Peckris

“Home made replica from three penny bit and 5p. Poorer on reverse due to manufacturing process” - :lol: Does that mean if I take a hammer to my car I can call myself a car manufacturer? But.. but.. it's rare! Have you noticed how there is a doubling of the legend in places?

Indeed. In Britain it amounted to around half a day's wages for a building worker.

No stops on obverse? That would make it 1695 if you could only make out the date.

The truly awful one was Windows 2000 (shown as 98SE in that timeline) - it lasted only months before Windows ME replaced it, and then XP was released only a year later. People tend to think that XP > Vista was an awful long time without any Windows update/release, but don't forget SP1 and SP2, which were quite substantial enhancements to XP. It's just that with Microsoft's almost legendary lack of imagination and flair, they decided to call them 'Service Packs', so people now just think of XP as a single entity when in fact it was three quite separate and substantial versions. I stole the timeline from Wikipedia My first computing experience was was with CP/M (anyone remember that - Digital research) using a Z80 card in an Apple ][, we had a massive brute of a hard disk with the amazing capacity of 5MB! Later we migrated to DOS and then Santa Cruz Xenix - using a Tandon AT with a 100MB disk (this hardware cost £2000 in 1986) My favourite operating system has to be RiscOS running on an Acorn Archimedes, though Amiga Dos was interesting So yes Bob, I am that old, and I haven't written a line of code for over 20 years now,so everything getting a bit rusty David Too cool David. I started with a TRS-80, with two floppy drives (one for the Operating system), with a fabulous 48k Memory board. Then on to a Olivetti PC with PCos operating system, then IBM PC, then IBM XT (5 MB disk), Multiple IBM AT's, Dell (multiple), and currently have a HP Omni27, Multiple channel, with Beats Audio! It been a great ride! When I first started in electronics it was tube technology, then tranisters, Then integrated circuits, then large scale IC's, then PC's on a chip (286,386.486, etc), and now multi-Core, and multi channel... My first computing course was in 1980, after failing a now-notorious aptitude test in the 1970s! I can't remember what the computer we used was, but I do remember we were shown the adverts for the Sinclair ZX80. My second training course was in 1985 at Kalamazoo in Birmingham, where a midi-computer with 1 MB of RAM supported 15 dumb terminals, a printer, a COBOL compiler, and also had BASIC too. Slow? Painful! My computing career was centred on IBM mainframes using COBOL, PL/1, and EASYTRIEVE. I didn't get a computer at home until the early 90s, and it was an 8088 Turbo, 5 KHz / 10 KHz (or do I mean MHz?), with a 20MB HD which I only ever half filled, on which I ran MS-DOS 3.3 and a little software suite called Mini Office Personal, which included WP, a database, a spreadsheet, communications, and probably other things I never used. In 1994 I got my first Mac and compared to using DOS it was like a "cat's whisker" AM radio compared to a digital-era TV. However, I did keep Mini Office on various backups, plus the various documents I created, and have discovered an amazing software app DOSBox (which also runs in Windows, by the way) and can now actually run Mini Office on an Intel Core i5 iMac!!! DOSBox will run any DOS apps and there's a website with free DOS games that can be downloaded for it - http://www.dosgames.com/

Blimey - the silver alone's worth more than that! (Just noticed - my 7777th post!!)

"I'm Enery the 8th, I am Enery the 8th I am I am I got married to the Widow next door She'd been married 7 times before..." Sorry about that - the typo in your topic title had me in stitches. FWIW, I think Windows XP is one of the ugliest OS's ever dumped on us all, but millions of users got used to it. As a Mac user since the mid-90s, I did have a brief experience with Windows 7 a few years back, and found its ease of use and general 'prettiness' a vast improvement over XP. I have heard that W8 is not so intuitive to use at first, as many things about it have been redesigned, so the jury's still out on that one. From my own experience, I'd say W7 might be the way to go for now.

Here's an EF example - make up your own mind. I suspect it's more to do with rarity however, than superiority. Mind you, a currency piece in similar condition to that proof would command a high premium.

No, I wouldn't say that (though the photographs are a bit out of focus). From what I can see, I would say Fine, and perfectly respectable. However, at that grade it would have to be rare to be worth anything much.

It MIGHT be IE ? Web designers used to code mainly for IE and any other browser had to take pot luck, but Firefox and Chrome are the main players now, with Safari on every iPhone and iPad, so IE is probably now a 'maverick' independent that plays - as it always has - by its own rules. Try Firefox or Chrome, and you may find it works fine. FWIW I'm using Safari 5 on an Intel Core i5 iMac.

