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SionGilbey

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Posts posted by SionGilbey


  1. hi i want to buy quality coins of worth and i mainly look for british at the moment but the only places i can look are the internet and the local car boot sale where i sell my old coins i do not wish to keep.

    i have uploaded 2 pictures of one of my coins i do not know about so any information would be fantastic here is the link http://s1205.photobucket.com/albums/bb430/thebrutalarts/

    i also would like to say i have learnt my lesson of buying fake coins and remakes but thats what happens without anyone to help ,hope to hear from ypu all soon

    Wayne

    When buying fishy looking coins look for a WR... it means Westair Reproductions and they are the most common type of reproduction I've found.

    eBay is by far the best way to sell coins if you don't mind the bother of posting.

    I'd advise buying a coin price guide from your local bookshop. The best for beginners I find is the Coin Yearbook (because it has not only a decent price guide but also info. about rulers of Britain, identifying coins and also grading them) but if you are going into the hobby seriously you should definitely buy Spink's Coins of England and the United Kingdom and the latest Collectors Coins GB.

    You'll start off buying any coin that takes your fancy but eventually you'll specialise to just a few or just one area of collecting.

    Some people just collect British pennies and I am refined to just milled British coins.

    Do you have a favourite type of coin? Do you like the hammered ones like the one you posted or do you prefer the more modern ones?

    Do you like the higher denominations like silver and gold coins or do you like copper?

    I'm quite new to collecting being 15, but I've found that I have learned a lot from being a member of this forum and reading books on Numismatics and I have quite a nice collection.

    I source my coins from the internet, car boot sales, antiques shops, jumble sales and museums.

    If you need any help the people here are very friendly and don't mind you messaging them.

    Sion


  2. Sorry to bump this old thread, but I noticed it whilst looking for something else, and had to say something.

    I think we've long reached the stage in this country where the £1.00 coin is probably the most heavily circulated of all the coins. Conversely, the 1p, 2p & to some extent the 5p, are spending protracted periods sitting in jars being saved up to pay in bulk to a bank, or otherwise not being used. This is why it's still relatively easy to find a lustred circulation 1990 1p, but virtually impossible to find the same in a 1990 £1.00, for example.

    It's because the £1 is the only coin that's useful.

    To buy a 75p can of coke,for example, you have a few choices:

    Ridiculous numbers of 1 and 2ps which are now worth pretty much zilch, while when it was new it was worth closer to 20p now.

    A handful of silver coins or just the plain old pound.

    Personally I prefer to carry around a few pounds in case I need anything and fling the change in the penny jar to go to the bank in 5 years time.

    One of the flourishing shops in Aber is poundland - and you can bet there's a lot of pound coins being battered in there.

    The pound coin is just handy. It's easy to buy things, saves carrying around awkward and useless change everywhere and I admit it's the only coin I carry around with me.

    Nowadays, notes and plastic are the only real money - coins aren't as useful to people these days as they were in 1971.

    Using a worth calculator, I can see that if I took a 50p coin back to 1971 and wanted to know how how much spending power I had, it would be something between £5 and £10.

    We only have coins with the spending power of <£2 and now anything £1 or over is pretty much worthless making the only coins useful 50p, £1 and £2.


  3. Can anyone suggest a cheap digital camera which I can buy just for photographing coins? I know it needs a macro mode and I will need lighting and a tripod as discussed above. I can't see me using the camera for anything else so possibly I could get something which plugs into the USB port and uses the pc screen for display? I presume digital microscopes are not suitable though?

    Myself, Declan and Hus all use a Canon powershot A480.

    It will knock you back around £60 Steve and ticks all of the above boxes.

    I don't use a tripod or any lighting other than natural daylight.

    Thanks John, I think I can stretch to £60! If no one has a better idea I'll get one next week. I'm fed up looking at me poor scans.

    On the other hand, you should be able to pick up a DSLR plus macro lens and still have change from a grand ....

    Only really worth it if you're a dealer.

    Otherwise get a decent camera for a few hundred and spend the rest on coins.

    A drug dealer Sion?

    There aren't many coin dealers that could or would lash out a grand on a camera :)

    Or, I suppose, rich.

    Personally, I couldn't swap a few extra megapixels for a couple of really nice coins.


  4. Can anyone suggest a cheap digital camera which I can buy just for photographing coins? I know it needs a macro mode and I will need lighting and a tripod as discussed above. I can't see me using the camera for anything else so possibly I could get something which plugs into the USB port and uses the pc screen for display? I presume digital microscopes are not suitable though?

    Myself, Declan and Hus all use a Canon powershot A480.

