Gary1000

happy nights Now wasn't that a missed opportunity. When I was about 15 I went out with a girl who would always brought her best friend......... What was his name? Paul.....ine Yes Silvia and Pauline, interesting times. That was my first introduction to coin collecting, started with a run of thrupenny bits.

There might be quite a bun-fight if one ever appears listed as such. They must be pretty darn rare, your VF is the only one that I've ever heard of. It's the only one I've ever come across as well, it actually came from Davies himself.

You'll have run into the same problems that a lot of people face trying to get G6 as well. And that is the major Auction houses don't bother with them accept in bulk lots (so you have to be there, really), and eBay is useless for such things because, forgetting the fact the images are never good enough to decipher an EF from an UNC (at best), the postage generally makes buying them at book price a prohibitive thing, unless you are going to buy a number of coins from the same ebayer (and good luck with that). The only way, is to buy a number of coins from the same dealer [to save on post], or attend a coin fair (and turn a blind eye to fuel costs). There's no easy answer, unfortunately, as it's not like say a Victorian coin, where a rubbish image on eBay can have you speculate a VF bid, whilst you're suspecting the coin might be VF and better. With E2 & G6, if an EF arrives, when you were hoping for an UNC, you've thrown your money away, as you will never be able to sell it on and get your money back. Here's where you've just got to have a dealer who's judgement in grading you 100% trust! Nothing else will do! I was lucky and picked up a date run in UNC. They are not easy to find in high grades because dealer haven't really caught on to E11 yet. I actually managed last week to upgrade my 1955 F to gap after looking for a year or two. Do you mean F to bead? F to gap is much the easier of the two for that date. Sorry your correct. I had also upgraded my to gap recently from about GEF but that was more from not looking. My F to bead was only about EF. Just leaves the 1965 Davies 2503 which I have in VF.

Did you pay lots of money for this coin by any chance beings you are happy to ignore the many years of experience on this forum.

You'll have run into the same problems that a lot of people face trying to get G6 as well. And that is the major Auction houses don't bother with them accept in bulk lots (so you have to be there, really), and eBay is useless for such things because, forgetting the fact the images are never good enough to decipher an EF from an UNC (at best), the postage generally makes buying them at book price a prohibitive thing, unless you are going to buy a number of coins from the same ebayer (and good luck with that). The only way, is to buy a number of coins from the same dealer [to save on post], or attend a coin fair (and turn a blind eye to fuel costs). There's no easy answer, unfortunately, as it's not like say a Victorian coin, where a rubbish image on eBay can have you speculate a VF bid, whilst you're suspecting the coin might be VF and better. With E2 & G6, if an EF arrives, when you were hoping for an UNC, you've thrown your money away, as you will never be able to sell it on and get your money back. Here's where you've just got to have a dealer who's judgement in grading you 100% trust! Nothing else will do! I was lucky and picked up a date run in UNC. They are not easy to find in high grades because dealer haven't really caught on to E11 yet. I actually managed last week to upgrade my 1955 F to gap after looking for a year or two.

Your link talks largely about weak strikes, your coin is showing post mint damage whatever the cause.

Glendinings sale on Wed October 30th 1974 sold one, lot 356 graded as "practically mint state" and sold for 1500 quid hammer Mmm, sounds good now, but back then I bought my first house for £6000, so £1500 was quite a price. £1500 in 1974, that's probably around £40,000 now so it wasn't much of an investment On Tony Claytons website the 1798 is valued at £18,000 in UNC! The point I was trying to make is that you would have been better off putting the money into a house. If in 1974 a house was £6000 so £1500 would be 1/4 of a house. Now in 2013 the average value of a house is about £160,000 so 1/4 would be £40,000 making £18,000 look like a pretty poor investment. I should have said in my area, the UK average is nearer £240k so that an even poorer investment

Glendinings sale on Wed October 30th 1974 sold one, lot 356 graded as "practically mint state" and sold for 1500 quid hammer Mmm, sounds good now, but back then I bought my first house for £6000, so £1500 was quite a price. £1500 in 1974, that's probably around £40,000 now so it wasn't much of an investment On Tony Claytons website the 1798 is valued at £18,000 in UNC! The point I was trying to make is that you would have been better off putting the money into a house. If in 1974 a house was £6000 so £1500 would be 1/4 of a house. Now in 2013 the average value of a house is about £160,000 so 1/4 would be £40,000 making £18,000 look like a pretty poor investment.

Ah but it's still different, because whilst it may have been rare it was still a possibility. For example in 1992 I saw a 1930s George V florin in circulation. So even though it was rare and only happened once in all those years, it did happen. The lady who worked at the local post office kept it. See that's not even a possibility now not with legal tender anyhow. The only thing you can get these days is predecimals used deceptively, such as farthings, halfpennies and shillings as 1p, 2p and 10p coins respectively, although that's seldom now. I remember it used to happen more frequently in the early 1990s. I can't remember the last time I got a predecimal in change (which I'd love to happen), or even an old 5p. I was relating more to the collector of today collecting the coins of today. No one would expect to be able to pull pre-decimal from there change. And when I started collecting the chances of pulling a Victorian coin from your change had about as much chance as your 1930s florin. 90% of the coins were GVI upwards

Glendinings sale on Wed October 30th 1974 sold one, lot 356 graded as "practically mint state" and sold for 1500 quid hammer Mmm, sounds good now, but back then I bought my first house for £6000, so £1500 was quite a price. £1500 in 1974, that's probably around £40,000 now so it wasn't much of an investment According to an inflation calculator website, it's actually just over £15k in today's terms! Are but a quarter of a house is about £40,000

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year? I did start collecting from change about a couple of years before decimalisation. I don't think the mix available was much different to now, ok you could find the very occassional pre-George VI but it was rare. Most of that kind of thing came from grandparents etc.

