Peckris

I haven't used a provincial auction house since the last débacle : hammer price was (I thought) a fair £30 for what I was selling. The cheque I received? £17. That's just grand larceny. I'd say eBay is your best bet providing the items are saleable. Fees are a fraction of auction houses (no staff or premises) and providing you begin your auction at a sensible time - e.g. 10PM Friday night or 10AM Saturday morning, and not mid-morning weekday - you should do ok.

Having said that, I recently bought a fantasy penny from eBay - the obverse is the Kuchler design of Geo III as seen on the Bank of England dollar, and the reverse is a replica of a pattern halfpenny of 1798. It's a heavy proof in dark slate-grey bronze and is utterly gorgeous (cost me all of £9.99 :-) If that had been stamped replica or similar, it would have been 100% undesirable. I'm sure someone of ill repute could try and flog those as rare patterns, but I don't think the existence of 1) crooks 2) gullible collectors should spoil a beautiful coin.

Actually you can just make out the faint trace of the dot. It's partly a combination of uneven wear (the higher dot is more protected by the rim) and a partly worn or filled die. That's my opinion anyway. Sadly the coin doesn't have any extra value. Perhaps its the one between GRA and BRITT I can see the faint dot too.... That's the one we're talking about az

How do you know when two coin collectors are about to decide something by the spin of a coin? "Ok, your call - obverse or reverse?" "Don't you DARE toss that, it's BU!"

I always get my gum from ebay. But then, I'm a Northerner.

Actually you can just make out the faint trace of the dot. It's partly a combination of uneven wear (the higher dot is more protected by the rim) and a partly worn or filled die. That's my opinion anyway. Sadly the coin doesn't have any extra value.

Great. At least we can say we know what it is now ! Are they quite common ? Not common as in coin-common, but not rare either, and with only a small collector base anyway. To be honest, yours is too worn to be of any interest more than scrap value ... but I've never seen a worn example before! So it's interesting purely from that perspective.

Now you're just giving me a headache! Sorry! I just meant it looks like a genuine coin that some individual has unofficially stamped REPLICA just for the hell of it.

Yes I'd be interested too, in the silver edition (is the bronze one worth getting too? I already have Peck, Freeman, and the first Gouby...) My main difficulty lies in knowing how to work PayPal from an email address. I only know how to click the PP button on a website, login, find the invoice already waiting for me...

The difficulty comes with early Victorian 3ds, where early strikes of the currency type are virtually indistinguishable from the Maundy. In my opinion, the supposed wide disparity in prices is absolute nonsense (Maundy being much lower) especially when you consider that 1) Maundy are far rarer and 2) the difference between them - finish - is negligible.

I'm qualified to answer this, as I'm the person that got Spink to upgrade their catalogue with the two types of pre-1926 obverses for halfcrowns, florins and shillings. And I lobbied for it, purely so they could record the rare 1921 shilling. Alas! They cocked it up. The 'nose to S/SV' was only one of a series of identifiers I'd sent them, but that's the one they picked out. And got wrong. The 'nose to...' business should be the other way about, which is why everyone is now so thoroughly confused, sigh. Your two examples are both the Type 2 'recut' portrait, with lower profile portrait. One of the giveaways is the space between the legend and the rim, which is greater on those types. If you look at a pre-1920 shlling, you will notice the legend is closer to the rim, which is also a bit higher. But the other main telltale is the height of the portrait, which is considerably higher, i.e. more 'modelled' than the flatter, later portrait. This is why 1921-1926 coins wear so rapidly, as the portait is so much flatter, with less well-defined hair. (Also, compare a 1911 penny obverse with a 1922 - the comparison is similar). There are also differences like the serifs on the letter E, and the pointing of the nose. The earlier obverse for 1921 shillings is considerably rarer - indeed, quite rare - than the later type. You wouldn't think so from looking at the values listed in Spink however. A BU example of the rare shilling would easily fetch between £200 and £300. Ten years ago, I met a dealer friend who had acquired three of them from some old guy who'd had them all his life. He paid £60 apiece and confidently expected to get near £200 each for them.

I know absolutely zilch about Aussie coinage.. But the strong impression I'm getting is that that is a genuine coin, which someone has stamped 'REPLICA' onto. In other words, a fake replica!

VF tops, and that's not allowing for the heavy wear in the centre of both sides. I note in the description the use of the word "we" - is that to give spurious authenticity, do you think? I've never heard of this "coin"! It's not the Hearn pattern, and it's not the proof original (which had the same reverse as the George VI crown). This looks like a fantasy piece, judging by the wreath reverse. Anyone else heard of it?

