jaggy

Beautiful coins but not sixpences

It is operational now. I paid my invoice online yesterday. Paid online and the cash was taken and shown as taken on the DNW site. Just need the coins to be delivered. If everything works then this will give DNW a definite advantage over less internet-sophisticated auction houses.

Looks like the online bill pay is up and running. I haven't actually paid yet but the invoice is correct as is the statement and I did input a couple of fields into the bill pay to see if it looked operational.

Yes, I had the same experience. I am assuming/hoping they will get all that fixed in the days to come.

And here is the pic of one of the two lots I won:

I checked my account with DNW online. They were pretty quick to put up the invoice. Nothing then . Cheers for letting me know. It depends, the sale doesn't finish until tomorrow, so they might not have done all of them yet. I don't have my invoice yet Danz The DNW guys told me that their website has been revamped in the last couple of weeks. They seem proud of it. My invoices show but that may just be because I checked out in person at their offices today. Mixed bag on penny sales. Some went extremely high while others made close to bottom end of estimate. Anything that didn't reach bottom estimate (at least while I was watching) was hoovered up by DNW themselves. I quite like the website. Pretty intuitive and easy to use. We will see if it stays that way for online payments and shipping instructions.

Hopefully, we were not bidding against each other

I checked my account with DNW online. They were pretty quick to put up the invoice.

For my two successful bids I paid £20 and £30 below the high end of the estimate range and right on the maximum I was willing to pay.

I put in internet bids on 4 lots and was successful on two of them.

Thanks for posting the photo. Very helpful. Forewarned is forearmed.

They should headhunt the guy from, Heritage. Their live bid system works very well.

I called London Coins today and got through first time. Mind ou, I was paying them money

I prefer to take coin photos in overcast light because I want to minimise any shadow. I place the coin on a sheet of white paper and take the photo as close as my autofocus will allow. I do use the flash and I set the aperture manually. White balance is set at auto and ISO at 200. After taking the photo, I import it into Photoshop elements. I crop it and adjust the lighting. I do not touch the colour.

I live in the USA and have not had to pay import taxes on coins purchased in the UK. Agree with your comments on Heritage. I have bought some coins from them and have been reasonably happy with the grading. The Heritage web site is very good and their photos of the coins are excellent so you do know what you are buying. I think the advantage of Heritage is that you are hitting a pretty big market and one which is willing to pay a premium for quality. But the NGC grading is absolutely key here. Personally, I am not big on slabbing but, in the US market, it is a prerequisite to getting top dollar for the coin.

Thanks to all for the opinions. I had the coin as Die 70 in my records but, looking at it again, I found myself second-guessing that original opinion.

Is this coin die number 7 or die number 70. The 7 is very clear but there seems to be a faint 0 next to it. Is this just a mark or a very weakly struck 0? I cannot make my mind up and would value opinions.

For $25 I like iCollect and I am sure it will get better with newer versions. At that price it is very good value for money. It is just the idea of having to re-key my entire collection which is almost a thousand sixpences not to mention a good number of other coins. Holy hell! Thats a lot of typing!!!!! Well for me its only about 300! I even think thats quite a lot. I have been looking at Bento and it looks very good, I like the fact I can sync to the iphone which means the collection is at my fingertips and means I wont buy a coin when out and about that I already have or one not on my list ( a really bloody annoying trait; oh that looks nice !!!). I am still undecided but I am having a go at messing around with icollect and have a good look into bento. Just wanted to say that I do appreciate you drawing my attention to iCollect.

For $25 I like iCollect and I am sure it will get better with newer versions. At that price it is very good value for money. It is just the idea of having to re-key my entire collection which is almost a thousand sixpences not to mention a good number of other coins.