"Half a Dollar" was in common usage for the halfcrown in Liverpool when i was a lad - found it confusing because £1 was US $2.80 at the time Likewise. That harks back to the good old days when there were $4 to the pound. Apparently the crown was also called an Oxford. http://www.fun-with-words.com/money_words.html

Heck, I can't even get excited about it either, and I collect coins. I still find it hard to get even remotely interested in the 1970s bronzes, let alone the small 5p. The only vaguely interesting things about the modern coinage to me is the 1988 £1 coin (not rare really, but cool to find one in circulation) and the 10p die varieties, to me that's like hunting down a rare coin, lets face it none of the dates of current coins are actually rare, or likely to ever be, so it's got to rivet counting... Of course with the cupronickel 10p coins withdrawn, well that just leaves the 1988 £1 coin as the little ray of sunshine. I can't get excited about the commemorative coins because I despise commemoratives, talk about forced... 250 years of some other event or person's birth/death that we neither care about or even were aware of. Please save stuff like that for stamps. Production of coins for commerce really seems like a second priority, and I seen more coins with flaws in the last few years than ever in my 20 odd years of collecting. Consider 50 years ago, how many collectors collected then modern coins. Go back 100 years and how many collectors collected the then modern coins. It's not something new to call in coins to melt. There's still more than enough pre-decimal out there to keep us collectors happy forever. I don't expect the early decimal to be any different to the collectors of fifty year hence.

I guess purely for trade purposes, the first step towards a world currency.

There are other metals as well. Private patterns means you can do what you want - as indeed can the RM. I think I posted an image somewhere. What was the primary purpose of a private pattern? Was it a private submission to a Royal Mint commission for a currency coin? Usually. You have to remember that contracts were given out worldwide for currency, so any coin would show the engraver's/manufacturer's competence. Some were popular despite being rejected by the RM such as Moore's model pennies and halfpennies to the extent that they had to publicly disclaim them. Another box ticked! Thanks, Rob! Who owned the artistic image in the coin or note?the artist the engaver or the mint? Whoever commissioned it I guess.

That sounds like my approach - you use the "darker coloured folders" method, i.e. the ones that show new content? No, I just look at the dates as I did with this one. I've never stopped to work out what all the various symbols and colours mean. Same ere, wot colors

Picture's a bit small but it does look rather bright. I wouldn't be surprised if it's had a bit of a dip. Still it looks a nice coin, I certainly wouldn't throw it out of my collection if I had it.

I would suspect all the incuse errors are likely to be unique as I assume the error is caused by the coin jumping in the rollers, rather than the raised edge error being cause by the collar being assembled incorrectly.

Plastic was invented in 1855, 158 years ago, i think the problem lies in that there was no TPGs in 1856 and they did'nt think about plastic holders back then They used to vanish them, not a lot different really.

That makes ebay's fees sound quite eye watering by comparison

I am all for them being conservative on the higher grades but I just have a sneaking feeling (and my experience is more London Coins than CGS in fairness) that they leave the lower grades, particularly fine, with too much ground to cover. There was one rare and expensive coin I recall that they slabbed as 'fine' which I thought was nearer to 'fair'. On the other hand there have been occasions when I thought they might have been one-third of a grade low which at least is erring on the right side. These are just observations on my part and really shouldn't be given too much weight. What would be particularly interesting is how they would sell in an American auction. I wonder is they would be completely ignored.

Why don't you ask CGS, PCGS and any other TPG why they won't slab a cleaned coin? Yet they will conserve a coin before slabbing it. Maybe not CGS. So if you have a set of Queen Anne silver candle sticks it's prefereable to leave them black rather than give them a clean occassionally.

Peter, I have spent hours upon hours on that bloody platform and I am still waiting for it to happen. My wife is a Penrith lass however Obviously the wife and yourself didn't spend much time on the station at the same time.

I would like to make the distinction between dipped and polished. Dipped high grade silver I have no problem with, bronze I'm not so sure about. I do get the idea though many collector saw a 1933 penny on the ground sticking out of a dog turd half would not pick it up and the other half certainly wouldn't wash it.

I first started collecting coins, had previously dabbled with stamps in my teens. With coins I ran out of steam probably in the early ninties I think because of all that was being minted was endless comemeratives and the likes which were unlikely ever to have any value and much less than the purchase price. I think stamps went the same way even ealier so people just lost interest. There was no more chase, you just waited for the next set to appear ever few weeks. The post office was just churning out more and more junk issues for collectors purely as a revenue stream. I think coin collecting is going the same way. Who in there right mind collects modern commeratives?