Peckris

Would I be correct in thinking this is only the second one to come to market, the other being the CGS 85. I like the idea that it's still in it's set and would perhaps increase it's desirability if not it's value. I shall be looking on with interest. Yes - that's why I've kept my proof 2+A farthing in the set it came in. I would have preferred to have bought the set containing my 1+A proof halfcrown, but it was only offered as a singleton. Was it identified as a 1+A when you bought it. Freeman rates the 2+A farthing as R9 and 2+B as R6 so out of 40,000 sets that's 30,000 2+B and 10,000 2+A. In my opinion he should perhaps put the 2+A up a notch or two to R11 at least which would make them about 10:1, even then they don't come up very often. Could the Half Crown be as common as the 2+A Farthing and has any of the other denominations ever come to light. I thought I had the Obv 1 Scottish Shilling but I now think it's more likely to be a very early strike akin to the proof-like Crowns you occasionally see. Colin cooke farthing catalogue cites the 2+A farthing as extremely rare and I think they have only sold two in the last ten years or so - the second one around £300 if I recollect correctly. I have rescued several off of ebay over the last few years although not seen one recently. They have usually only made £30-40 once identified so the one CC sold must have been very special. Are you talking about the proof? That is supposed to be very much rarer than the currency, which makes Freeman's rarity rating rather strange.

1901 shillings aren't easy to find in high grade, nor are 1898. It's odd isn't it, as the price-guides would have you believe otherwise! Having a quick scout around, revealed nothing in UNC across the web either! I just checked my collection, thinking I had one : turns out it's a 1900. Checking in Spink, it seems that none of the 1901 silver is rated lower/commoner than earlier dates. Well, I'd argue against the rich dark purplish 'Mint toning' as being unattractive - but for years the 1901 values for bronze were way behind the earlier dates (akin to 1936). I think the general public put the bronze issues aside as keepsakes, considering Victoria had been the longest reigning monarch. Certainly, in my days dealing in the 1990s, 1901 pennies in high grade were incredibly common

Would certainly up their SEO if they haven't copied and pasted it from an Encyclopedia, that is! I might list a 1966 penny with a description like that, just for the email responses from bemused collectors worldwide! "This 1967 penny is the finest we've ever seen - and we've seen many! Almost full iridescent lustre, this coin is virtually in the state it left the Mint in 1969. (Yes, note the historical drama - despite carrying the date 1967, this penny was actually minted in 1969 due to the quirky law passed by Great Britain's Chancellor, Jim Callaghan. This minting of a coin bearing the incorrect date was unprecedented since.. the year before). The generous size of these old pennies puts today's hastily struck minor coins into perspective. Remember - a 1967 penny is the last of its kind, redolent of that lost era between February and August 1971 when - already doomed - it and its peers could be seen gasping out the last weeks of their existence. This particular specimen is 100% guaranteed genuine, having been taken from a receipted Mint Sealed Bag which lay forgotten in the cellar of a 1960s coin dealer who went out of business in 1972. All the other specimens in the bag were damaged by environmental factors, but this miracle specimen emerged virtually unscathed and we offer it - slabbed and annotated - as an artefact of a lost age of coin collecting."

I hate external links like the plague (what good is a forum if you can't upload pictures directly into a post?) At the risk of repeating myself for the umpteenth time (and for the umpteenth time, Chris, WHY DON'T YOU ALLOW ME TO SET UP A 'STICKY' ON THIS???) - to get your picture within the 150k limit : 1. reduce its size to around 600x600 pixels; despite some of the 'dinner plates' that abound here, that's perfectly adequate to see a coin's finer details 2. reduce its resolution to 72 ppi (that's the resolution of a computer monitor; anything more is just wasted) 3. save it as a JPEG and compress it when you save, e.g. to Photoshop's 7/12 setting (or 'Medium') It should fit into 150k, though you might need to post the obverse and reverse in consecutive posts.

Thanks The main problems (without a special lighting rig) are getting close enough to the coin without the camera casting a shadow on it. If you can do 'macro zoom' with your camera, that would help. If not, set your tripod up so there's about one foot between the lens and the coin, make sure the plane is exactly right angles, and use the maximum res as you may need to crop out a lot of surrounding material!

The usual crappy blow-up in Photoshop (even that king of software apps can't increase the size 3-fold without making it look horrible), but apart from what looks like a couple of tiny carbon spots, here's mine:

Would I be correct in thinking this is only the second one to come to market, the other being the CGS 85. I like the idea that it's still in it's set and would perhaps increase it's desirability if not it's value. I shall be looking on with interest. Yes - that's why I've kept my proof 2+A farthing in the set it came in.

Yes. I have a 1920 and 1921 penny exactly like this, included in an auction lot from the 1990s. They are in a Whitman folder, and the previous owner has annotated the streakiness as being caused by the use of WW1 shell casings in the mix. He doesn't say where he got his information from, but it would explain why it only occurs on those two dates, and is quite unlike the kind of streakiness so often seen on high grade coins, where it seems to be a factor of the lustre. This is definitely a feature of the metal alloy used, and one can certainly imagine the top brass (pun intended) finding a sense of relief that "What do we do with all those...?" was solved so readily!

