961 dawned, the lowest value coin was still - briefly - the farthing - by 1971, a mere 10 years later, we'd lost both it and the halfpenny, and the lowest value coin was the 1/2p, worth nearly 5 times the old farthing - by 1984, not even 25 years on, the lowest value was the new penny, worth nearly 10 times what a farthing was. Yet here we are, almost 30 years after the 1/2p went, and the lowest value coin is STILL the penny. I very much doubt, given inflation, that our humble 1p could even match the 1961 farthing's purchasing power. I say, let's get rid of those useless 'coppers' and make the 5p the lowest value coin - it is, after all, approximately the size of the old 1/2p. And to avoid rip-off merchants, legislation would enforce the rounding UP of any item that's closer to the higher multiple of 5 (e.g. 13p 14p, 18p 19p), but the rounding DOWN of any item closer to the lower multiple (11p 12p, 16p 17p etc). As I say, I'd hate to lose the penny, but I'd not mourn the loss of those almost valueless coppers. The penny would survive in the Maundy, and in years to come, there could be other ways to revive the name too.

Can't be done - decent stuff sells, but the crap gets continually recycled via "free listing" weekends Rob, Peter - you both miss my point, I'm not complaining about the relisting BUT recycled listings make any attempt at statistics impossible. Court's suevey is valid because his samples were on the way to the melting pot - ie no coin was counted twice Well, maybe there is an outside chance to do a survey by trying to replicate the experiment. You can certainly collect as many piles of low grade pennies as possible and ensure they get melted and hence not double counted. That would be good for everyone as the supply of crap far outweighs the number of collectors and their demand. What you cannot overcome is the 40 years of cherry-picking to remove the rarities from the accumulated piles. You are comparing two different populations - the first was for circulating coinage, the second non-circulating collected accumulations by people with a probable interest in coins. That will inevitably skew the results. Exactly Rob. Though there's an interesting future scenario - if copper prices continue to rise, and dross continues to be sold for scrap, can't you envisage a situation where the known rarities become progressively commoner in relation to their peers?

It's utterly astonishing how cheap Roman silver can be. For example you can pick up EF silver of the commoner types for less than £100, which for 2,000-year-old coins is pretty amazing. As a general rule of thumb, the earlier emperors, and the last few, are usually worth more than those of 2nd-3rd Centuries. If it's not a rare type (and PROVIDENTIA reverses usually aren't) then it would fetch anywhere between £30-£75 as a guesstimate. Better to hang onto as a historical piece.

I don't recognise either, though my knowledge of Roman is moderate only. The first one has an obverse typical of an earlyish emperor, but that reverse is like nothing I've ever seen. The second one could possibly be Greek, but equally it could be a local imitation of an established type.

When was Court's survey done? Obviously pre-decimal, but how long before? I suspect that the frequency of known rarities have changed dramatically since 1971, and it would seem that all those 4 varieties must have been known about pre-1971, or a survey of them could not have been taken. I don't know how, but it's time for a new survey - perhaps a regular sample of eBay once a month for a year.

I have an 1858 with identical effect, at least on the date :

I read somewhere (more than once) that these were created purely for photographic purposes, so there would never have been more than a handful.

Do you know what, Ski, that's really interesting, and I think it's been mentioned before, but I never picked up the latter parts of this thread by using the 'search for new content' feature that I do! So don't be underwhelmed, I think threads can genuinely slip below the radar sometimes, according to how people browse the forum, and when? If a forum or thread's icon is dark not light in colour, that means there are new posts since your last visit. It's what I go on, and apart from a few glitches, it hasn't let me down.

Well at least its described correctly, but why list it is the obvious question Because it's unique!!!

The reverse certainly is, at the very least. E7 obverses are tricky - you can get an otherwise gVF with little hair detail, or you can get a gF with lots of hair but the rest less so. I'd rate yours F/NVF personally, so gF would be a good average.

"The coin in the picture is the actual coin you will receive". OMG, please, no!!

So no coin can have an "edge knock" then?

If it really had been a "Geroge" crown, it would be very valuable! I wouldn't quite rate it at VF, between F and VF I'd say (that particular issue wears very well) but you didn't overpay considering recent prices.

No, I don't buy that either. We have to remember that when coins are produced, the intention is to fulfill a treasury quota and dies are used as they become available, usually oldest first. The fact that this can produce rare die combinations is, or at least was irrelevant to the mint. Presumably once the basic effigy for the new head was available, no dies were cut using the old one and therefore the pennies minted early in the 1926 run would have used dies probably dating back to 1921 or 1922 and kept in stock. There were probably quite a few 1922 dies unused, when you look at the size of the 1921 mintage and how suddenly it was reduced for 1922 when the economic sh*t hit the fan.

Hi. I have plenty of higher grades that I would like to check. Your best bet is Michael Gouby's book 'The British Bronze Penny' - very comprehensive.

I've seen the Modified Effigy 1926 penny described as a mule, but is it, really? My understanding is that a mule is a combination of obverse and reverse dies that are not normally seen together, but either through unintended action at the Mint or from deliberate using up of old dies, are put together. Given that the Modified Effigy was planned before 1925 when it first made its appearance on halfpennies, and was an attempt to eliminate ghosting altogether on first issue reverses, then surely its use on all the 1926 coins was quite intentional? Ok, the gap to the new reverse designs of 1927/1928 (proofs/currency) is very small, but that doesn't make the 1926ME coins 'unintended' in any way. After all, apart from the penny, all other 1926ME coins are pretty common, or hardly scarcer - if at all - than the old head. Its appearance with the first issue reverses was planned, and therefore cannot be described as a mule. What do others think?

Yes, there are red case specimen sets that are often sold as proofs, but aren't. Auction houses should really know better.

I dunno, Scott, it looks like the entire coin has been overlaid with itself, a kind of semi-transparent image over the same image, maybe a reflection or something? ALL the numerals look displaced by the same amount? I hope I'm wrong, and you've got yourself a goodun! You're absolutely right. If you zoom your screen, you can see there is a clear case of camera shake, where it moved halfway through the exposure. Most of the legend is doubled in an upwards direction. If it was an underlying 8, its upper loop would be higher than on that picture - I think what we're seeing is the loop of the 6 doubled.

So that's what Americans mean when they say "Go f*** yourself"