1. I think the original question wanted to know if it is a database of British coins? Which would be pretty damn useful, and a computerised Spink if such a thing exists. "A database that's already been set up" in this case is simply a blank pro-forma into which you input your own coins, right? (Which is what mine is - it all had to be input by hand, and new coins added manually). 2. Not as long as you might think. I used to be a computer programmer, and FileMaker's scripting language (which no user HAS to use - you can set up a working database without any knowledge of scripting at all) is fairly simple and basic. It's just knowing how to do what you want to do, which I suppose is the same in any computer language. Being a relational database, I have a separate table of values for each coin, and simply add a new record for each coin when values change. Then in the master database, I have a layout with a portal to the related file which pulls in all the values it has for each coin. When I said "going back to the 60s", that doesn't mean every year! I have 1965/6, 1968/9, 1976, 1980, 1985, 1997/8, and every few years from 2000 to the present. The critical periods were from the late 60s to 1980, then it subsided and stagnated for ages, and started to take off again from the late 90s. Sorry Peckris, I meant it was an empty blank database with which you would have to enter the data, I believe that you would have to collate from a few sources though. Your second answer makes a lot more sense now! It must be nice to see the appreciation in value of certain coins? Jaggy I wholeheartedly agree with your pros and cons, are you making the switch then? Regards Honest answer is that I haven't decided yet. I like the software and I like the price. What is putting me off is 1) the need to re-key everything. If there was an import function then I wouldn't hesitate and 2) the lack of a print engine.

I downloaded the demo version of this software and spent an hour playing with it. Pros ... it works pretty well. I like being able to customise the on screen display and I like being able to attach a photo to the record. There are a lot of useful fields, probably more than I need but that is okay. Price is very reasonable at $25. Definitely more user friendly than my current Excel spreadsheet and a 'prettier' user interface. Cons .. I would like to be able to customise the record field labels. So, for example, 'other reference' could become 'Seaby' or 'ESC'. The word wrapping in the description field doesn't work well so that in display mode it truncates the odd word. In addition, I could not see how print reporting works. In fact, I couldn't see any print options. Also an import function from Excel would save a lot of re-keying. Overall. At the price this program is good value for money. Definitely better than my Excel solution. I would hope that the creators will continue to improve the software as identified in the cons.

Can you import data from Excel or does everything have to be re-keyed?

Does it come with an included database and, if so, how comprehensive is this? How does it work with British coins?

I will admit to having a chuckle when I saw that description. The more so that the close up photo of the coin does not really match the hyperbole. As a sixpence collector, this and other coins in the auction do interest me. But the prices are completely over the top. Which is a shame as I would have been willing to drop a decent number of dollars at prices which more accurately matched what I believe to be the value of the coins. I have bid and won a few times at Heritage in their weekly internet auctions and, usually, the prices are more or less what one would expect. But this particular auction seems to be completely over the top. I don't know if this is due to unrealistic reserves being set by sellers or by an auction house trying to manipulate market prices. It will be interesting to see how much success they have. You've hit the nail on the head Jaggy, OTT prices coupled with market manipulation. I said it before in a thread a few months back, but Heritage normally start the bidding at Spink book for grade and work upwards from there. Just because a Common 1853 sixpence is a Good UNC does'nt mean i want to pay 3 times over Spinks price guide. Of course, a quality soecimen i would have thought in the £259-£350 range, but over £1300 is a bloody joke if it Hits top estimate, in fact the £650 start price is a joke, thats Double what spink Rate a UNC at , and checking back on Londoncoins previous auctuons, best i can see sold for £160 in 2011 and another in UNC or near so in 2012 for £135 I don't have an 1853 sixpence so naturally I was interested. But, as they say, patience is a virtue so I am happy to wait for one that is appropriately priced. I was also quite interested in the 1887 pattern sixpence ( I already have the aluminium one) but, again, the price is way over the top. A similar one sold at London coins for £380 (or $600) in 2009. I might have gone to $750, $800 or even $900 but $1400 which is the Heritage minimum is out of the question. American collectors may be willing to pay silly prices but I am not. Even though I live in the USA, bidding and buying from the UK is perfectly possible. As I have said elsewhere on this forum, the internet has made this a worldwide market. Heritage should take note.

I will admit to having a chuckle when I saw that description. The more so that the close up photo of the coin does not really match the hyperbole. As a sixpence collector, this and other coins in the auction do interest me. But the prices are completely over the top. Which is a shame as I would have been willing to drop a decent number of dollars at prices which more accurately matched what I believe to be the value of the coins. I have bid and won a few times at Heritage in their weekly internet auctions and, usually, the prices are more or less what one would expect. But this particular auction seems to be completely over the top. I don't know if this is due to unrealistic reserves being set by sellers or by an auction house trying to manipulate market prices. It will be interesting to see how much success they have.