In the bronze series, I would say that ought to include a beaded and toothed 1860 possibly 'crosslet 4' and other 1864 but not essential to have both IMO 1865/3 1875H one wide and one narrow date from the 1870s 1902 Low Tide possibly 1903 'open 3' if that floats your boat the GeoV H and KNs as you have said 1926 ME Those are all fairly major varieties.

The 1934 in particular, as it's 3 times rarer than its nearest competitor.

Yes I agree with Rob's reply. I "converted" from date collecting to type collecting some years ago, but the process is never an absolute one. For example, I love my date collection of bronze pennies, but am resigned to not upgrading pre-1887, as it would now cost too much. And I have been disposing of some dates in my halfcrown run from 1911 to 1967. I also have a complete set of brass 3d. But my Edward VII halfcrowns are a very mixed bag : one UNC (1910), and three rares (1903/04/05). As Rob says, how wide or how precisely you define 'type' will vary from person to person, and there is no hard and fast rule. Tastes change over the years. Enjoy what you collect, and if that includes the challenge of the pursuit, enjoy that too!

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year? I did start collecting from change about a couple of years before decimalisation. I don't think the mix available was much different to now, ok you could find the very occassional pre-George VI but it was rare. Most of that kind of thing came from grandparents etc. I started in 1968 - I found a few (worn) 50% silver coins, but I also found a 1949 brass 3d, a 1953 penny, a 1936 in EF, a 1926ME, a few 1946 mint flaw, a 1909 halfpenny in GVF+, and 1935 EF with lustre, a 1938 UNC with strong lustre, a 1952 GEF lustre.. I thought I did quite well, but I had to sift through one hell of a lot of bank bags!

What's fine? A Fine coin

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year?

Because the price of silver was so volatile. The value of a Bank Of England "dollar" could - and was - adjusted in face value according to the rise and fall in silver prices. For the same reason, countermarked "pieces of 8" (Spanish) could have a face value set that was usually less than five shillings. If they had issued crowns, the value would have been fixed at 5/- and if the price of silver rose, they would have been melted down for their metal content.

If it's a good fake (Chinese) it will be very difficult to tell from the real thing. Otherwise, there are good pictures of the genuine article - the type, I mean, not necessarily that date (lots in the Crowns topic in the Varieties sub-forum here, for example). Any reputable dealer will be able to see if it's a fake, and a reputable auction house will take back any item that can be shown to be a fake, but you need a way to prove it's the same coin you won. Do you have a picture from the catalogue?

That sounds like my approach - you use the "darker coloured folders" method, i.e. the ones that show new content? No, I just look at the dates as I did with this one. I've never stopped to work out what all the various symbols and colours mean. Same ere, wot colors A forum with no new posts has a pale blue folder, which goes dark blue when there's new posts. Within a forum, topics which have new posts are dark gold in colour. I just click on the dark folders/topics.

Are these edge variations really significant enough to warrant requiring an example of each to consider your collection complete? I honestly don't think so. This is a much discussed point. Eventually you will arrive at an example of every die and combination produced. I suspect boredom will set in long before you achieve your aim. Well said. Some of the tiniest variations collected should be used as a test for Aspergers Syndrome

That sounds like my approach - you use the "darker coloured folders" method, i.e. the ones that show new content?

It's really strange how different threads show on the forum. I always click 'view new content,' and generally read everything before clicking 'view new content' again (to check for posts added whilst I was reading), before finally marking all as read! You'd think that would have me seeing everything, however, even with this approach I still stumble upon significant threads - which have had endless responses, which I should have picked up on with my method - that have just passed me by! Very weird! With your zoomed photography, I couldn't say underlying E. It looks more like a partially clogged B to me. Has the B/E every been clearly recorded? Interesting approach. I dive into each forum that has the "New posts" dark folder. Then within that, I dive into each topic that has the gold "New posts" folder. That way I should be able to see everything. And if I leave a topic and someone has been adding a new post, it shows gold again, so I can look again.

John, Here. Regards, Clive. Interesting grading. Very conservative. This lot rated as "fine to very fine". What do you think? Especially the 1887 double florin. http://www.dnw.co.uk/coins/auctions/rostrumauctions/auctioncatalogue/lotdetail.lasso?auction=British+Coins+12+Jun+13&id=282

That's a VERY good price! I'll add that seller to my list... Ah, didn't realise it was GB Classic Coins - I've bought from them before, including an UNC 1921 florin for about £50, which I thought was a good price for an underrated coin.

What planet have you been living on scott? It's been steel since the early 1990s!

Difficult to say if it's had a slight dipping or not. It's certainly not been polished or buffed, and as Gary says, it's a nice coin and also a scarce one. If the money's right, I would definitely go for it. Do bear in mind, if you're a type collector not date, the 1927 is the same issue and would be a lot cheaper in BU.

Surely you at least wore a pair of cotton gloves? Nope!!!!! But I must say I was a lot more careful to only handle by the edges than they were!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edit: Ooops, now I've said it!! I suppose the thrill of handling such gorgeous coins made you impervious to the cold, then