Nick

Totally agree! It's impossible to not just read VF, the psychology of it is just too much...especially so if you've sent the raw coin off! It would make good business sense for CGS to make this change (maybe one for you to feed back, Bill?)! My point being, would Paulus use CGS again? Would I? CGS won't have compromised their tough standards in adopting the above suggestion! I don't know why they bother with the grade prefixes at all. Why not just stick with the percentages as a measure. Then those who think that a 70 is an EF and those who think it is an AU can both be happy.

I'm pleased that I didn't make myself look foolish on the predictions although I was a bit high on some. The only surprise for me was that the 1834 came in as low as it did, but all in all, I think you can have confidence in the consistency of their grading and we'll wait and hope for a good result when you see the proceeds of the sales.

An 1894 penny. Quite nice - except for the fingerpriints. They gave it an AU78. Can I ask which TPG it was? I think Red already told you. AU78 rules out NGC and PCGS, so it's gonna be CGS.

Interesting that you say more wear on that one. I would say less wear, but more weakness. Those lions are notoriously weak on some of the Gothic florins. I'll stick my neck out, with an AU78 prediction. Thanks Nick, that's just my ignorance for you! Don't count on it. It's just my opinion, no more, no less. I'm sure that one of the 'gods' will give you a more categorical answer.

Interesting that you say more wear on that one. I would say less wear, but more weakness. Those lions are notoriously weak on some of the Gothic florins. I'll stick my neck out, with an AU78 prediction.

LOL, Nick, just realized we have similar interest and even names are similar! I haven't reached this level yet - we will see. I am trying to find a good database of numismatic data for 1800 onwards UK coins (e.g. good solution picture with details explained, weight, size etc.), seems there is none I had to combine information from http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk, http://coinsgb.com and also our http://coinsgb.com I think I will end up making own database or webpage soon... maybe I missed some good websites? BTW, if admin can see this, the forums 'read first' post has invalid links to grading etc. The weights of silver coins are pretty easy to remember (or at least to work out). All you need to remember is that a crown nominally weighs 0.9090 troy ounces and the others can be worked out from that (halfcrown = 0.4545, florin = 0.3636, shilling = 0.1818 etc). Then you'll probably need to convert troy ounces to grams which is multiply by 31.1034768.

And possibly the best piece of advice is "Don't believe everything that you read", and that includes forum posts too!

I've never been any good at grading Gothic florins, I'll take a stab at EF60 +/- 5.

I believe that for G4 HCs, all of the veins in the laurel leaves need to be pretty much intact for EF (or better) to be considered.

I don't think CGS will see them that way. I suspect that grades somewhere in the VF55-EF60 are more likely, but hope they rate a little higher. please advise where you have seen better. If you look on Mark Rasmussen's website in the archive section there are a couple there that look to be higher grades, but are only described as EF.

This is a cracking 1834 halfcrown. I expect CGS would grade around the 78-82 mark.

I don't think CGS will see them that way. I suspect that grades somewhere in the VF55-EF60 range are more likely, but hope that they rate a little higher.

They do seem to turn up in auctions pretty regularly (and in fairly high grades too). I don't know whether they all ended up in South America or not, but if they did, more than their fair share have made the return journey.

Lucky Bevpub indeed.... private listings always leave me slightly suspicious however! What was it, penny or shilling? We'll never know for sure. That's why I never bid on private listings.

I just copied out the address at the top of the DNS error page. Yes, well you want to be looking at the address that caused the DNS error, not the webpage where you ended up. I assumed that was the same thing. I.e. that the link you clicked on was still the one showing, but as the browser couldn't find it, it returned a DNS error. Patently not. Try hovering over the original link or just copy the link URL and paste into a text file.

I just copied out the address at the top of the DNS error page. Yes, well you want to be looking at the address that caused the DNS error, not the webpage where you ended up.

Dunno what you're looking at Peck but the original has two lots of http as follows: "http://http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/News/Mexican-8-reales-coin-shines-with-15pc-increase-on-estimate/13349.page?catid=26" If it hadn't had an obvious fault, I wouldn't have been able to correct it and post a proper link.

There already is. It still doesn't work. There are two lots of http: in the original link. This link has just one and the colon and does work.

Glad to be of some use. I'm happy to help out with photo manipulation if anybody needs some assistance.

Here's 1949's penny with the other sides superimposed.

And here is a picture showing a die clashed 1839 shilling reverse with a composite showing both sides merged together to show where the outline of the obverse design might be expected to appear on the reverse.

It occurs when the dies are struck together without a blank in between. You'd have thought it would be catastrophic but it seems that they survive pretty well, leaving just an impression of one on the other. Clashed dies are extremely numerous on pre-Jubilee Victorian coins, especially the smaller denominations.

My point is that none of us start off as as expert, and anybody that claims that they've never bought something that they later regret is probably lying. Personally, you can polish your 1839 proof set as much as you like - just don't claim that it's FDC when you decide to sell it.

Sounds like you think that the gullible deserve to be parted from their money.

Many thanks Declan. The 1882 penny connection was a bit of a red herring, it was the reference to the usage of the dies that I was interested in.