Paddy

A very merry Bah Humbug to you all! Let's hope the New Year brings a more peaceful and prosperous future for us all.

Yes, I have just had a similar message from Tim. I have replied thanking him for taking the comments in good heart and reacting accordingly.

Not really my specialist area, but I will contribute. Yes, appears to match #455 in the list of evasion farthings. I have this list in the back of the Withers Token Book 2010. There is no picture - just a description. In that it shows no date and there is no back up to indicate where this type was produced. There is also no value suggested, which generally indicates it is fairly scarce. In your pictures I think I can see the ghost of a date - 1798 or similar? A sharper close up might help. Value, as always with these, is a guess. Best market would be in the US where these evasions are closely linked to the earliest US coinage. It could make just £10, or £80 depending on who saw it and needed it for their collection. By the way, your Flickr links give access to all you photos on that site - I hope that was what you intended? 🙂

As a separate comment, I bought at Fieldings auction yesterday, and their service was impeccable. Combined invoice received with 1 hour of the end of the auction. I requested postage online and this was quoted within minutes - £15 plus VAT for lots totalling around £500, which is reasonable. I paid before 5pm yesterday and the coins arrived by Special Delivery today around 14.30. Spot on!

As the coins are now safely in the hands of a trusted friend, I will reveal all. Firstly, an amelioration of my previous criticism: the staff at Lawrences are extremely helpful and have resolved the confusions caused by their systems cheerfully and without quibble. So the criticism goes to their admin system - AUCTIONET - and whoever in management decided this was a good approach to customer service, and made this an obligatory default for payment. Specifically: It insists on sending out separate invoices for each lot sold, The process for requesting combined invoices is complex and requires manual intervention by AUCTIONET, not the auction house, The postage costs are set very high, and by default are charged separately for each lot, with minimal discount for combined postage when achieved, The payment process is buggy - it cannot cope with more than payment per session, so you have to log out and back in for each transaction, By default it starts sending out abrupt "storage charge" emails after only 1 week and with no consideration as to the size of the lots. So my advice would be: if you find out your auction house is using AUCTIONET, be prepared for frustration.

Definitely not the mule and I have messaged him to that effect. If he can't see that the border on the reverse is toothed, not beaded, he can check on the rocks to the left of the lighthouse. On the beaded reverse, there are 3 distinct rocks, whereas on the toothed there is a single large rock.

Going back through my penny collection I came across this one identified as 1* and B - therefore F8B. I can't remember how or when I came to that conclusion as I am not usually too attentive to varieties, and it may have been discussed on this forum before. Is that correct? If it is, I would have thought it would be imaged on rarestpennies, but I can't see it there. If it is wanted there, please feel free to add it.

I have it in the 2016 paperback edition of Freeman, published by the great ROTOGRAPHIC - page 29, 1* and B. Unfortunately mine is 1** and B, which makes it F763 - deep in the appendices.

A little while ago I posted a tip in response to another thread, which proved very useful to some people here and turned out to be something many were not aware of. It occurred to me that there are other useful tips that can make life easier for coin collectors on here, so I thought I would start a thread. Here is one that is very useful in dealing with photographs, whether your own or ones found doing research on other sites: At any point you can create a screen shot of a portion of the screen (as opposed to the whole screen) by pressing the Windows button (the one with squashed window shape usually between "Alt" and "FN" on the bottom row of the keyboard) along with Shift and S. The screen will dull and you can then draw out a rectangle covering whatever are of the screen you want. As soon as you release the mouse button, it copies a screen shot of the area to your clipboard, ready for pasting wherever you want. If you want to get this screenshot into a .jpg for further use, you can paste it into any picture handling app, or as a second tip into a Word document. If you then "Save As" the Word document as a webpage (.htm, .html) it creates a folder with any images in the document as .jpgs - from where you can copy or edit them wherever you like. Or, if you have Notifications on, you will see a message pop up in the bottom right of your screen. If you click on this it will open the image in the Microsoft picture editor and you can save it from there. (Default is to save as .png, which is larger and not generally what is used on the web, but you can save as .jpg instead.) I hope that is useful. Also works as a way of dealing with uncropped pictures on your own machine.

https://www.predecimal.com/forum/topic/13698-useful-tips-on-windows-for-coin-people/ This is the link to the suggestion

You can also do a selective screenshot of just the image. See the tip I posted under useful tips in the technical section on here. Saves a lot of faffing around.

First cartoon to make me laugh out loud in a while:

I think I'd like to wait until I have my coins safely in my hands before I insult them directly.

Auction One gets worse and worse! Automated emails from them last night - If I do not collect by Friday they will charge £5 per coin per day storage fees! Unbelievable. My point about the difference in buyers commission was more about the expectation that with such high commission levels they should be geared up for great customer service. The reverse seems to be true. If anyone is desperate to find out which auction house I am talking about, please PM me. PS: Have now spoken to them and they assure me they will not be making the above charges. If so, why have their computer send out such annoying emails?

"I wish I could gnash my teeth at you..."

Yes, the first auction house was quite a large one - long established and holding posh sales roughly monthly as well as clearance sales fortnightly. Until fairly recently they were family owned but I believe they have been bought out and this maybe why auctionet has entered the scene. They only do coin auctions once a year - I hope they have got themselves sorted out before the next one.

Lots of great comments about The Coinery - I have sent them a link to this topic for their information. No comment on the appalling experience with Auction One - do I take it that this form of poor customer service and over-charging is taken as normal?

The auctioneer introduced himself as Richard something, but I cannot remember what surname he gave. I just assumed both Richard and Guy are involved in the operation.

Yes - Guy is the chap running The Coinery auction. The bank transfer was to his account. I have no idea if Guy is on here somewhere.

I see @The Coinery last visited in 2017, so even if they are related to the auction house, they are unlikely to notice the comments here!

I don't know - I hope so.

Thanks for that! I will amend my notes accordingly. If you want it on Rarest pennies, feel free.

Bought and received - all great, thank you.

I think I'd like to go for that - I have 174, 176 and 177 so that fits in neatly. I'll PM you.

I came across this lurking amongst my random collection of bits and pieces. Anyone know much about Fred Jeffries? I see he was mentioned briefly in another thread about 4 years ago. It has to go, and before I throw it in with another job lot, I thought I would offer it here in case anyone remembers him. First sensible offer (does not need to be much!) to include postage gets it.