Hm. To identify a coin accurately you need to : • consult the Spink Standard Catalogue available at any decent library • or get a copy of the Collectors Coins GB guide as yours are post-1797 coins • or post pictures or scans of them to this website and we can advise. On the face of it, finds in a field are unlikely to be in a worthwhile condition, but you can lightly brush dirt off bronze using a non-scratching brush (bristle). Don't use any metal cleaners, polishes or abrasives - those will destroy any value the coins may have. In the case of 1875 pennies the main thing to look for is a letter H beneath the date numerals, but even then, it wants to be in a reasonable condition (properly readable) to have any collectors' value. The CCGB book only costs around £6 or £7 and lists all UK coins from 1797 onwards - it would be a good guide to identifying coins and to seeing what are the rare dates. You can order via this website or buy at Smiths/Waterstones/etc P.S. I like your username - are you a Red? In which case I will fall on your shoulder sobbing at the season we just had

Definitely genuine, the reverse being better than the obverse. Also, it has that appearance of wear to one of the numbers in the date, that is so typical of those coins, even on high grade examples. I agree. Everything about it screams "kosher", and I've seen plenty around that grade in my time. I'd say the "missing" dots are a combination of mount damage (between ANNA & DEI) and wear, but in fact if you look VERY closely there appears to be the faint trace of a dot after GRATIA, and a heavy wear 'smear' after DEI. At least, in that photo.

I use Corel's Photopaint but that's getting a bit long in the tooth. The main one I use is ACDSee Photomanager. The attached is the full size scan of the coin I started asking about with the complicated background removed (the plainer the better) and compressed by 50%. Done very quickly and with a minimum of experimenting. Cheers Kris Blimey! Photoshop must save JPEGs as much larger files than your average program. The problem is, my scanner is linked directly to Photoshop so I don't have much choice. I suppose I could change to another program, but 1/ I'm not sure how to do that and 2/ I don't think I have any other graphics program (when you've got Photoshop you don't tend to look around for alternatives ) Thank you for your feedback anyway.

It was about two years ago, maybe a bit more, that they brought in the "Bidder 1" business on the UK site. Before that, you always knew who you were up against, and who sniped you at the last minute, which was rather fun in a small hobby like ours - almost felt a bit community-like. Oh I see! I've not bought from eBay further back than that. So I'm used to the whole Bidder1 thing, and think no more of it. Even the "Bidder 1" etc, system has been replaced now, Instead they show a list of the user names, with most of the characters starred out. As in this example Although they only ever use three stars, so you can't even tell how many characters are in any given user's name. Oh yes, I see - thank you for that 1949. I was just thinking "what a fair price for an Unc 1906 penny" when I saw the caveat about surface marks and edge knocks. Sigh. Oh well. Honest seller anyway - I would have assumed it was a good coin. The seller concerned has that caveat against all his/her sales. I've bought quite a lot from bitsandbobs1204 and trust him to cut a good deal. I've never been disappointed in what I've got from him. So there you go, personal recommendation Wow, then I'm certainly not going to tell him that that caveat may actually mean people bid less on his coins. Perhaps he's being a little TOO honest!

I was referring to the frosted nature of proofs, which is lamentably lacking from most proofs (VIP excluded) after 1937 and before 1980. Pathetic is not too strong a word - there's virtually no frosting at all.

If you're an INVESTOR - then go out and buy the highest grade pre-1920 George V silver you can afford. Preferably Uncirculated. Those will bring the best returns IN THE LONG RUN. If you're not an investor (and you don't sound like a collector), then you're probably in the wrong forum.

I'm not sure what you're saying Farmer. This coin IS stamped "copy" - look, high on the reverse. It's absolutely plain and clear, you can't miss it.

Preview Post??? You'll have me proofreading next !! No, as 1949 mentioned, the upgrade to the forum at least means we can actually Edit for a good few minutes after posting. Which is so much better than old "no edit" system we experienced.

Except that then I have to : 1) open a new tab in my browser 2) find my eBay bookmark 3) login to eBay 4) copy and paste the item number into Search When people make a link, all I have to do is click it, and I'm there.

How on earth do you keep a picture that large below 150k? If I save a JPEG that size in Photoshop it comes out 200k MINIMUM, and usually more. When saving as a jpg most programs give you the option of adding some compression (most of them automatically compress by 10% unless you tell them not to). Not too sure about Photoshop 'cos I don't use it normally. A compression to 70% doesn't lose detail that will be missed on a computer screen. Cheers Kris Photoshop gives a sliding scale from 12 (Maximum) down to 1 (Very poor). I find that the lowest acceptable compression is around 6 or 7, though 5 (which is to less than 50% of original) is just about acceptable. But a picture that size, even at 5, would be way over the 150k limit. So I'm wondering what you use?

Chris, I have one for sale on eBay right now. It is item # 270575489297. Whatever it brings... will give you an idea of value. Item number on its own not much good - can you make it a link?

Yes - I've noticed on Wikipedia that each of my edits has a different IP address (final two numbers), so mine must be dynamic.