Peckris

It depresses me immensely that you have come back to this forum without apparently reading any of the above reply I gave you, over which I spent quite some time and care. I've nothing more to say. Goodbye.

I'm assuming that these coins are all "scrap"? I.e. not in any condition that would raise their status to "collectible"? (You could scan the 1904 shilling anyway, and upload it for us to see but I suspect it is probably F or less). The 1904 is scarce-ish in lower grades, but all the other coins are pretty common, assuming you don't have rare varieties of 1921 shilling. Even so, the silver value of those coins is considerably in excess of £5 so it WAS a good investment! Chris Perkins may pop in to advise what the current buying in price is for 50% silver (which most of those are)?

Mat, your argument is unsound. You cannot apply Trading Standards law to antique price guides. House prices (which by the way, themselves do not form any kind of 'standard' compared to a tin of beans, a gallon of petrol, or a unit of electricity) cannot be compared to coin values. There is an 'intrinsic' value to a house, which as any surveyor and insurance company will tell you equates to the "cost of rebuilding". Yes, as you point out, advertising and the process of buying and selling may well fall under regulations, but price guides do not, and never will, for the simple reason that they are not "offers to sell", they are simply guide prices. I'm not sure why you have a bee in your bonnet about Spink? That guide is NOT a Spink creation, but was authored and devised by BA Seaby who ceased coin trading long before they sold the title to Spink. The format and content of the "Standard Catalogue" is much as it was under Seaby, though with more additions, e.g. modern varieties. It is used by insurance firms, by dealers, by collectors, or as a general public reference. Yet at bottom, its prices cannot ever be guaranteed. Coins are intrinsically worth only their metal content. Above that, they are worth only what collectors are prepared to pay, and if that is over or under "book price" then so be it. Different sales, different parts of the country, different dealers, different days, different buyers, different competition, even different times of the year or traffic conditions en route to auctions or even the weather, will all conspire to form a huge variety of prices for any given coin. What hope for any price guide compiler to cope with that? What MIGHT be useful is if guides like Spinks gave a RANGE of values for a given coin condition, but that would be unwieldy and would result in a book twice its present size. And since Spink are the oldest existing coin dealers and one of the biggest and founder members of the BNTA (the industry body of which you speak), isn't it better that they, rather than some fly-by-night, produced the Standard Catalogue?

Agreed - that 45 Euro florin is AT LEAST a grade and half lower than the eBay item. Take any checkpoint you like, you will see more wear (with the possible exception of the legend).

Oops - can you double check? If it's the same size as a QEII halfpenny, it may well be a farthing! (That sounds confusing I know, but the 1797 penny is MUCH larger than a QEII penny, so the same should apply to the halfpenny ... I'm not certain, it's just a thought)

My own instinct would be - if it's a proof, don't touch it. ANY intervention on those would show up, even trying to remove a fingerprint. Others may differ, so I'd wait and see what they say?

Depends on the size - it could also be an I.O.M. halfpenny.

Doesn't this cost more in petrol if done on a regular basis than buying the book outright? And it's always to hand. Not if it only takes you 3 visits, and you happen to be in town for those visits anyway As has been said, these price "guides" are only that, guides. Having said that, most insurance companies use Spink to agree valuations where necessary. In the days when it was Seaby's, that book was rightly regarded as 'the bible' - Seaby had no axe to grind, but on the other hand (as it proved) they could become out of touch with the market. CCGB is under for an Unc 1797 2d IMO - £300 would be my estimate for a true EF, but then I think CCGB has always been under on these twopences. To be fair, their £300 is for an Unc coin, where Spinks £1400 is for a BU specimen. That's not unrealistic - the number of Unc specimens is fairly low, but a true BU is EXTREMELY rare - quite probably significantly rarer than the average proof. Agreed - though my heart does bleed for people who have bought from eBay many times but are new to coins; they are badly let down, both by the e-charlatans and the e-ignoramuses. Some of those gradings ought to be prosecuted, they are so far out.

Or you could scan it - that might actually be easier, you don't have to worry about focus or plane.

I agree - it looks EF to me too. And the toning is gorgeous. I think that's a fair price tbh.

Oh that's so true! And it still is. If you're in the hobby for the long haul, and collect for fun, and always buy the best you can afford and choose for what looks good, then in the end your collection will be worth more than you paid for it and you will have had the pleasure out of it too. (P.S. Don't tell Spink, but I generally go and consult their latest guide in the library, transcribe the prices of coins I own and transfer them into my database at home. Shhhhhh. )

Yes - the obverse photo is very 'woolly', but from what I can make out, there isn't any noticeable wear to the ear. I'd feel fairly confident grading it EF now I've (almost) seen the obverse. Put it this way, if it was a 1946 or 1949 in that grade you would be entitled to dance a happy jig! Sadly, 1937 is probably the commonest G.VI date to find in high grade - it was a brand new concept when it appeared and very many must have been put aside.

This very much depends. That book you've mentioned is a "market follower", it is a fairly simplistic guide to coin values. If your interest mainly stems from 1797 onwards, then a better book - and a cheaper one - would be the Coin Collectors GB series which this site's Chris Perkins publishes, and has a long publication history history. It contains many of the minor varieties you'd find it hard to see in other guides. However, if you think your interest may go back to Roman eventually, then the "bible" for collectors and dealers is the Spink "Standard Catalogue" which is carried by most large libraries if you want to look at it before you buy one. As it costs between £20 and £25 that would be a wise move. As you specialise (if you do) there are more detailed works, most of which don't carry prices. You will hear mention of Peck, ESC, Davies, Freeman, Gouby, etc. Good luck and welcome to the hobby!

