Emperor Oli

CU Aethelred on CU forums (who I think might be a member here, albeit a fleeting one) seemed to get quite a score with this eBay lot. See the photos further in the thread!

Close to uncirculated condition indeed.

Definitely not, it's wonderful!

It was marvellous because the day previous there were workmen removing these seemingly permanent concrete bollards to stop terrorists or whatever getting close to Parliament and do damage to it, just to let the Queen's carriage through. Must have cost a fortune!

Hi All Just got back from a week's work experience with my MP in Westminster. Luckily, it was the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday which was amazing! We stood outside a government building on Parliament Street where the procession would take place. After ages of standing around hearing the bands play and seeing the soldiers march, along came some cars. When the Prime Minister drove past, the band struck up the Imperial March from Star Wars which was quite amusing. The Imperial State Crown went past in its own carriage, as did the Mace. After that, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in their carriage passed through as did others such as the Princess Royal amidst many a horse and shining silver helmet. Once everyone had gone into the Palace, we dashed back inside the building and through a tunnel leading to the Central Lobby where all the MPs etc file past. Although we were right at the back because we arrived late, I still managed to see the heads of most of the people who passed through which was rather interesting! When Black Rod requested that the Commons go to the Lords to hear the Speech from the Queen, Dennis Skinner shouted "Is Helen Mirren on standby?" which caused uproar. Later on in the day I managed to get tickets to see the debate on the Speech afterwards where the public gallery was full to bursting. Quite an experience!

Looks okay to me, just polished to death.

It was said on another forum that Britannia is helmet-less which I hadn't even noticed!

I think I quite like this one, the Britannia series seems remarkedly good in contrast to some of the other commemoratives cranked out.

It depends on which guide you use, some are more useful than others. Speaking generally, Spink tends to overestimate most coins by quite a margin. The Collectors' Coins series tends to be on the money if you're buying. Obviously it depends on what series you're collecting, so there isn't really a definitive answer to the question without qualifying it. Just remember that a guide is just that, a guide.

Just reading a thread on CU about images people "nailed", i.e. they were as close to the true look of a coin as possible. The first image of this coin I thought was quite something! The toning isn't particularly to my taste in the second view of it, but the cameo effect is amazing.

Excellent work, Chris. Rotographic has taken off since you took over.

Will do

I deleted about five spam threads all in one go today. It was interesting because some of them didn't have links in.

I don't understand how he is so anti-racist according to his profile i.e. against the persecution of people because of their skin colour, yet is vehemently homophobic i.e. persecutes homosexuals because of their sexual orientation.

You should go ahead and make up your own mind rather than have people who wrote thousands of years ago do it for you. It's all a fairy tale anyway - I mean "lakes of fire" is like something out of Tolkein.

Er...yes...why? G I was thinking the same thing.

whoops I just edited your post to fix the link but you beat me to it!

Welcome, Aidan. You seem very qualified in those areas, a very worthy addition to the forum!

How interesting. I never thought of that!

I read a book about that a few months ago. Semper Augustus was the most valuable bulb which sold for about 10,000 Dutch Guilders, the annual wage of about seventy low skilled workers.

General Studies really is a complete waste of time. Multiple choice for one paper and the rest is extended writing which isn't particularly challenging. I don't know why they don't do away with it. Critical thinking was a bit of a bore but I'm glad that I did it. We had to learn flaws in arguments, weight of evidence, things like that. In the exam those things were applied to various scenarios; for example, a plane crashed and there were two conflicting reports of what happened. You had to weigh up both sides and come to a judgement.

This year I did Politics, Economics, Maths, German, General Studies, and Critical Thinking. General Studies was only timetabled for an hour a week which was a bit of a joke as we didn't do much in the lesson either. Critical Thinking was optional and perhaps one quarter of the year did it (that was only one hour per week too). About analysing arguments and logic, things like that. I'm dropping German next year, and Critical Thinking isn't offered at A2 so I'm carrying on with Politics, Economics, Maths, and General Studies.

Just as a post-script to the CU thread, it seems the seller in question fabricated his whole story.

So even PCGS slabs are fallible. 18 pages on that topic in a matter of hours just shows how much of a stink this has kicked up. What does that make them now besides glorified capsules? We now know that coins can be AT'ed whilst in them, counterfeits have been slabbed, and grading is often dodgy (as we saw in that MS65 Morgan thread I think someone posted a few days ago). People will still pay ludicrous money for them though.

That looks very promising, Chris! Once there are higher grade pieces in my area, I shall be sure to buy some.