pokal02

Managed 4 out of the 8 I wanted (and probably overpaid for 2 of them, although not dramatically). Fortunately I've spent very little in the last 4 months, still left a bit of a hole in the wallet though...

What do people recommend for Crown collections? I've got van Roekel, Rees-Jones, Whetmore and Karon - anything obvious (within the last, say, 40 years) I should get? For my groats I've got Buck, Brady & now Motcomb - anything else?

I managed to get a free copy by e-mailing them. Will be doing a lot of bidding on Thur, over 50% of my gaps are potentially fillable. (Hopefully there don't seem to be too many groat collectors on this site!!)

It's impossible to generalise. I generally avoid milled coins with serious defects, although I don't mind a bit of scratching or polishing provided the price is discounted accordingly. Hammered is more difficult. I'd obviously rather have full, round coins but sometimes it just isn't possible particularly for Anglo-Saxon. Affordability is a factor too, for example a good Henry IV groat with no defects is well outside my price range, so my Henry IV groat has a small fragment missing and looks polished too although otherwise it's NVF. I'd rather have it than an undamaged one in say Fair-NF, although I know others will disagree.

Croydon are OK in the lesser grades - their Fine is as harsh as mine, but their EF tends to be my VF.

Agree that Spink & Mark Rasmussen are fairly strict (nearly as strict as me!) AMR and Studio Coins next best.

Nice coin, just traces of wear on obv, EF/ GEF for me

NVF for me too. I must be getting more lenient in my old age!

Again many gaps/upgrades - if I'm keeping it realistic, a 1643 Oxford Crown S2947, a Durham House groat and an Ethelbert 1d. 2 of the 3 would represent a good year.

....and a further trawl through the catalogues suggests my piece is almost identical to the third 'bust 1' in the Brady auction, i.e. the later cloak & broken saltires & slightly droopy moustache. . It seems that the Stewartby book is bringing forward the start of bust 2, both by saying that broken saltires are bust 2 and by stating that Canterbury/York started at this bust while Spink/North start them @ bust 1 'variety'. Whether this is the result of further research or just an opinion I'm not sure.

Thanks all. My specimen I was unsure about seems to have broken saltires and was sold as A1 although I think it's closer to B. I'm going to put it down as a late bust 1 for now. Dividing by stops is slightly easier than busts, although the transition from saltire to a broken saltire must still have been an ongoing process.

It seems quite difficult to match the Laker busts to the 'bust 1-6' classification used by Spink & Stewartby. I can see that A=1, E=3 but can't work out where bust 2 starts. Laker says that the provincial mints started at bust B which I took to mean B,C and D = bust 2. (as Canterbury/York didn't issue any bust 1's). The Shuttleworth auction catalogue describes at least one specimen as bust 1, Laker B. Stewartby further confuses me by putting the dividing line between 1 & 2 as the change in stops from quatrefoils to trefoils. Is there a generally accepted answer - given the state of most specimens it's not always easy to distinguish busts A1, B & C or the exact kind of stops? .

According to the Telegraph today, a hoard of c. 160 pennies was found near Watlington, Oxon recently mostly of Coelwulf II. This is interesting as I believe there were only nine specimens known previously. Presumably we can expect some to find their way to the market and reduce the five-figure prices on these by (?) 75% or so? ( I'm currently lacking one so would hope they come down quite a bit!). When was the last example of a reign/major type becoming 10+ times more common overnight? Most Burgred coins were discovered in 1817, there must be a more recent example?

I was definitely not intending to criticise the Rotographic book - indeed, I agree it's a must-have & would like there to be one covering Charles II- George II too. It's a fair reflection of how many dealers grade now - it's just that I tend to think that VF & EF grading was harsher 20 years ago and I've tried to stick to this, which is why I'm on the lower end of most of these 'guess the grade' discussions.

I'd say GVF only (still good for £8 though). Am I in the minority in thinking a lot of Rotographic's EF's (and VF's) to be a tad lenient?

Among 'what a waste' coins I've seen are enamelled 1853 and 1821 TERTIO edge crowns and a Richard groat (not sure whether 2nd or 3rd) cut in half for one of those penknife jobbies. Why don't those that mutilate coins stick to 1967 pennies!

NEF and Fine respectively for me.

I'd say a nice GF (would want a bit more detail on the three lions to go NVF)

My plain edge proof is .925 and doesn't have the U over N in unita so I was getting a bit worried about it. However a quick trawl through the web has revealed that although the majority of the plain edge proofs have the U over N, at least three recent ones (Heritage, St James and DNW) have not. I don't think that many fakes would have got through unchallenged. So I might even have a slightly rarer variety!

I've got very confused with the Gothic crowns listing, particularly the plain edge proofs. They seem to be saying that almost all of them were struck in .999 silver and have either u over n in unita or m over m in dom (anything else they show as R6). Surely this is not right? My understanding was most were struck in .925 silver and not all have one of the two overstrikes, although they are all struck with upright die axis as opposed to the undecimo's which were mostly inverted. If they are right there must be more forgeries about then genuine ones...

Liked the provenances at the back - we can now know where e.g. the 1674 crown has appeared. Thought they'd tinker with the rarity ratings a bit more, e.g the 1654 crown is still shown as R3 despite being about as common as the 1652 which is R. ;

I think if Spink etc catalogues took average auction prices for the year, the values would be a bit lower (and more realistic). I don't know if they include dealers' average prices, the problem with this is that all the ridiculous over-grading and silly asking prices (£600+ for a 1927 crown, anyone) get factored in to the average. A lot of even not-very-rare coins would only turn up once a year or not at all though (when's the last time you saw, say, a 1669 crown, or even a Henry VIIi 3rd coinage York groat, in VF) so I suppose there's a lot of guesswork involved.

For me small nicks scarcely matter (I'd rather have a GF with a small nick than an F without one). I guess they would if I was collecting FDC or to a lesser extent EF.

There's currently a Churchill crown on ebay (actually there are hundreds, but what stands out about this one is the £500.00 asking price). Seller has a zero feedback too. At least he/she doesn't say it's rare.

Much better than mine, haven't seen many Henrys that good.