Mr T

I had never noticed this either but I read about it in one of Michael Gouby's books recently. I don't think the reason was given but the point he made was that pennies with the weight you'd expect were definitely tested (the so-called heavy flan pennies mentioned in Freeman) at some point to overcome whatever minting issues they were having at the time.

The 1939 is comparatively low mintage and I think the 1893 (or somewhere in the early 1890s) is fairly low mintage too. I don't think the 1920 or 1921 are exceptionally expensive though. There are 60 or more different varieties of the 1862 of which some are quite rare.

The Coinage Act 1971 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/24) is heavy reading but section 3 (a), ( and © say that pretty much anything goes if the Queen says so. I don't know how that works in reality but I assume some committee agrees to what the Royal Mint suggests and the Queen just agrees with what the committee says. edit: ignore the previous post - the forum stripped off most of what I said.

If so, I understand there's a table of outputs towards the back and I'd like to know how many of what denominations (if any) were minted for the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands.

In Australia at least 1000000 were "one in a million" with all other notes having 6 digits. The 1000000 notes were created from an extra sheet with serial number 100000 which was guillotined and then each note had an extra zero added with a small manual press. The reason was so that there would be an even number of notes, and, when it came to bundling, the number of notes could quickly and easily be counted by looking at the serials of the first and last notes and subtracting. I assume a similar thing happened in England.

For me as an Australian collector strike is a huge factor - plenty of Perth Mint pennies and halfpennies have indistinct rim beads and ill-defined high points on the portrait. I know coins with such poor strike can be technically uncirculated, but I can't come to considering them uncirculated, let alone paying good money for them because PCGS doesn't mind terrible strike.

Do these notes normally have six digit serial numbers? 1000000 is seven digits which would surely make a bit more special than any other serial number (except maybe solid 0's).

Do you have link to an image or listing? The search feature on the Spink site doesn't seem to work. Wait, never mind, see https://www.spink.com/files/catalogue/14007.pdf (p142). This seems to be BP 1953 L, not the seemingly more common F244. Here's the previous sale I was thinking of: http://www.londoncoins.co.uk/?page=Pastresults&auc=144&searchlot=386&searchtype=2 Some more discussion at http://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/9390-1953-penny-mule-rob-bernie/ with what looks like allusions to the second ??? in my list. Here you go mate https://www.spink.com/lot-description.aspx?id=14007000929 - Damn at my bid of £ 2550 I thought I was going to win it Ah thanks - much better image. It really does look like a currency piece.

Hm, and the same die was then used for the proof sets. Anyone happen to have copy of Spink Numismatic Circular, Volume XCIV, Number 5, June 1986, p.148?

I heard someone recently talking about an Android emulator - DroidX or something like that which apparently supports loading apps from your computer. The discussion concerned a Mac version but maybe there's a Windows version?

I don't have one but if you're not already going through bags of 10p coins from the bank, do it - it really speeds up the search for this sort of thing.

Do you have link to an image or listing? The search feature on the Spink site doesn't seem to work. Wait, never mind, see https://www.spink.com/files/catalogue/14007.pdf (p142). This seems to be BP 1953 L, not the seemingly more common F244. Here's the previous sale I was thinking of: http://www.londoncoins.co.uk/?page=Pastresults&auc=144&searchlot=386&searchtype=2 Some more discussion at http://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/9390-1953-penny-mule-rob-bernie/ with what looks like allusions to the second ??? in my list.

Looks real to me too - I think fishtailing near the clip is a characteristic of genuine clips and N and E of NEW certainly have fishtailing.

I see. Re F244 and BP 1953 L, the obverse dies apparently have a different number of rim beads (minor difference, but a difference nonetheless). I think Gouby mentioned an F244 from a VIP proof set but BP 1953 L just had a matte finish (or at least Gouby didn't call it a proof). Was there a proof set sold recently with a mule? I remember seeing a picture of one and the penny to me looked like a proof.

I think it's your choice. Here in Australia at least plenty of people buy coins removed from packing, plenty buy coins still in the packaging. That said, collector coins I think would tend to sell for less if not in their original packing.

What I find absolutely confusing is eBay's regular emails which ask me if I'm still interested in items I have already bought.

I've been reading a bit lately about all the different types of 1953 penny and this is what I have come up with: 1952 pattern: toothed border on obverse and reverse (F243A) ???: regular proof set obverse and toothed border on reverse (BP 1953 L) ???: beaded border on obverse and toothed border on reverse (F244), from VIP proof set (in all VIP proof sets or just some?) ???: beaded border on obverse and no beads on reverse (BP 1953 N) Specimen set coin: beaded border on obverse and reverse (F245) Regular proof set coin: beaded border on obverse and reverse but obverse is slightly different to specimen set (F246) Is that correct? Are the VIP proof sets a separate thing the regular proof sets or not? And where did BP 1953 L come from? Was it also in proof sets? And have I missed any?

I think the Edward VII florin is pretty good:

So it will be worth a fortune in years to come!

Interesting - not sure that the first letter-writer's argument about it being good fit for a decimal system is that convincing though.

Hm, I hadn't considered it before but I don't know how the emulator accepts touch - presumably with the mouse but it might be a bit of nuisance doing things that way.

Don't know about British notes but in Australia the 1000000 numbered notes were hand numbered because of the extra digit and so are reasonably rare and valuable.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html contains the official Android emulator I believe but it looks to be mostly geared towards people making their own apps so you might need a bit of know-how to do what you want. There is an iOS emulator that comes with XCode I believe but I'm not sure if you can run apps that you haven't created yourself with it. Android apps are just files with the extension .apk and I think can be loaded in the Android emulator without too much trouble but iOS apps I think are an apparently meaningless collection of files that aren't conveniently bundled together and aren't really designed to be handled outside of iTunes. But I don't have a Mac so I'm not entirely sure.

Okay, never mind, I found the answer here: http://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/4687-whowhat-is-satin/

Oh, and the Jerrams book on pennies is even more up-to-date than the Gouby book is it? And is the reference to Satin at http://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/5500-1937-penny-die-variations/page-2#entry44914 yet another book?