Nick

Wouldn't it be useful if there was a facility on eBay to report that an item was fake? Oh wait... I told them it was fake on five occasions but they insisted I send it back to the person who sold it to me. I think the seller had to promise ebay that they would destroy it ... I just saw a pig fly !!! I was talking about reporting fakes before the auction has ended, but unfortunately eBay ignores all such reports.

Just had a look at the pictures I have of 1896 crowns and the LIX has a narrow gap and the LX has a wider gap.

There are two well known varieties, Spink 3938 and 3938A. Not sure if you are referring to these. The easiet way to recognise the scarcer one is the longer border teeth on the reverse. Spink 3938 refers to Half Crowns and not to Crowns (unless I'm mistaken). Crowns are 3937 so don't seem to be recognised as having varieties. Ah yes. It would have helped if I had read the question properly.

There are two well known varieties, Spink 3938 and 3938A. Not sure if you are referring to these. The easiet way to recognise the scarcer one is the longer border teeth on the reverse.

Wouldn't it be useful if there was a facility on eBay to report that an item was fake? Oh wait...

I've never found a definitive answer as to what they were used for, but there is an interesting paragraph in the 1869 book by George Frederick Ansell, published in 1870, who worked in The Royal Mint at that time. He says: "For the past four of five years the reverse die has been made to carry, in addition to its recognised device, a small number, with a view to determine at which coining press, and on what particular day, the numbered die was used, that bad work might be traced to an individual. It need hardly be said that accidents encountered in daily work entirely overcome the object being sought, for a die may last either minutes or days in wear owing to the irregularities of the steel from which it is made, and besides, the boys who work the presses are of necessity changed at irregular intervals." Hi Nick, Thanks for the interesting information. So the Royal Mint were possibly looking at ways to keep tabs on their staff and equipment - a sort of quality control on their coins. I shall certainly have fun attempting to collect all the variations now. :-) D If you are going to attempt to collect all of the die numbered sixpences, that is going to be tricky. There are some years (1867-1870 and 1879) for which finding any example is difficult enough, let alone one for each die number.

I've never found a definitive answer as to what they were used for, but there is an interesting paragraph in the 1869 book by George Frederick Ansell, published in 1870, who worked in The Royal Mint at that time. He says: "For the past four of five years the reverse die has been made to carry, in addition to its recognised device, a small number, with a view to determine at which coining press, and on what particular day, the numbered die was used, that bad work might be traced to an individual. It need hardly be said that accidents encountered in daily work entirely overcome the object being sought, for a die may last either minutes or days in wear owing to the irregularities of the steel from which it is made, and besides, the boys who work the presses are of necessity changed at irregular intervals."

That's just cruel, Peter. Nice 1904 florin, Paulus.

There is no point increasing the resolution (despite what you see in the movies), you can't just invent something that wasn't there in the first place. Sure you can average neighbouring pixels or interpolate or some other clever algorithm, but what ever you do it won't be an accurate representation. I wouldn't worry, your pictures look better than most do at that zoom level. Many thanks, Nick. when I converted the cut-out image to jpeg, the program asked me how many pixels I wanted to save it at and, never having played with this stuff before, I wasn't sure what to save it at, I plucked 600 out of thin air. The other point that is worth saying is that JPEG isn't the best choice for preserving fine detail. It's mainly used to produce a good quality image with a reasonable amount of compression - which unsurprisingly is popular on the Internet. However, if you want to preserve the finest detail, then TIFF or PNG would be better choices - although the file sizes will be huge in comparison.

There is no point increasing the resolution (despite what you see in the movies), you can't just invent something that wasn't there in the first place. Sure you can average neighbouring pixels or interpolate or some other clever algorithm, but what ever you do it won't be an accurate representation. I wouldn't worry, your pictures look better than most do at that zoom level. Many thanks, Nick. when I converted the cut-out image to jpeg, the program asked me how many pixels I wanted to save it at and, never having played with this stuff before, I wasn't sure what to save it at, I plucked 600 out of thin air. The number of pixels you choose is pretty much irrelevant (unless you choose a small number). How it looks depends on the input DPI, ie a low-resolution blocky input will look the same (just bigger) in high resolution, whereas a high-resolution input will still look reasonable even at low-resolution. The moral is: scan/photograph at the highest DPI you can - you can always throw away some detail later. The opposite is not true.

There is no point increasing the resolution (despite what you see in the movies), you can't just invent something that wasn't there in the first place. Sure you can average neighbouring pixels or interpolate or some other clever algorithm, but what ever you do it won't be an accurate representation. I wouldn't worry, your pictures look better than most do at that zoom level.

Yes. All known 1878 DRITANNIAR sixpences have die number 6, which were sent to Cyprus for use there.

Let's all report it to eBay so we can see how many fake reports they will ignore on a single item.

At least the pictures show that it is obviously polished. I agree with the seller in that "I'm sure the serious collectors out there will know the value of this Item". Indeed they will and it's bugger all bar the silver content.

Trouble is, at least 50% of the male population think they could do a better job as manager. So unless he wins every match from now on he will inevitably receive scorn and derision It's the British media he'll need to worry about, not the armchair fans. The gutter press seem to feel it is their duty to destroy England managers both professionally and personally. I reckon he'll last a couple of years, unless Euro 2012 is a disaster.

They should ditch the 1p and the 2p in my opinion. It may raise some prices slightly, but for those items priced just below a psychological barrier (ie £1.99 etc), they would have to drop slightly.

It seems to share quite a lot of the same characteristics as the fakes that were discussed last time. With this sort of suspicion associated with them, I would only consider buying one from a top auction house or reputable dealer.

Not a easy choice. No matter which you choose, there are a great number of really difficult years that will present a challenge.

It is, along with an 1844 crown and an 1864 penny.

A model of a Cromwell halfcrown surely ? How else could it be so much smaller than a bronze penny? That'll be because the bronze penny (as featured on the front cover of the Spink 2012 catalogue) is greater than life size.

Let's hope not for the buyer's sake! Would anyone care to post a pic of their 1905 HC, I would like to see a high grade one! (It wont be me, mine is gF) Here's mine, any good? If you're after a fake, that'll do nicely.

You can either uses something like MS Paint to crop and reduce an image to size or use a hosting site like Flikr or Photobucket and when your image is uploaded there, you just pop a link to it in your post as you did with the library pic. The free membership option of PhotoBucket that I use also imposes file size restrictions but that is a somewhat more useful < 1MB.

Let's hope not for the buyer's sake! Would anyone care to post a pic of their 1905 HC, I would like to see a high grade one! (It wont be me, mine is gF) It won't be mine either, but there is a good one (EF or better) in the forthcoming DNW auction (21 Jun 2012). It's the best one that I've seen. Estimated between £3k and £4k.

I have a few pictures of Elizabeth II sovereigns that you can use if they are any use to you? A reduced in size sample is attached. That would be great Nick thanks. Please email the pictures and any description ie name, your coin site, you would like me to put under them. If you want to rename anonymous that is fine to, whatever suits you. Regards, Hus I will sort them out tomorrow and send them on.

I have a few pictures of Elizabeth II sovereigns that you can use if they are any use to you? A reduced in size sample is attached.