1980 was around the peak in an artificial "high" of coin prices - if you'd bought then, you'd have been buying at the top of the market. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s there was, following an early fallback, a stagnation of values. You can't compare commodities to bank accounts. Buying a Una & The Lion in 1980 would have proved unwise, whereas buying one in 1994 would have turned out well in the end, as you've noted, though no-one has a crystal ball.

I'd rate that around EF myself (or AEF) - but would need to see the obverse as wee Georgie's hair is the real decider. But no, not rare, and with only a small value.

Same thing happened to me - the seller couldn't see any difference between the obverse of a 1927 and 1928 penny and swapped the pictures. I thought I'd discovered a mega-rare 1928 mule penny ... then I saw his 1927 penny and realised what he'd done. Needless to say I withdrew my bid

Yes it's kosher - the milled edge on George III coppers (1806-7) has that somewhat strange appearance. It is a bit like two coins stuck together, and the experiment seems to have been abandoned shortly after. But it is actually just the way they milled the edge, using a collar when the coin was struck.

This is a numismatic myth. Both Coins & Medals and Coin Monthly carried out detailed studies of die numbers during the '60s and '70s before finding the true reason for them had already been provided in an article, 'Registration of Coins' in the July 1866 issue of the Intellectual Observer which I quote as follows. "It is done with a view to identifying the particular die by which each individual piece of money was struck, the particular press at which the latter received its impressions, the day on which it came into existence and the name of the press attendant under whose agency it was borne. Thus if a defective coin, which had escaped the vigilant and scrutinising eye of the examiner at the Mint and passed out into the channels of general circulation, were subsequently discovered - no matter how long after its issue - it would be possible, by reference to Mint records, to establish its identity and to fix the responsibility for its defect upon the unhappy wight who managed the machine which stamped it into being." Who said that Big Brother was a new idea! Fascinating! I'd never read that before - thanks for reproducing it. Makes you wonder why it happened only during that period - a Mint employee uprising broguht it to an end perhaps? Like the workers who hounded poor Mestrelle's machinery out of the medieval mint.

Also, when I checked this forgery against a real Half Crown of this date, I could not find fault with the overall design . Yes - the copper silver-washed forgeries of the era were more often than not amazingly good copies. Either they got hold of genuine dies (and with a Recoinage of that size and scale there must have been one hell of a lot of dies used), or they used genuine BU coins as a matrix, perhaps in wax, to produce their own dies.

Mostly, I would say "no". The reason being that The Mint introduced die numbers to monitor die wear, so almost by definition there will be a good use of that die. And I suppose the effort required in undertaking a survey of surviving coins with a particular number would be so great as to make it unfeasible. It's an interesting question though - some varieties become spectacular with much less obvious differences than a die number (e.g. bun penny minutiae), so you would think someone would have researched it by now.

If it's the same size as pre-decimal sixpences then that's what it is (the shilling used the same design but was the same size as a ... well, a shilling ). As to this particular one, it's a little difficult to say from your photos : it could be silver-washed copper, i.e. a contemporary forgery, or it could be kosher.

You won't have any problems with this very website! I am also mostly abroad (in Germany) but the exchange rate has no effect on coins because the vast majority I source from the UK. I buy them in GBP and sell them in GBP. Postage is also in some cases cheaper when I send things from here compared to within the UK. It's usually very quick and higher value items can also be properly insured. Yes thats good but you need to put some more coins up for sale there seems to be a bit of a shortage? do you get new ones very often? He bought a whole stack off me in the summer - mind you, they were mostly modern high-grades, but perhaps between us we could persuade Chris to put up the pre-1937s? Or at least the better ones? Especially if you're a prospective customer ...

I have seen attested modern fakes of fairly common coins in mid-grade condition. A coin which is worth £50 or so, is far less likely to raise suspicion and be easier to sell than an FDC Gothic, but the workmanship is still spot on. If the annual wage you can get at the local factory is only £500 a year, then you don't have to produce many coins to exceed that figure, and the secret of being a succesful criminal (so they tell me!) is not to be too greedy. Being a numiswotsit is dashed hard these days. I had a fake 1905 halfcrown in GF-VF, I also have one, fake that is, in about EF. There is a fake UNC on ebay at the moment with a BIN of £6000. I think these are all from the batch that came out of Turkey about 20-30 years ago. Yes, but low grade fakes of 1905 halfcrowns make much more sense, as they are rare(ish) and fetch high prices.

from what i have seen on these types of coins here is the types i know of 1887 young head 1887 j head without jeb (chris described this earlier) 1887 j head with jeb on shoulder (this is the one i am wondering is rare) 1887 j head with jeb below shoulder (ive seeen loads of these myself) and last 1887 wreath There is also a (very rare?) variety of the Wreath reverse, which you can see in Unconfirmed Unlisted Varieties in this forum. The first 8 of the date is over a higher 8, and the 7 is twice as far from the second 8 as on the normal variety. So far, my copy is the only one I've ever seen of this. I'm hoping to find other people who also have one (not too many, obviously!)

You were very sensible to let yourself be outbid. More than £30 is quite astonishing for a penny in that condition, not a key date.