Gary1000

The 0.500 has the sword pointing to a tooth like the regular crowns

You'd need an accurate set of scales but the specific gravities are far enough apart to be able to work out which is which. If you tap it gently with a rench you should be able tell from the ring.

What worries me is the expectation that slabbing a coin increases its value. Why? It's the same coin whether slabbed or raw.

What worries me is the expectation that slabbing a coin increases its value. Why? It's the same coin whether slabbed or raw.

Well ... maybe. But personally I'd have thought (that in the UK/Europe at least) a coin will find it's value dependant on what it is and the condition. I'd be surprised if many (any?) members here would pay any more just because a coin is slabbed. Amen. I've often considered slabbing some high grade but fairly common hammered coins for the US market but I cannot see a slab in the UK adding a significant percentage to the value or sale price. Would the US market even take one look at a non-US slabbed coin. IMO if you want to sell to the US you need a US slab. Although I will say, one factor in CGS's favour is that they use the 100 scale so they can have higher numbers than the US TPG, great for playing the numbers game US collectors

Absolutely agree, I have many Three-Pounders! Therein lies the difference between WANTING a coin, and WAITING for one! I'm trying to up the few EF GVI shillings I have. Rarely does ebay come up with a photo anything like good enough to see better than EF.

I have a clearout every now and again, usually when I need funds. I'm about to have one now as the wife wants to go home for Christmas, yes we need to buy the tickets soon, and it'll make a hole in £3000.

My Peter Nicholls has a small hole drilled in the centre of the tight fitting holes so you can push something like a cocktail stick up from underneath to lift the coin out.

Well that didn't work how I expected. You will have to scroll down to my post where I attacked the picture.

Here's mine. link

Complete collection? What does that mean? I set my goal to collect 1900 to 1967 Farthing to Crown. Well I,ve added most of the major varieties and many of the minor one's as well to keep it going. Not much else to add now.

That's interesting to know as my collection is largely complete and I was thinking of banking it rather than spend £500 on insurance, you can buy a couple of good coins for that. Can you explain that a little more please! I'm just upgrading really now, all the major obtainable holes are filled. Really just things like the 1935 gold crown, the old 1920's cupro nickel bits, unconfirmed varieties ect which I don't expect to find for prices I can afford. I intend to sell my collection in about 7 years time and paying £500 a year for the next 7 year so that it can stand in the corner of my living room. I can think of better things to spend my money on.

That's interesting to know as my collection is largely complete and I was thinking of banking it rather than spend £500 on insurance, you can buy a couple of good coins for that.

It's a case of horses for courses. If you have a British coin and you want a slab to validate its variety attribution then you've got to go with CGS. US graders just don't seem to have the depth of experience with British coin varieties. Frustratingly, NGC don't recognise Groom's 20th Century varieties. They only recognise a very few bog standard 20th Century varieties such as the 1902 low tide penny. So how do you get a variety slabbed, go to someone else until you find someone that recognises it?

I don't think anybody's opinion will have changed. It's either a crude forgery, or some sort of 'fantasy' piece. Your only hope would be that there is some gold content. To me it looks like a mock coin like used in cheap jewellery

Like Vicky, I also believe that TPGs do take into account on the position of the marks. The PCGS website give the following defintition for MS65 "Minor marks/hairlines though none in focal areas, above average strike". By "focal" areas, I assume they mean the face or an important part of the design on the reverse. I think they must do. But surely they should not. The position of a contact mark can affect desirability and hence value but should not affect the grade. We're talking slabs here, the grade's got to be effected otherwise collectors are going to have to actually start looking at the coin in the slab.

And of course an over valued coin has some bargaining room

Yes, I always thought that verd was a copper, bronze & nickel brass issue, rather than a silver one. Had a strange experience with my uncirculated 1919 shilling a few months back. Took one of the shilling drawers from my cabinet, and noticed what ~ for all the world ~ looked like green verd at the base of the 1919 shilling reverse. On removing the shilling, and very lightly rubbing the base of the shilling, the green material just fell away as though it was powder. Obviously it wasn't verd, but quite what the hell it actually was, I've absolutely no idea. No residue was left behiind. Incidentally, talking about slabs, does anybody know if any form of spontaneous or continued deterioration, can occur in the slab ? Or does the act of slabbing arrest the action of any deleterious outside agent already on the coin ? Probably sounds a naive, simplistic question, but I'm no metallurgist. If there is a harmful chemical already on the coin (but initally undetected), then there is no doubt that slabbing cannot prevent it from reacting with the metal in due time. The link in my last post describes a situation where a spot (damage due to previous long term contact with PVC) only developing after the coin has been slabbed. However, I do think these cases relatively uncommon. Obviously, such coins will develop problems whether you slab them or not and so slabbing cannot be blamed for the issues. Perhaps the coin should get a good dip before slabbing

Thank you, I'll look into that. For 19th century stuff is British Silver Coins Since 1816 a good reference? Thanks for the information. Dave Groom's book gives you for 1900-on everything in Davies and more. I 'd just stick to Dave's book if you aren't interested in pre 1900.

Dipped, polished, scraped, buffed... and now a new cleaning term - mangled I guess you could say it's been ebayed

Which customs problem? A guy on another forum had to pay customs to receive his coins back.Later I will try to find a link. If you send abroad and want it back in the UK you will be hit for VAT on any value you asign to it. A fully insured value could get high. I guess if you send it to Heritage an get them to slab it before auctioning it there would be no duty to pay.

I prefer to see it that way. Although, I'll run with any method as long as it produces an interesting date. Besides which it's more unusual to get date "anomalies" (for want of a better word), which involves the entire year, rather than just the last two digits of it. 12.12.12 is unique, and doesn't work with 2012 But yes, yours is another palindrome. There are also some interesting hours, minutes and seconds palindromes that occur every day!! In a mischievous mood, sorry! I guess it won't matter anymore after the 21st anyway. I think I'll put my whole collection on ebay to finish on the 20th and go out in style

But still some interesting date combos left. Next year, for example, we've got 11/12/13 02/02/2020 is a perfect palindrome ~ the converse of 20/02/2002 ....to name but two..... Incidentally, next year is the first since 1987, not to have at least 2 digits the same. How's about 21-02-2012 works much better than 12-12-2012

absolutely right, Rob, and I can't be doing with looking at every 1964 that gets listed, so I had to snap these up, if only for the time it saves. I charge £10 an hour to my gardening clients, so after 90 mins looking for those varieties, I've broken even! Now all I need to do is to mock up some of them tricky 65s... Never seen a 65 yet apart from the one I've got. The biggest problem with ebay sellers is if they know they are only going to make 99p they only show one side, usually not the important one.

He does accept returns, just doesn't know it.