Peckris

Indeed. If you did hand it in then they wouldn't give you £1 for it. Which leaves most people with the choice of passing it on or making a loss. Same as in ye olden days in fact, except now nobody will chop a bit off you for posession of a fake. I collected enough counterfeit (are they good enough to call that?) £1 coins to have an (preferably extremely poor!) example from most dates since 1997. My 'worst' examples are made from lead which has then been painted gold. Pass them off once and after that the paint wears off so a real shoddy job! But numismatically interesting. Lead? More valuable than brass, surely?

To be honest, ALL proofs should be cameo (frosted/mirror), but we had a lousy strike of proofs in the 20th Century. 1937 are a BIT frosted, but everything after that, from 1950 to 1979, were just shoddy strikings, which really don't look any better than the modern BU specimen sets. VIPs were usually far superior proof strikes (though not invariably).

If you mean contemporary = "now", then yes. In those days people tended to clip not forge. Such forgeries that exist from that era are very crude.

oops, asked a question that's already been answered

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Many of us tend to steer well clear of modern commemoratives as they are a money-making sideline for the Royal Mint, and the secondary market has a glut of such commemoratives. However, it really does depend on the metal - is it gold? In which case it has a minimum intrinsic value, and probably higher than that if put into auction. However, if it was inherited, and gold, then nice to own. I've no idea of value - you'd need a catalogue of Channel Island coins. There may be a Rotographic publication? Chris Perkins, who runs this website, would know - he publishes them.

AFAIK banks are still obliged to accept large-style decimal coins for their equivalent face value. If not, then the Mint certainly should (I believe they still accept predecimal?)

Number 59 please. (Special Fried Rice).

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.

This certainly isn't resin; my guess being stainless steel but with toning in all the right places, so very easy to be taken in. The 'r' being lower case is also very easy to confuse with a metal flaw whereas an upper case 'R' would be much more obvious. I still have it somewhere, but I can't lay my hands on it at present. I had two coins with the same initials on. The Liz I 3d was something that looked a fair imitation of silver but wasn't (steel?). The Roman bronze was resin, which perhaps gets used more often for base metal? Or perhaps only by this one company.

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.

Hm. That particular coin has been very skilfully dipped by the look of it. It's got a gorgeous golden tone in the "after" pictures. I'm not sure I'd quarrel too hard with his EF assessment either, at least for the obverse, perhaps a bit less for the reverse. I'd say that's one example that doesn't show him in too harsh a light. I'd be interested to see what it fetches in a day's time.

It's a commercial product - you can buy it in Tesco under the name of Silver Dip. I believe one of its main ingredients is uric acid? Or am I thinking of something else?

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.

Yes, welcome Andy Just a quick word of warning if you're collecting modern proof sets (i.e. decimal era) : please IGNORE the values you see for these in the Spink Standard Catalogue. They are based on the 'original selling price', i.e. as charged by the Royal Mint. But if you ever decided to sell your sets, you would get barely a fraction of this. The 'secondary' (i.e. collectors') market for modern commemoratives is awash with them. At auction, dealers look to pick them up for around one third book price, perhaps a little bit more. Don't buy your sets from dealers. Get them from auction. You should aim to pay NO MORE than around half book price for them. There are occasional exceptions to this : e.g. 1971 & 1972 sets, the first two years struck. 1972 especially, as there were no currency coins minted that year. A big clue to the truth of what I'm saying, is that prices in Spink - though artificially high and based on RM selling price - have barely moved in the last 10 years. A stagnant pond is less stagnant...

Museums sell replica coins - sometimes made out of resin or similar. In design, very convincing, sometimes they have the initials of the manufacturers impressed into them, but small, so not that easy to spot. The Elizabeth 3d I was sold was in every way convincing, except it was twice as thick as it should be.

Boy, does this thread make me glad I've become a type collector!

You can get face value back - probably from the banks, if not then certainly from the Royal Mint. That's if scrap value is less than face, which it probably isn't.

Dipping = using Silver Dip, a proprietary chemical for removing tarnish and tone from silver. Some toning (unlike that UNC florin) is ugly and can and should be removed. The problem is, you should only use silver dip in the briefest of bursts, e.g. 10 seconds immersion, then rinse off immediately. If you do that once or twice on a coin that is toned ugly, it's possible to improve it, even if you can't fully cure it. Trouble is, people like that clown on eBay bung the coin in the dip, then wander off, make a cup of tea, go out and do the shopping, watch Star Trek, then say to themselves "Wonder how that coin's doing?". By that time, the damage is done.

We have ebay to thank for that. Now they hide the identities of bidders there's no way to check it the same bidders come up again and again. Increases ebay profits or cause to allow shill bidding so no vested interest there then. Gary I've ALWAYS found that bidding is anonymous in eBay. Except for my bids, it just says "Bidder 1" "Bidder 2" etc, and always has. I've never seen any other system there.

Damn! I'm not going to rush to find them, then

Well let me tell the variables involved in MY solution: • 15 different layouts minimum, from main data entry, to printed labels, to values calculator, to history of coin prices, to locations, etc etc • sets of related tables • a table for "coins in sets" • a table to analyse and break down auction lots • a values calculator that has to determine the correct % increase for a coin that falls 'between grades' • Spink values input table • historic (Seaby) values input tables • a pictures database • a 'retired coins' table, linked to the main database so I can interrogate it at will • purchase and sale details So you see, 'one size fits all' wouldn't fit me! I was being a bit tongue in cheek there.. I'm an eclectic collector, and so any given 'system' would probably fall down somewhere with me. Got you. Understood.

No-one seems to have made the obvious comment : his blatant lies about rarity! NONE of the post 1874 series of halfcrowns is rare, not compared to the majority of the earlier series. Not even the 1887 which is merely scarce. Ish. There's nothing special about the 1879. Yes, it's clearly been cleaned. But before that, £365 for an 1879 in no more than EF ?? The world's going mad. I have an 1875 and an 1886, both in better shape than that coin. There's one born every minute it seems.

Well let me tell the variables involved in MY solution: • 15 different layouts minimum, from main data entry, to printed labels, to values calculator, to history of coin prices, to locations, etc etc • sets of related tables • a table for "coins in sets" • a table to analyse and break down auction lots • a values calculator that has to determine the correct % increase for a coin that falls 'between grades' • Spink values input table • historic (Seaby) values input tables • a pictures database • a 'retired coins' table, linked to the main database so I can interrogate it at will • purchase and sale details So you see, 'one size fits all' wouldn't fit me!

I really don't know. I use a custom-built app I designed in FileMaker Pro. Other members use Excel or Access or similar. The question with off-the-peg solutions to something as esoteric as collecting, is "how flexible is it? Will I be able to expand it as & when my needs change?" Something that is perfect for one collector may be near to useless for another.