Peckris

Ye gods. It jumped £500 in the last few seconds.

That is SO annoying! And at its worst in a half hour BBC series (you know, the provider that doesn't have adverts...) where the presenter says - after two minutes on one topic - "Coming up..." and refers to what the next two minutes will be about. Then "Coming up..." as he announces they are returning to the previous bit that ended two minutes ago. Jeez. How short do they think our attention span is, FFS ?

How very dare you. Best game in the world. You have to make allowances - scott is a Man Utd supporter, and you know what they say :D

On ITV you'd be watching a great duel, and one driver positioning himself for an overtake, then BANG! - no, not a crash bl00dy adverts. By the time they'd finished, the manoeuvre was done. At least with C4 cricket, they just squeezed one ad in at the end of each over.

Any radio, TV or internet content with adverts for me, although ours are probably the most tolerable anywhere in the world For the first time in a few months I ended up on ITV to watch the FA Cup last weekend. Why would anyone watch five minutes of play, then the same amount of adverts all repeated ad infinitum? I watched three games before stopping as it was excruciating. Given that I probably only turn on ITV four or five times in a year, this recent tale of woe reminded me that even this is too often. I wonder if they realise there is more to life than LCD programming? Just kidding, nobody could really expect them to raise the quality above current levels. You're not really a football fan, are you Rob? I can only think you switched on 5 minutes before half time - has no-one told you that even on ITV you get two entire halfs uninterrupted by ads? You must be thinking of Formula1, where ITV indeed interrupted the race for adverts at frequent intervals! (I wonder if Sky do the same, or if you get the whole race?)

Price guides for coins are just that "guides". They don't necessarily reflect reality. Coin appeal consists of four factors, a) Rarity, Grade, c) Eye appeal, d) Popularity of the series concerned. You have to take all that into account when determining what a coin is worth to you, and whether you should buy it. Assuming your target type is popular, always aim high as far as grade is concerned, but strongly take into account the highly important concomitant factor of attractiveness. Just because a coin is GEF, say, doesn't necessarily mean it will actually look as good as a coin which is GVF. You might have to take a hit on grade, if your given specific target is rare, but take my advice and NEVER buy "clear date" or other space fillers. You will invariably regret it and want to upgrade. is whereas b( could be bc. I think I'll be cool, and stick to nunbers from now on....... Very poorly designed emoticon - they could at least have made it instead of

Do you want to let a fox into the chicken run?

Price guides for coins are just that "guides". They don't necessarily reflect reality. Coin appeal consists of four factors, a) Rarity, Grade, c) Eye appeal, d) Popularity of the series concerned. You have to take all that into account when determining what a coin is worth to you, and whether you should buy it. Assuming your target type is popular, always aim high as far as grade is concerned, but strongly take into account the highly important concomitant factor of attractiveness. Just because a coin is GEF, say, doesn't necessarily mean it will actually look as good as a coin which is GVF. You might have to take a hit on grade, if your given specific target is rare, but take my advice and NEVER buy "clear date" or other space fillers. You will invariably regret it and want to upgrade. is whereas b( could be bc.

Yes, the two arrows pointing up means "medal axis", the other is "coin axis". All coins nowadays are minted with medal axis

Sorry to hear that But if it's been in your family that long, it should be ok. Your best bet is to put it in an auction rather than accept (at most) 2/3 of its value from a dealer. Unless you need the money quick, of course.

norwich....nickers of ready when i come home............. beats swalk any day So what does City mean? Club In Trouble - Yikes!

The Rotographic book forum has been driving me mad the last week or so - the icon has indicated New Posts but there aren't any, so I've watched the last post date instead which is a far more irritating thing to have to do than glance at the colour of the icon. But just at random, I decided to click the icon itself - and it went from dark blue to pale blue immediately! Result

Is the Spanish Riding School not in Vienna? Nothing against the Viennese branch, but I would have thought that if there actually was a riding school in Madrid - and I'm sure there must be - it must necessarily be Spanish! Unless of course, the riding school based in Madrid is called the "Austrian Riding School"

Happy Birthday! :)

It all went slow. Now it's loading again .. strange: Oh yes - super fast today! That example looks a bit porous too, though not as much. If the local shops don't know the difference between UNC & EF I suggest you ignore what they say. If a proof, then this should be obvious, but if only EF would be impaired and not worth a premium to a currency piece. There are modern counterfeits of this issue. Courtesy of the Lebanon, 1970s, among others. They are expert fakes too, and extremely difficult to spot unless the gold was tested for purity.

