Accumulator

As well as the re-submission factor, there can be no doubt the population of slabbed coins is skewed towards the rarer varieties. Who is going to pay for slabbing a coin where the slab costs more than the coin is worth? I know there are exceptions, but generally the occurrence of better grades and rarer varieties amongst slabbed examples is out of all proportion to their relative scarcity. As an example, I just checked the CGS population report for 1919 pennies. The numbers are 1919 - 18; 1919H - 3, 1919KN - 8. Not exactly representative of the known population of these coins!

I finally managed to get my hands on the Norweb sale catalogue (Spink no 56 1986 - The Norweb Collection English Coins - Part 3) and confirmed what Rob had told me. The 1935 proof penny I purchased from St. James's auction in April, without provenance, was indeed the Norweb coin. Below are the catalogue photo (black & white) and a photo of my own coin. Discoveries such as this, which Rob seems to make regularly, are a really exciting part of our hobby. Like most of us, I have other coins which must have spent most of the last century in collections, some of them possibly well known. I only hope I can establish provenance for a few more of my coins. Thanks again Rob!

For me, referring to pennies, (though I haven't thought this through too much), a type would be defined by the denomination, monarch and basic design. E.g bun head penny, veiled head penny etc. A variety would generally be a distinct die pairing listed in Freeman. A micro variety would be minor variations in date width, die damage & repairs etc. as additionally listed by Gouby.

Others can advise you on what looks like trade token (I presume BIRM: in the exergue is 'Birmingham') but you mention a couple of stamps were in the wallet too. Since the first stamp in the world was issued on the 6th May 1840 (yes, sad I know but I didn't need to look that up!) they are clearly not contemporaneous with the token. Good luck in finding more information.

i think its a personal view that goes with age, i donth think a 1967 penny is old, my son thinks its ancient, my 1554 tanner, now thats old......to me......but not to my mother-in-law who can probably remember the day it was struck . sorry debbie....but coming back to cars...... arent there veteran and vintage classes, a moving scale based on age of the vehicle......i think thats how we look at age, with a coin, the scale moves with the owner/viewer. ski With cars there's 'classic' too, which fills in between modern and the most recent that could reasonably be described as vintage. As far as coins are concerned 'old', to me, simply means pre-decimal or post-decimal that has been withdrawn (e.g. large 5p & 10p, 1/2p). Other descriptions such as historic or ancient would better describe early examples of coinage. Debbie... not sure whether you are referring to the 1/2p or 1/2d with your boys? My girls were born more than a decade after the 1/2p was in circulation (it was withdrawn in 1984) so have no memory of it whatsoever. A Remy Martin bottle full of them does make a nice doorstop though!

Interesting thought on a 1922 rev. 1927 specimen, which I imagine being perhaps £15-20k in the current market. In many ways I prefer the circulation examples though. The thought that someone at the mint threw a handful in with the millions of 'normal' coins and that fewer still would eventually be spotted by collectors. Mine came from circulation but it's condition suggests that it spent much if it's life out of circulation. Fascinating story.

Very nice indeed, but for 30k I'd want something a bit more special.

The system appeared to work well. I held the winning bid prior to the 'live' session this evening, during which no further bids were made. The maximum proxy bid I'd entered for the live session was $200 higher but, in the absence of any further bids, this additional cash was not used. It's nice to see that Heritage don't take bids 'off the wall' (not that I would expect that) and I only paid the minimum required to win the auction. Hopefully the coin will arrive ok.

I gave bidding a go in tonight's (the afternoon over there) 'Signature' auction. I must admit the system is very slick and, as others have mentioned, many of the British lots are just recorded under a general Spink number so bargains are possible. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is the quality of the photos provided, these are exceptional particularly as the coins are generally slabbed. Anyway, one lot won, so let's see...

You need to visit Room 101 Actually I can't quite decide about date widths. I collect those listed by Freeman, and a few others, but take your point...

