Paddy

It's been removed already.

You may be right, but as they delay releasing the figures until at least a year later now, they ought to be more up to date. It certainly doesn't explain why 2016 One Pound coins are not listed at all, two years after the event. I emailed the Royal Mint and got a standard "Thank you for your interest and I have passed the buck" message back from Lewis.

Am I right in saying all the smaller 2017 coins are pretty thin on the ground? I see I have none yet below the 50ps and even Ebay seems pretty sparse for them - a few very expensive and that is it.

I am beginning to doubt all the figures released by the Royal Mint on their website. I was looking at the numbers for 2017 50ps - according to their list there were no Royal Shield ones that year - but I have one and I don't believe they are rare. Mine did not come out of a set I am pretty sure - I picked it up in loose change last year. So what is going on? PS - I also see that they say no £1 coins were issued in 2016, just 640 million of the new ones in 2017. We all no that is wrong. 😕

I think you will find the same problem with 2017 2p - still haven't seen one yet in any grade.

I think the point everyone over here is trying to make is that for the vast majority of dealers in the UK, they are too small to be VAT registered and so there is nothing to claim back. The only exceptions I think would be Coincraft and some of the commemorative producers like Westminster, but I can see no reason to buy from them. If you buy from an auction house, the big ones can probably handle the VAT return, the little ones probably not - but you are dealing with 20% of say 25% of the hammer price - so a much smaller overall percentage.

Just to clarify as the VAT discussion has got confused over several posts: In the UK an auction house selling coins will add VAT to the buyers premium only. Most auction items are exempt VAT on the value of the item itself if second hand. You can occasionally find an auction house that is too new/small to be VAT registered yet - usually small and local. A new one set up within a few hundred yards of where I live a few weeks ago and their commission was 15% with no VAT to add. Bliss! Sadly the few coins they had were C**p.

Ah yes - but that one is 1923 and it is 1932 I need to upgrade... 😊

This one needs a long lesson in grading I think. This is the coin that attracted my attention but when you look at her others, she is consistently 2 or 3 grades out if not more. Grrr! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1932-GEORGE-V-SILVER-FLORIN-EF-SPINK-S4038-ESC-952-NICE-COIN-AND-RARE/352419988545?hash=item520dde4441:g:iC0AAOSw~AVYqTqj

I think the only substantially scarce 2p is the 1983 with New Pence instead of Two Pence. Some other dates were issued in sets only - 1972, 1973, 1974, 1982, 1983, 1984 - I think, and are so a little scarcer than normal. The tales of the 1971 being scarce are a classic case of "Fake news". I am leaving out proofs and trail coins - that is a different area all together.

My first experience of computers was on the Durham University Mainframe in the late 70s. The machine was actually in Newcastle, which added to the slow response. It was water cooled, so occasionally we got the message: "Sorry, the computer is down. The plumber has been called." . They had just moved from tape readers to card readers programming in Fortran IV as previously discussed. In my third year I was allowed to use one of the new "Green screen" consoles - there was a waiting list and sometimes it was the middle of the night before I got on. Nothing much has changed - there was an entirely word based adventure game on there - a bit akin to dungeons and dragons - and that soon occupied too much of my time! About then the first PCs arrived - a Commodore PET with a whole 1k memory, programmed in Basic and with a cassette tape to store your efforts on. All the professors were very snooty about it and insisted it would never catch on. I was as pleased as punch when I created a worm chasing its tail game - you can still find them on older mobile phones. Ahhhh! Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

I have never been diagnosed as such but have come to same conclusion for myself over a number of years. I thinks some indicators: - get on better with things than with people, even get emotionally attached to inanimate objects more than people. - able to focus intently on mental games for hours, but get bored quickly making idle chatter with people - Love "ticking the boxes" collecting and filling gaps in a collection. Love sequences, similarities and differences in a collection - can remember facts about things - periodic table, history, coins etc - with no difficulty but forget people's names in an instant. - find "unfinished business" intensely bothersome. - have to focus to be understanding and tolerant of other people's faults, but can't see the problem with my own! Anyone else tick a few of those boxes? 😁

Very nice but I think your £50 per month budget would be blown for the couple of years! I suspect that lot will make more like £500 to £600 at DNW - they generally under-estimate. You have 3 or 4 coins in there that a dealer would move on at over £100 each, the 1718 quarter Guinea well over £200, so with the other bits quite a good lot. (The "Quarter" Farthing is actually a "Third".)

I have long had a theory than both IT and collecting (along with certain brain focused games such as Chess and Bridge) are particularly attractive to people with a low level (often undiagnosed) autism. The need for high focus of concentration, attention to detail and retention of large amounts of data seem to work together.

Ah yes - I did Fortran IV at university on punch cards. I hereby formally apologise to Ian Pickles for shuffling his deck when he wasn't looking.

PL/1 with DB2 and IMS/Db to start with, then another another little known application development suite called Sapiens (RAD). Then much more into the Business Analyst side for Insurance companies - a lot in support of the sales process. Eventually all got too stressful and cost me my marriage so I got out of the rat race. EASYTRIEVE rings a bell somewhere but I cannot remember what it did or where I met it!

Early Retired now, prior to that I had a Travel Agency for 12 years, before that I was IT Consultant on IBM Mainframes (Like Peck) both with IBM and other companies. Before that I was British Army - Royal Engineers all round the world. I collected coins for a while as a child and then got back into them while I was being a Travel Agent (too little intellectual challenge there!).

Another interesting way of building a collection of "foreign" coins has been taken up by one of my regular buyers at market: He wants one decent coin from every country or territory that is or has been under British control at some stage. It is a surprisingly long list - I saw a map online somewhere suggesting that there are only 22 countries in the world that have not been occupied at some time in whole or part by the Brits! He came with a list - and I promptly added a whole load more - Ionian Islands, Demerara & Essequibo, Straits Settlements etc. There are other surprises: Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates are all ones I would not have thought of.

... and to get back on topic I found this site which has some good pictures of most of the proclamation coins (and a few others): http://www.triton.vg/proclamation.html

Any chance one of the moderators could move all the political ranting in here to the Dog Pit so that we can get on with the very interesting topic of the Proclamation coins?

I had to have a laugh at this one! I know many dealers who love to use "Near" and "About" to justify Fine, Very Fine and even Extra Fine grades, but I have never seen anyone use "Near Fair/Poor+" before! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rare-1672-Charles-II-Silver-925-Shilling-Near-Fair-Poor/292656589612?hash=item4423b12b2c:g:mogAAOSweqxbWiKQ

Peck hits many of the ones I would suggest - Pink Floyd being my ultimate favourite. A few others: The Strawbs, Greenslade. Moody Blues (though they get a bit poppy sometimes), Emerson Lake and Palmer... Here is Greenslade as they are probably the least know of the above:

I am not the person to advise you on Grading coins - I don't do it myself at all. I can see that encapsulated examples make appreciably more than raw, so it may be worthwhile. Mintage for 2005 is quoted as 12500 in Proof, 45542 in bullion. This is not hugely different to other years - Proof coins in 2009 and 2010 were 16000 but in other years around there range from around 8000 to 12500.

Does appear to be a Proof coin - I assume you have checked it is Sovereign size and not half sovereign as both had the same reverse in 2005. As to value - you have done OK but not stunningly brilliantly. If it had it's original box and certificate it would make over £400, but without those they make only a little more than the bullion coins. Actual price as ever will depend on how much someone wants one. There are far more of the proof half sovereigns that have sold on the net recently, and these are only making bullion value without their boxes. But you certainly haven't lost out, as long as it is genuine!