I went for the 1874, F70, for an upgrade to the rather scruffy looking one I've got now. It was at £180 when I bid with 5 seconds to go ~ bid nearly £100 more (£275.75), and still missed out to the winner who bid with 2 seconds to go. Christ knows how high they bid. I was watching both of those. The 1894 money was only worth it if the obverse had matched the reverse for full blazing lustre, otherwise it was way too much IMO. As for the 1874, once I'd spotted the flaw in the planchet behind Vicky's bun and the light wear to the robes across Britannia's lap, I retired immediately. That was disfiguring ultimately, though in all other respects it was a nice penny. Just not £300 nice.

Being a country bumpkin, I have a regular postie who has become a friend. I am quite happy for him to sign for my packages as a) I trust him and it saves me the 3 mile drive the following day to get it from the sorting office. Where did that bloody smiley come from? The emoticons are simply graphical replacements for sequences of text that look vaguely like smiley faces. Unfortunately, if you actually wanted to use a b followed by a closing round bracket - you can't. Most systems that use emoticons have a way to disable an emoticon (eg using a backslash to make the characters literal) but I haven't found one that works here. b ) Yeah, a space sort of works, but any programmer worth their salt would provide a mechanism to override an otherwise default behaviour. None of them are! I speak as an ex-programmer...

The picture I posted is of my own coin Dave, which is of a fairly clear example (though it's not a great photo, I admit). I'm still not convinced about the coin for sale, even comparing with the various photos in Michael Gouby's book. I agree. There is absolutely nothing on the left of the 5, as there is in ALL Michael's examples. There is a faint ghosting to the right of both the top stroke and the main loop. If I had to stake my life savings, I would suggest it was a 5/5 recut. The puzzling element is the "teardrop" below the upright of the 5, which doesn't correspond to anything. (ETA: it could be the ball at the end of the loop, if the underlying 5 was a slightly different style than the recut one?)

Being a country bumpkin, I have a regular postie who has become a friend. I am quite happy for him to sign for my packages as a) I trust him and it saves me the 3 mile drive the following day to get it from the sorting office. Where did that bloody smiley come from? The emoticons are simply graphical replacements for sequences of text that look vaguely like smiley faces. Unfortunately, if you actually wanted to use a b followed by a closing round bracket - you can't. Most systems that use emoticons have a way to disable an emoticon (eg using a backslash to make the characters literal) but I haven't found one that works here. b )

I finally gave up waiting for that link to load, Tom.

Don't worry about the supply of proof sets drying up unless there is a huge upturn in the number of collectors. You can always pick up any year fairly easily. Maybe not the first person you see, but certainly within a few table visits. It is therefore logical to cater for those who collect individual denominations. If I have duplicate year sets I will usually break the one with the worst condition packaging to provide the singletons. No qualms. As I have done in the past, also without qualms.

Now you've had it certified genuine, that's one weight off your mind. The condition is somewhere between Fine and Very Fine, I'd say nearer to Fine myself. As a VERY rough guide, allow 1/25 - 1/30 of the realised prices for Fine, and up to 1/10 maximum for VF. (Judging by Spink values). No comment Dave, except to ask "Doesn't the Aye-Phone have a scroll bar?" I read what was written Peck, but as Peter has also said, my concern was it being porous. As we all know, NGC have made some glaring mistakes on English coins which have been recently highlighted on this very forum. So it's still a concern for me my old bean................Has anyone else heard of porous Gold? It may or may not be genuine, but if you have a slip from NGC saying "genuine", and you want to sell it, then it is

Yes but... here are a couple of cases in point. Both of these were fresh out of a sealed 1970 set. Neither qualify for FDC in my view, and in point of fact, left the mint that way, the first because it's got a couple of minor scratches on the bust and the second because some bozo at the mint has stuck his thumb on it! If these were not proof, you could still describe them as Unc, the first for the reason that 'bag abrasions' are permitted, the second because toning doesn't affect a coin's uncirculated status. But as proof coins, they don't as I have said qualify for FDC, 'uncirculated' goes without saying and really doesn't help us much, GEF implies some wear which they patently haven't got and I really don't want to go down the route of calling them AFDC because that is utter gibberish! So what do I call them? Perhaps I ought to get out more... Toning doesn't usually affect FDC status, but it doesn't apply to 'bozo thumbprint"

The acid is oleic acid, and very mild. It doesn't combine with other acids, which is why oil and vinegar always separate (or maybe the acid is bonded into the oil in such a way that while an oil, it doesn't behave like an acid?)

Now you've had it certified genuine, that's one weight off your mind. The condition is somewhere between Fine and Very Fine, I'd say nearer to Fine myself. As a VERY rough guide, allow 1/25 - 1/30 of the realised prices for Fine, and up to 1/10 maximum for VF. (Judging by Spink values). No comment Dave, except to ask "Doesn't the Aye-Phone have a scroll bar?"