Nick

The NGC images are rubbish. You cannot discern any of the many scratches and surface marks from their images. If I were them, I'd be too embarrassed to put them on my website.

The pictures seem to match those in the NGC database, so perhaps it's kosher. The edge lettering looks ok too. However, as it has definitely seen better days, it has limited appeal.

That'll be Marg then. I notice her feedback recently went private, after she was outed on this very forum... But don't worry, eBay have sophisticated procedures in place to catch this type of thing... Yeah, right.

I'm interested in a couple, but will only be successful if all of the other bidders suffer from collective amnesia and forget to bid.

You did respond, but I think it was in another thread.

You probably just needed a little more patience. The email confirmation of your bids can take a week or two to arrive if you submit them way before auction date. The time to question is when nothing has been received and there are only a few working days left before the auction.

Link

Seems to behave just like PhotoBucket. I prefer the images to be embedded (regardless where they may be hosted) rather than have to follow a link. For example here are your images embedded:

It seems that for those affected, it's caused by the fairly recent change made by PhotoBucket to their links (to include a url=...). However, for those with PhotoBucket accounts you can turn off this behaviour. Log in to PhotoBucket, choose "User Settings" then "Albums" and untick "Link back to albums" and "Save". This change reverts the image links back to how the used to be.

That's REALLY weird. The first time I clicked on one of those links I was taken to the Photobucket site itself and watched paint dry while it finally decided to load the image. Then I clicked Goback and returned here. When I clicked the link a second time, I instantly got just the jpeg image on its own, and nothing else - no Photobucket. How is that even possible? I tried it a few times, using different browsers and saw the same behaviour. The first access modifies the url to start "s344.photobucket....." which loads the full Photobucket page, whereas subsequent accesses just show the actual jpeg. Not sure what controls this behaviour, whether it's cookie based or just server randomness, but it's odd for sure.

a***d clearly wants to win that one!

I saw that early feedback too and thought it might be somewhat iffy.

It happens a lot. I think it's called bid stacking and is somehow supposed to deter other bidders from trying to beat the current high bid.That's the opposite effect that a shiller would want! Exactly my thought too! A shiller would NOT want to win the item. Ergo - not a shiller then!

Do some research, find out what you like and then find the best that you can afford. Always make sure that it's a year of your choosing.

It happens a lot. I think it's called bid stacking and is somehow supposed to deter other bidders from trying to beat the current high bid.

Then why are they all for the same amount?Because if you are already the highest bidder and you increase your maximum bid, that new maximum should not be divulged to anybody.

This is what I don't understand about eBay. Here you have: j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:39:55 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:39:12 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:25:11 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:22:57 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:22:37 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:03:25 BST j***e £870.00 28-Jul-13 20:01:15 BST e***r £850.00 28-Jul-13 20:00:04 BST Now, e***r has an unsuccessful bid of £850 at 8 PM. In the next 39 minutes he (or someone) seems to have had seven attempts to outbid j***e. Yet there aren't seven increments of £5 between £850 and £870!! How do you explain that? On the coin itself, I wouldn't rate it as a £870 example. The hair detail of the strike just isn't strong enough, though it's good in all other respects. Nobody has tried to outbid j***e, the additional seven bids were all made by j***e, probably to ensure a bit of headroom to cover any last minute bids.

How did you highlight the box? I just tried and all I could highlight was the text inside the box. I managed to delete that ok. However, when I tried one more backspace (all the text had gone) it did delete the box alright, PLUS my reply, PLUS my presence in the topic, returning me to the previous topic I'd been in!!!! I'm not trying that again! It wasn't a momentary glitch - every time I try the same thing, the same weirdness happens. I'll just have to live with unremovable boxes. I simply REFUSE to use Firefox. It's easy. Just click on the 'switch' button in the reply toolbar (top left corner) and you can toggle between the graphical format and the text markup that you know and love.

That's not quite what I meant - you can certainly change people's quoted posts to e.g. bold, italic, and red, as I've just done with yours! But try to delete nested posts, and it's a different matter (before, you just deleted anything between a or even just bits of it). E.g., I can't see how to remove my nested quote here, and just leave yours. ETA: Interesting - putting {quote} and {/quote} - but using square brackets - has generated an empty quote box! ... or this? I've just pruned your nested quote.

Like this?

Editing seems to work ok for me, unless it looks different once I've hit the button to 'Add Reply'.

It does seem to work. Clicking on the image took me to the bbc web page you quoted.

Not sure. I suspect not, but have no evidence one way or the other.

I've no idea about the accuracy of the figures, but 1887 and 1893 come from the era of the Royal Mint Annual Report, which contain sections written by the head of each department. The reports from the die department contain the number of pieces coined and the number of dies used (obverse and reverse). As an example: in the production of just 54,864 gold £5 pieces in 1887, a whopping 429 obverse and 248 reverse dies were consumed. That's just under 128 coins per obverse die - probably less than a minute of run-time for the press.

Everybody else does too, but you can only see your own warning points.