What browser and operating system are you using?

unlikely combination! I think an alloy like that should have its own name. Calling it 'bronze' is a total lie really.

Just click the "Quote" button (bottom right of all posts), then add your own comment below the box. £75 could be ok if there's a few things in there that could be sold on eBay. Yes, keep us posted, and remember there are foreign coin collectors here too, especially if prewar (or 19th Century), who could advise.

What is aluminium bronze?

Probably most of it will be dross, but if you got it for a fair price (scrap value plus a margin) then that's ok. And who knows, you may find something in there? As a rough guide, "silver" coins have real silver (50%) from 1920 - 1946, and before that they are sterling silver. Copper has a reasonable value too.

Coins can tone back if exposed to the elements - some will leave them in guttering but I wouldn't go that far personally; a windowsill by a window that gets opened fairly regularly might help. Turn the coin now and then. Of course, it does depend to some extent how badly dipped it is : if even pale silver in colour but dull and lacking lustre, it might take an awful long time.

My name is David, I collect coins My name is ... well, you can call me Peck ... and I post to a coin collectors forum.

I actually returned under a new name in 2009. My original membership was around 2005? and I remember people like Master JMD from back then, but I wasn't a very active member and cannot now remember what my username was.

On the subject of insurance - for now it's good advice to get the maximum valuables cover on your home contents, but make sure you get confirmation from the insurance that the "single item limit" applies to individual coins not the whole collection. They have no real justification for trying to claim that a disparate collection assembled over years and comprising individual coins from a variety of sources, is a 'single item' other than that they are insurers and that's what they do. Argue the toss with them and make sure you get written confirmation that individual coins are 'single items'.

I have to agree with you on that point I reckon we are going to be seeing a few short reigns ( comparatively speaking) out of Charles and William. The queen is 87 I reckon we will get 5-10 years of her then Charles will be in his late 70's- 80's ( if he lives that long himself) so give him no more than 20 years but I think it will be about 10-15. By that point William will be 61 by this point so say another 20 odd years of him before George will take the thrown. could be an interesting time. You're saying William will be 61 in 15 years time?? Something wrong with your maths, mate!

Unfortunately not! The great problem with early Liz II halfcrowns - especially 1954 - is that even UNC coins don't look it, the design is so shallow. To get one that actually LOOKS BU would cost a fortune. Mine doesn't show any wear, but you wouldn't say the lustre was so strong you have to wear sunglasses. But isn't that because they are Cupro-nickel and not that nice shiny stuff that the Royal Mint used to use? So the "new BU" lacks lustre. Mark Not really. If you look at some 1960s CuNi and more especially what started to appear in the 1970s, there's a highly mirrored finish. Even sixpences dated from 1949 - 1952 can show a high degree of lustre. I don't know what it is with Liz II 1950s large "silver", but it does get better through the decade.

True - but 1927 is a weird case : where a denomination exists in the previous type (1926 ME), the proof values are approximately the same as UNC specimens of that previous type (even the shilling, where there is also a currency issue for the proof type). It's where the proof denomination is the only one dated 1927 (florin, threepence) that the values soar. Therefore, although the rarity is the same for all 1927 proofs, collectors seem to rate them according to whether there are ANY coins dated 1927 for a particular denomination.

Unfortunately not! The great problem with early Liz II halfcrowns - especially 1954 - is that even UNC coins don't look it, the design is so shallow. To get one that actually LOOKS BU would cost a fortune. Mine doesn't show any wear, but you wouldn't say the lustre was so strong you have to wear sunglasses.

Wrong Spielberg film, Peter was in the one where he had to sit in the front basket of a bicycle with the Mrs cycling. Brilliant!

Or they're getting better...

Do bear in mind that some 1950s cupro-nickel (especially florins, a few halfcrown dates, and an even lower number of shillings) are very tricky in UNC and quite pricey. If you get there and find this is so, you might want to put a 'finger in the place' for now and start on George VI - many of his coins are easier to find in UNC. Peck, As he so often is, wisdom of years I suspect is giving good advice. However do persevere with the 1950's silver in BU. Not to expensive yet. I have chosen the rarest dates in (not bothered with a date run) 2/6 & 2/- and am pleased I have them. They won't get any cheaper than they are now IMO. As with GV silver get it in BU if you can, you won't regret it. Mark I picked up UNC 1954 and 1959 halfcrowns for a fiver each from Format Coins in the 1990s (sold as AUNC but these days they would pass as UNC, no sweat). I left it too late to get any of the difficult florins in UNC - and they're REALLY difficult! - so settled for a 1956 instead.