Accumulator

Not just any 1923 penny either. That's the excessively rare one with the 'half' error reverse!

It's definitely 1837.... You can find it here on the HM Revenue & Customs website.

Why not try a George III Guinea to, i'll open a spar near you Sion Yes, all post 1837 sovereigns are legal tender with a face value of £1. It's the reason why their sale is not subject to CGT. Round here we use Waitrose of course

AND... It's not even slabbed!!!

Petrol?................. Check Oily rag?............... Check Worthless coin?......... Check "This is a chance that comes up once every lifetime... if you're lucky!" Yes indeed... The chance to make the most idiotic purchase of a completely worthless piece of junk for a totally ridiculous sum of money.

You mean, like the tub of 1933 pennies, or the bucket of 1954's sitting on top of the box of 1955's, on the pile of 1956's...?

Not if that UNC has just been graded MS70

I very much agree that any guide is just that, and no more than a suggestion of what one might pay, on average, for a particular coin. In the case of rare or expensive coins the number of sales are so few that a guide becomes less useful and it will come down much more to who really wants it on the day. The surprise here is that a relatively common coin should depart so far from the norm. Clearly the 'slab factor' is beginning to make a significant difference. I notice that the March London Coins auction has a separate section only for slabbed coins. Interestingly I had a little look through a few penny collections on the NGS site and a fair number of collectors (at least one of whom frequents this forum) are clearly going down that avenue for their entire collections. I certainly don't wish to re-open a debate that, from the archive, I see has been well covered before but I'm just not sure I could live with all my coins in slabs. But, then again, maybe I could?

Or you could just toss it in your salad

Spink (2010) values this 1931 Penny in UNC at £45. With 11 hours to go it has 9 bids and has reached £103. Does slabbing really make that much difference or have I missed something?

Aah...! Perl? MySQL? perl is a programming language and MySQL is a database. These form the back-end of many smaller websites because, as mentioned above, they are free (and, for some this is important, not made by Microsoft). In fact many webservers using (the also free) Linux operation system come 'bundled' with these products and with a reasonable knowledge, enthusiastic amateurs can create almost any application they choose. The corporate market is different and dominated by other, often complex, and certainly more expensive products. The caveat is that I've been out of that particular industry for a few years so things may have changed slightly. I'm sure someone else here knows more!

"Angel Dust" ... or is that PCP? PHP is a scripting language, often used in conjunction with perl and MySQL. All popular with geeky types because they are open-source and hence, free!

Not only that, the program will slow down exponentially once the file size goes over a certain size. This is the great advantage of databases. You can have a related table of pictures and just set up a relationship between the coins table and the pictures table, and when you open the coins file, you can see the pictures without even having to open that file. I know you're right and I appreciate there are technically better solutions. One day I might move over to a database with tables as you suggest. However, yesterday I spent time putting my early Victorian copper pennies into the new spreadsheet, with obv & rev pics for each, and I have to say I'm really pleased with the result. I set the size of each 'comment' image at 12cm x 12cm and, with 1200dpi resolution, each image file is around 300k. This is larger than needed but means I have a hi-res version of the image available too. I haven't experienced any slowing down but, if in future I do, I'll simply split the spreadsheet into sections. It might sound complicated Rob, but once you've done a few it takes literally seconds to add each image. The much longer task is the scanning!

Glad it helped. I've been working on my penny sheet today. I think the easiest way around any size problems, should they become an issue, is to simply put different denominations (or monarchs if you prefer it that way!) into separate sheets.