Oh, please, how do you do that? 'Timeline Originals' out you go! Do your normal search, then find "Seller" down the left hand side. Hit "Specify Sellers", then in the box that pops up, choose "Only show items from", "Exclude", and paste your blacklist in the little box that doesn't look like it has enough room for it. Do the list in a text file first, and separate the names with a comma, but no spaces (you're limited by number of characters, and spaces count). Don't forget you can rid yourself of an awful lot of crap with judicious use of wildcards in the initial search box too - here's mine: -1967 -197* -198* -199* -200* -201* -olym* -"Isle of Man" -framed -holed -enam* -polish* -token -damag* -empty -india -gibr* -decimal -proof -pattern -mother -wedd* -churchi* -£5 -£2 -£1 -diana -sover* -gold -keyr* -aldern* -jers* -guern* -1p -20p -50p -commem* -cuffl* -millen* Then save your search using the link at the top. Be aware though, that eBay, bless 'em, have a technical fault at the moment with advanced searches, and if your results only show gallery pictures for the first 11 items, you've fallen foul of it. They are working on it, they assure me. It's something to do with the complexity of the query - the more complex it is, the more likely you'll have the problem. Mine, predictably, is horrendously complex because I try to filter out 75% of all the British Coins on there, if I can. Used to work fine - it's only in the last week or so that their problems have occurred. But surely you'll miss out on the beautiful gold plated, polished, proof alderney, commemorative, 50p peices mounted in a pair of cufflinks Declan?

Thankfully, there are still a few dealers who will leave you alone in a room for an hour with £25k + of coins and trust you implicitly. And there are still those who will send you £2k+ of coins in the post to see if you like them. I would rather buy from these gentlemen if I can.

Oh I'm a permanent resident there.. but are you saying this isn't the argentum (John) we know and love? I thought from the first post that it wasn't John. We just need him to confirm now!

As far as I could tell, both wide and narrow date varieties had a shorter 2nd '9':

I don't think it was to make the wide date possible. I'm wondering whether they quickly made the 9 smaller because it was too much of a jam to get the full-size 9 in, due to the curvature. I wonder if maybe a bead or two got damaged on a couple of dies, leading to the decision to shorten the 9, making the wide-dates a possibility? I don't think the wide-dates would've been possible with the full-size 9. I overlapped the first and second 9 of your close-date and they were identical, so full-size 9's were definitely used. All speculation from me, I'm no expert in these things, just always find them interesting! The thread was here. Actually it started out as a discussion on the 1900 penny! These were my close and wide date 1899's:

Bargain !

A lovely story. Those rarities are just so hard to locate these days and it's almost impossible to find anyone with such stock (even in their basement safes)!

The obverse is from the Australian crown, I think.

yes Accumulator's post is mind boggling but i hope to understand one day, i love that one penny coin with the two colours is very pretty I presume you refer to the bi-metallic model penny in my avatar. This coin is fairly common, having been produced in great quantities by Joseph Moore as an alternative to the pre-1860 large copper pennies. His concept was that the intrinsic value of the metal centre allowed for a much smaller coin. Despite being popular with the public, they were never officially adopted and in 1860 the Royal Mint produced the now famous 'bun head' bronze penny instead. The particular coin in my avatar is extremely rare, being one of only 4 known which display a date (1844).

Some mules are reasonably common but can be hard to identify. Collectors get a great deal of pleasure from finding these as quite often the seller is unaware of the subtle differences. An example of this would be the 1913 penny, which is commonly found as either a '1 + A' or '2 + B' die pairing (where 1 or 2 denote different obverses and A or B denote different reverses). Interested collectors scan dealers' coins or eBay looking for the much rarer '1 + B' or '2 + A' combinations. In top grade these would be worth several times the value of the more common coins. For 1913 I have 1 + A, 2 + B and 2 + A in top grade but have never found an UNC 1 +B, despite this being listed by Freeman (the definitive guide) as not especially rare. If you find one in UNC I have £150+ waiting!

He's a small time radio & tv presenter. His brother is a much better known presenter & talk show host: Jonathan Ross (or Woss )

Thanks Bernie, I guessed you might have one! Let me know if you come across a spare

To someone like me who's only recently started looking at crowns, a very useful summary!

Sorry AardHawk for the late response. Here are images of a different section of the coin, hope this is okay with you. Interesting - not only are the teeth clearly longer, the rim is observably wider too. Put those together and the two types should be fairly easy to tell apart? Having taken another look at a couple of coins, I'm not so sure. It would appear that strikes are often a few microns off-centre (barely visible even with a magnifying glass). The result is that the rim on one edge is slightly narrower and the teeth are slightly longer (presumably taking up the excess metal) while diametrically opposite the rim is wider and the teeth shorter. See what you think? These images are from the reverse of the same 1936 penny: Having just posted the above I realise the effect you have found is entirely the opposite. The wide rim on your penny demonstrates the long teeth. Never mind. Food for thought anyway!

I'll try this over the next few days!