    It will knock you back around £60 Steve and ticks all of the above boxes.

    I don't use a tripod or any lighting other than natural daylight.

    Thanks John, I think I can stretch to £60! If no one has a better idea I'll get one next week. I'm fed up looking at me poor scans.

    On the other hand, you should be able to pick up a DSLR plus macro lens and still have change from a grand ....

    Only really worth it if you're a dealer.

    Otherwise get a decent camera for a few hundred and spend the rest on coins.


  5. Well shame about the loss of the data that's a real pain. I must admit I just have a plain old nokia phone and I have the ipod touch. That way I get batter battery life than the two combined for example the iphone and also calls don't stop my music :):D:rolleyes: .

    Tape them together for an iPhone!


  6. I remember in the late 90s, when I got a Psion Series V, it had a spreadsheet app. I created a document for Spink prices and busily transcribed prices for all my collection plus many major types in all grades into it. Many hours spent in the local library! However, I did have a portable reference to carry around for a year or two...

    Youngsters nowadays .. if there isn't an app for it, they don't want to know. Luxury! We 'ad it tough in them days...

    Still use my 5mx! B)

    Whats the 5mx a older prio model?

    Newer by a couple of years.

    It's black and white and can't remember anything if you take all of the batteries out.

    Yes, disregarding all the warnings I allowed both sets of batteries to go flat, and everything went west. I actually do have an early backup surviving but sadly that was taken before I'd done the Spink spreadsheet. I don't use it at all nowadays (it got pretty shabby, the stylus broke - but a good little machine in its day. The success of the Palm drove it out of the market. I believe they still technically live on in ARM chips and Eriksson firmware?)

    Oh, of course I also mainly use the iPhone, but it has enclosed batteries and needs to be charged up and things while if you're just taking voice/text notes I find you can just carry round a pack of AA batteries and it lasts for weeks.


  7. I remember in the late 90s, when I got a Psion Series V, it had a spreadsheet app. I created a document for Spink prices and busily transcribed prices for all my collection plus many major types in all grades into it. Many hours spent in the local library! However, I did have a portable reference to carry around for a year or two...

    Youngsters nowadays .. if there isn't an app for it, they don't want to know. Luxury! We 'ad it tough in them days...

    Still use my 5mx! B)

    Whats the 5mx a older prio model?

    Newer by a couple of years.

    It's black and white and can't remember anything if you take all of the batteries out.


  8. I remember in the late 90s, when I got a Psion Series V, it had a spreadsheet app. I created a document for Spink prices and busily transcribed prices for all my collection plus many major types in all grades into it. Many hours spent in the local library! However, I did have a portable reference to carry around for a year or two...

    Youngsters nowadays .. if there isn't an app for it, they don't want to know. Luxury! We 'ad it tough in them days...

    Still use my 5mx! B)


  9. It's certainly a good enough photo to see all of the coin detail, but I agree with Sion - it's slightly fuzzy. Could be slightly out of focus, or just a bit a camera shake.

    Looking at the background, I think it's just that the subject is not quite perpendicular to the camera. I think the bottom is slightly nearer the camera than the top and given a low depth of field the top half is slight fuzzy.

    Yes, I think it is more a trick of the mind as the background is irregularly fuzzy but the coin is not very fuzzy at all.

    The camera shake is very very small but I know that when I buy any expensive coins I do expect flawless photos (I'm a bit picky!) so buying the tripod was a good call.

    Good luck in future photos AJW!


  10. Well just a quick thankyou going out to all the contributers in this topic its been some interesting reading.

    I've been taking many photos and scans of coins over the past few months and now have some ideas on how to improve my photos so thanks. In case you were wondering what I'm using its a Fujifilm J210 10mp held by hand (first thing I'm gonna do is get a tripod)using the scene recognition auto mode with macro and take the photo as close as I can with out blocking the light. My light source is daylight which is slightly filtered by a net curtain. I then crop the photos on my PC afterwards.

    Here's a recent example of a photo

    DSCF2506.jpg

    There's many more in the gallery section on my site thanks any feedback would be great.

    Looks good!

    Nice lighting and backdrop, looks very natural.

    Very slightly fuzzy and not cropped square; a small section on the left edge of the coin is cropped out.

    The pictures on your site seem sharper though.


  11. Why would anyone pay that much for a 1 in a billion chance of getting the real one - then have to give it back because its stolen property! I picked my '33' penny (along with '54 penny, and '45 silver 3d) from Gary Phelps for £15 each!

    What do we reckon... adjusted 5 or transplanted 3?

