Nick

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.

I was reading an article about the 1882 no-H penny which provided a reference to regulations introduced at the Mint in 1864. The reference is to B.M.C. page 417. Can anybody provide the details of the reference, as I don't have access to a copy of Peck's book?

It's a perfectly decent coin, but £700 is way too strong - it would probably make about half of that at auction.

I know of another three for certain, so the population will eventually turn out to be in double figures (if not three figures). I've got two, one of which I've had for several years without realizing they were that scarce. Hi Nick - two of what? The Halfcrown, Crown or the mule penny? Or two proof sets? There are (now I believe) three different proof sets - the standard set issued for general population (40,000 made); the VIP Set (as names implies) for special gifts and I suspect less than 100 made but could be as low as 20 and the (as far as I have been able to find) pre-production proof set that was given to advisers to the Bank of England. For the latter it is estimated that there are no more than six produced (but finding out details is quite difficult). Hi Bill, I highlighted in bold the relevant part of the reply, but in case it isn't that clear on some displays - I know of three (in addition to those known to CGS) of the 1+A proof halfcrowns. Gary D has two of them and I have another one. I find it hard to believe that there are so few of them. I found one within a few weeks of starting to look.

I've never heard of a 'shift' + key combination being used in that way, it's usually Ctrl or Ctrl-Shift etc. Is that an I-phone thing? Anyway, pressing Shift-R or A makes no difference to my web browsing experience. Yes its to do with phone browsers, some networks reduce the bandwidth by limiting the picture size until you request an improved image. i have never had it happen on my i-phone, but I have heard of other mobile users having similar issues. Thanks Colin. I just did a quick google to find out about it and it seems to be that some mobile internet providers have enabled high image compression by default to reduce the amount of bandwidth eaten up by downloading hi-res pictures. It also appears that it can be turned off if so desired and you're happy to pay for the consequences.

I've never heard of a 'shift' + key combination being used in that way, it's usually Ctrl or Ctrl-Shift etc. Is that an I-phone thing? Anyway, pressing Shift-R or A makes no difference to my web browsing experience.

I know of another three for certain, so the population will eventually turn out to be in double figures (if not three figures). I've got two, one of which I've had for several years without realizing they were that scarce. Of the three that I mentioned, two belong to you and the third is mine.