Either that's a typo or you just made a brilliant pun! (I'd claim the pun if I were you ) Indeed, a complete about-face

Actually it's really easy, just very well hidden for some reason. This is what you do: 1. Choose the cell that you want to activate the coin pic. when you mouse-over (if you want separate pics for OBV & REV just use two cells, one for each) 2. Right click on that cell then choose 'insert comment' from the drop down menu 3.The text box which pops up may contain some dummy text which you can just delete. 4. Place your mouse pointer over the BORDER of the box, right click and choose 'Format Comment' from the drop down menu. This is the important bit, because if you right click over the centre of the box you won't get the option to add a pic later! 5. In the Format Comment window that pops up, click on the 'Colours and Lines' tab then click on the down arrow next to Fill Colour to bring up the colours and fill effects. Click on the 'Fill Effects' button at the bottom. 6. In the fill effects window which pops up, you will have a 'Picture' tab which allows you to browse and select a picture from your computer. 7. Finally, you may need to close the Fill Effects window and go back to the Format Comment window to set the size and aspect ratio of the pop-up pic. You can also add some text if you like too. Once you have done the above, a small red triangle will appear in the corner of the cell to show that a pic is available. Very neat! And that's it. Sounds complicated but it's really not.

I've looked at proprietary software packages but for the moment have decided to build a simple Excel spreadsheet as I sort through my coins. I read previous threads about Access (which I do have some experience of) and one of the main reasons for going that route seems to be the difficulty in adding images to Excel. Checking around various techy forums, though, I've come across a really neat way to add images to excel using the 'comment' feature. It's not that obvious how to go about it, but the result is that when you mouse-over the relevant cell, up pops your image and any text you want to add too! As soon as you move the mouse pointer away the image disappears. If anyone wants precise details, I'd be happy to post them here. The effect is like this (excuse the rather basic dummy spreadsheet in the background):

Bernie, I noticed this 'raised dot' version in your son's sale. It made a good price too! What I struggle with, though, is why this is any more desirable than, say, my very obvious 1922 die flaw pictured above? I'm not trying to add value to my coin (I only keep it as a curiosity), just trying to understand the rationale from a collector's perspective? Sorry, I know I'm getting slightly off-topic!

So excessively rare pennies probably lay for years, completely unrecognised in the back of departmental cupboards along with all the other old tat government officials tend to get given by visiting foreign dignitaries! You can't get away with mentioning four varieties for 1926 and not telling more! Apart from Spink, I can find no reference to the third variety. And what is the fourth? The low mintage figures for 1926 mean I don't have that many pennies to look through What am I looking for?

Indeed it is fascinating, and the evidence for the 1922 coin is hard to refute. According to Spink though, there's another piece to the puzzle. They list an identical coin dated 1926, i.e. a penny with ME obverse and 1927 reverse. Does this exist too? If it does, then why experiment with both dates? Unless, as you say, tests were done in 1925 before the 1926 dies were produced, and then repeated with 1926 dies before 'going live' in 1927. We'll probably never know.

I'm new to scanning my coins, but you're welcome to use the 1922 penny with 1927 rev. (although you have one of these already), the 1903 penny with open 3 and the 1887 sovereign with small JEB (hooked J) posted in other threads. If you need hi-res copies I can email these. You're also welcome to use pics of any others I post in future. Anonymous is good.

I mentioned this in the discussions on the 1922 penny but it rather got lost, so am posting here as a separate thread. Spink (2010) catalogue a 1927 penny no. 4054A. Described as having a "shorter index finger". The price suggests its very common but I have never knowingly seen one and, as far as I can tell, nor has anyone else! I presume this is a mistake or am I missing something obvious? I assume they have got confused with the change of position of Britannia's hand on the shield from 1922. A better description would be "shorter thumb", but it any case it's the same as 1927 catalogue number 4054. Interestingly identical coins therefore have different prices!

My last post is another example of this. I've never scanned a coin until this past few weeks and it's amazing how much more detail you see! Using a traditional loupe, the field of vision is so narrow that one tends not to take in the whole coin and see all the minor imperfections. My olive oil bath is going to be busy!

Another interesting 1922 I have is a clear die flaw. Like most, I keep rather than actually collect die flaws. I'm always a little confused as to why Freeman regards some die flaws (e.g. F147) as varieties? I've always understood a variety to be the result of intentional human intervention, rather than mechanical failure.

Thank you. As I say, the value is academic as it's part of my collection, but relative rarity is of always great interest. Below is a scan of the obverse. I've tried overlaying it on a standard reverse(3) just to check and it's a perfect match.