    Neither.

    The coin is all wrong...


  12. Good morning. I am a new member on this forum.

    I started collecting UK farthing. This is my first one. What do you think about it? I am not very good at grading. I bought it because it has a great eye appeal, it shows traces of red. Thank you!

    post-6698-039007800 1305797605_thumb.jpg

    post-6698-012810800 1305797617_thumb.jpg

    Very nice coin! I agree about the eye appeal, great toning.

    If you want to collect more of George IV, my bookmarks (for when I get round to collecting them, I only have 1825 and an 1822 so far...) are:

    http://aboutfarthings.co.uk/shop/index.php?cPath=28_41&osCsid=459a7ccf5d7adbcbe17eccb3f394a9ff

    http://aboutfarthings.co.uk/shop/index.php?cPath=28_40&osCsid=459a7ccf5d7adbcbe17eccb3f394a9ff

    http://tinyurl.com/ebaysearchGEORGEIVFARTHING


  13. I couldn't disagree more. Your second picture shows massively too much contrast (to my eyes) while the first one I thought "What's wrong with this? Seems good enough to me." It has good exposure, colour and the only thing missing is perhaps a little iridescence, but if shot 2 is the cost of getting iridescence, I'd happily live without it. (I must add - the thumbnails give the reverse impression, and the second shot looks good, but when I enlarge them, that's when I thought again).

    I've done a bit more experimenting and the best I can do so far is this.

    Lovely picture :D


  14. Kris, if your lamp caused an EMP you'd be in big trouble. They usually only come from the detonation of a Nuclear bomb...

    It sounds like you're plugging too many things into one socket.

    EMP can be caused by a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field as produced by a transformer being overloaded.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

    That type of lamp uses a small transformer and sometimes a bit of circuitry in the base to reduce the mains to the 12 volts of the halogen lamp. The two "telescopic aerials" holding up the lamp and shade are the conductors carrying the 12 volts up to the lamps. There are no internal wires to the lamp.

    The operative part of that is "aerials". :blink:

    An very little electromagnetic pulse can be caused by even a spark, but one that causes damage as you describe would not be emitted from a lamp.

    Sion


  15. I'm desperately trying to grow out of PVC once and for all, and I can see the point of slabs for storage. Perhaps the only crime is putting a grade on the label?

    Nah, you want yourself a nice mahogany cabinet Declan. It will act as a coffee table for you as well!

    I have a nice semi spare one I can let you have at a snip, a 28 drawer model by Peter Nichols ;)

    If I could afford one of those...


  16. Anyone who knew anything about electrickery would have a fit if they saw my setup here:

    Long extension cable buried in a trench I dug under the yard, plugged into a single 13A socket.

    Other end has two outlets, one goes to the outdoor freezer, the other holds a plug dangling through a hole I drilled in the bus floor. That plug goes to a 3-way, 2 empty, one to a 6-way.

    That 6 way:

    1) fairy lights

    2) laptop

    3) printer

    4) speakers

    5) empty

    6) to another 4-way

    that 4-way:

    1) doubler driving halogen and daylight CFL

    2) laptop

    3) camera

    4) long extension going back out through another hole in the floor on the other side of the bus - for outdoor power tools and charging up the bus batteries.

    Combined with the propane and the woodburner, EMP would be the least of my worries!

    Sigh.

    Do you know what a bus looks like when it's on fire?

    Please tell me you at least have a couple of circuit breakers!


  17. I found that the sort of halogen lamp the Declan is using caused all sorts of problems with electronic equipment in the vicinity. Particularly if plugged into the same multiway adaptor or double socket as the rest of the gear. PCs locking up and other things needing resetting were the main symptoms. :unsure:

    I finally figured out that the transformer in the base of the lamp could cause spikes on the mains either when starting under load or being switched off. I'm still not too sure it wasn't causing some sort of EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) as well. :blink:

    It may have just been the one I had and it may have just been switching it on and off while the electronics were fired up but the problems went away when I binned it.

    Cheers

    Kris

    Kris, if your lamp caused an EMP you'd be in big trouble. They usually only come from the detonation of a Nuclear bomb...

    It sounds like you're plugging too many things into one socket.


  18. I use black or light blue and they both seem okay. Best advice is try what you have to hand and see which, if any, you favour.

    Using the advice in this thread, I've set up my little coin-photo-thing.

    Unlike declan I only have one camera so I can't take a picture of my camera actually on the tripod, but it's lens is pointing down.

    rig.jpg

    product.jpg

    There's a little glare from the light and the CD-case backdrop is entirely copied from Declan.

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