Colin88

1905 Shillings are also subject to forgery but they are many times more obvious than the halfcrown...more often than not its a case case of a clumsy recut "5" ...then all you have to do is look at the "E" of "DEF" on the obverse and you'll see it's the normal 1902 type obverse. There is a seller on eBay who has sold quite a few of these even recently..(and I even worked out where he bought them from)..unfortunately you cant contact the poor buyers any more and warn them. I gave both of these people the benefit of the doubt..because I'm a Christian (you can still say that, cant you??)..eBay have been informed...I've informed them....but on a scale on 0-10, guess how much notice they took? ....but the good news is, eBay got their fees....

A few years back I bought the 1860 Copper penny (60/59) from a dealer. When it arived inside the jiffy bag it was tightly wrapped in bubble wrap and cellotape....after a while I lost patience with it trying to get it out and used a large pair of scissors to force through the bubble wrap and cellotape......well it went through alright and through the platic envelope and made a large scratch on the obverse of the coin...thus taking a huge junk off the value......I sold it recently and many other rare and high grade pennies that I'd fallen out of love with ....for the second time in 30 years..I may start again...!

Love that word 'modulus' dont you? The 1860 Farthing is a gold Lauer Pattern....ex Plymouth Auction Rooms of "English Pattern Gold Coins" 18/4/2008....ex Murdoch Lot 538 ....Standard Catlalogue of World Gold Coins by Krause & Micheler Number PPN 49. Next time I get them out .....oooer missus....I'll attach a photo...its a beauty.

Personaly 1905 halfcrowns make me nervous.....those 40 or so high grade fakes (made in the late 70's I believe) are still doing the rounds.....they are absolutely amazing copies....one of the very few ways to tell is that the "i" on "QVI" of the Honi Soit Qvi Mal Y Pense" is not struck up properly and very very slightly 'wobbly' at the top ....that why I've stuck to a 1903 in Unc and left high grade 05's well alone.

Re the 1860 Halfpenny.....very simply, in 1860 a radically new style and type of Penny/Halfpenny and Farthing were issued for circulation....these were now made in 'bronze' and were far smaller,lighter than the Pennies/Halfpennies and farthings that had previously circulated until then, which had been much larger, heavier and had been made of copper.....a couple of shillings worth in your trousers and you would have walked with a limp. Only a handful of the older style copper pennies/halfpennies and farthings were dated 1860....and they were in fact coins dated 1859 that had had their dies recut to 1860...it's these that are extremely rare and to which you were refering to. They are also known in gold...I have an 1860 farthing in gold.

The good news is they look quite genuine...I would do what Azda has recommended.

If thats a genuine 1905 and a genuine UNC then its genuinely a good buy...

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Went to the Holiday Inn Coin Fair yesterday in Russell Square....I was only allowed to do so if I took my wife girlie shopping in Town afterwards....there's always a price to pay... Good to see that Baldwins are still making up the prices of their coins with no regard to catalogue values or anything resembling a fair market price. Some bloke on one of the stands immediately as you entered, was in the middle of eating what smelt like a disgusting Chinese takeaway which made you want to not go anywhere near. I was quite surprised at the huge amount of foreign buyers during the time that I was there...probably the majority of the people there were foreign....still no-one uder 30 either ...how do we get young people interested in coins and away from computer games?? Noticed that Arthur Bryant (ex Spink) has gone off on his own and seemed to be doing a brisk trade...always a nice guy, easy to deal with. I bought a couple of coins that I was pleased with but had to get back to the bored wife (mine) waiting in Reception and got dragged off to the shops...would have been cheaper to buy that 5 guinea piece that I wanted...mind you we finished up drunk in the Ivy which is always a larf...........

Put me right off my quarter panda...

Having to give so much personal information to a random stranger in a Call centre in God-knows-where who says his name is "John", but really isnt called John..."So, John, you've lied to me in the first few seconds...so how is this conversation going to go? Oh....and did I mention Ryanair?

On the coin front my pet hate is the 'me expert, you d*ckhead' attitude of many of the old school dealers. On the general front...it banks at lunch times..despite still making £billions of pounds profits and despite almost 3 million people being out of work...at lunch times they still manage to have only a skeleton staff on the tills..of which one till is normall fully occupied by a retailer depositing their takings in numerous bags which take forever to be counted and effectively tie up 50% of the available two tills. Oh...and Ryanair. (Azda, do you want to mark my spelling and syntax)?

Despite the fact that CGS wouldnt give me a discount for volume nor reduce the turnaround time for the same, pesonally, I have far more confidence in the accuracy of their service for UK coins than I do for any fundamentally US TPG service. Who in my view, can still even after all these years, have a cavalier and uninformed attitude to UK coins.

I did actaully write to them outlining all the issues and the fact that clearly they had wasted a lot of money on very poor underlying technology and IT expertise. I also recommeded that they should consider letting real users test any changes they make thoroughly both in terms of functionality and how real people (ie their customers) would actually use it....not just let the techies loose on it then put into into production. I didnt get the courtesy of a reply which is fairly much in keeping in my experience of the "me expert, you d*ckhead" attitude that some of these old school coin dealers still tend to have even now....hopefully the newly appointed Mike Veissid will go some way to change that within Spink at least.

Spink have clearly spent a fortune on their latest websites and technology platforms...unfortunately what they havent done and clearly never do, is to test any of it before putting it into 'production'....by that I mean after they've done something new, then actually allowing real users to test that it all works...dont just take the IT bloke's word for it.

Personally, I've bought a lot from him over the years and have without fail, found him easy and straight to deal with (sadly not so, with many other dealers over the same years)....just a decent bloke

How could anyone have paid $1300 for that 1862 ! I'm in the wrong business. I hope the buyer finds out soon and gets his money back from Stacks.....and learns a lesson...like we've all done over the collecting years.

Good news.....Paul Dawson is back at Spink two days a week.....

As an aside, I would be interested in buying a half dollar (4R) with the octagonal counter mark...if anyone has one for sale?

I have about 40 coins that I need graded....I asked CGS if the would give me discount for volume and they said "no"....so I thought I'd try the fairly newley opened for business PCGS in Paris. Now, I am fully aware of the French's love of beaurocracy and long lunches and despite me having a 1st class honours degree in applied mathematics I could'nt get to grips with the submission form that was clearly designed by someone after a very long and very liquid Friday afternoon lunch in the sun.....so it will be back to CGS at some point.