Red Riley

Mintages are actually quite low for most of the earlier years, caused if I remember correctly by the very high price of silver bullion. The florin is generally sought after as it is aesthetically pleasing, unlike the dull as ditchwater George V issues.

Sixpences seem to be going for way below list at the moment. Just seems that they are not flavour of the month.

Just make sure your mint doesn't get lost in the wrinkles.

Just a suggestion, if you want to know about coins but aren't that interested in mega-varieties or UTD prices, then why not buy a 2 or 3 year old Spinks? £2-3 should cover it.

This isn't elitist, rather common sense. Buying blind is the easiest way to make purchases you later regret. For all its benefits, eBay is also the repository for most of the people on this planet who are incapable of grading, or at times even identifying what it is they are selling. Good pictures are a must if you are going to make a purchase on eBay and as an aside, the prices realised are frequently too high for the item bought. Many times you can buy at a proper auction much cheaper than on eBay with quite a lot of the former items being sold on the latter site almost immediately after the auction because there are sufficient numbers of people willing to pay over the odds out there to make it feasible. Buying on e-bay is fraught with hazards - and opportunities. The first rule is to never assume that anything is unc. It's EF at best. Bid accordingly. Secondly, be prepared to spend hours dredging through acres of dross to find the nuggets that are in there somewhere. When you spot something that looks worthwhile, put in a realistic bid using an Auction Sniper, go away and forget about it until the auction is over. That way you won't be tempted to increase your bid. If you didn't get the coin, so what, what have you lost? Thirdly, completely ignore sellers' grades, learn how to grade yourself and trawl dealers sites to see what an item is going for on the market and bid some way below this. You will learn that price guides can be a long way out. Rubbish photographs; you can sometimes get bargains on these simply because not everybody has or can use a camera, but your bid must be ultra-low. If what turns up isn't as good as you expected, send it back. If it is, then you've got yourself a bargain. Beware though of sellers with dodgy photos and say, 5000 transactions. If they've been doing it that long, isn't it about time they learned how to handle a camera? In short though, with experience it is possible to come out on top but also, be prepared to work for it.

To tell .925 from .5, take a known example of each (i.e. pre- and post- 1920 but not 1920 itself) and drop gently onto a hard surface - the ring will be entirely different. Now compare your coin. 99.99% certain to be .5 I would have thought.

They certainly said no to me!

However, cellulose thinners was what car body shops spent their entire lives working with until comparatively recently, and as an old car buff I have used it a lot and know of a lot of other people who have too. Most of them are still around...

I don't seem to have said but you're welcome to use mine (although mostly UK). I have a large store of images so if there's something you want send me a p.m. As far as e-bay is concerned, it's down to laboriously contacting the individuals I'm afraid. And don't bother with Spinks, they always say no.

Actually I have a couple of lower grade with lacquer which I can try and test it out on.....I haven't got any nail varnish remover Dave, mine are false I suspect all suggestions come with caveats but I have used cellulose thinners in the past with some success, admittedly to remove PVC residue but it didn't seem to do the coin any harm. I knew abot the eyelashes but the fingernails?

Yep, Ferric Sulphate, Fe2SO4 also known as Copperas. I too am not 100% certain, but wasn't this collected in former days as dog's no.2s?

I've maybe seen that before, but what a gem! Is that yours Derek? No, it was sold on e-bay a few years back, I did bid for it but unsurprisingly it went out of reach. Another one which got away was a 1940 penny re-cut with a swastika instead of the union jack.

Unless of course all (or virtually all) the coins of a particular denomination struck in a particular year are weak (1920 pennies spring to mind).

No you're right, Russell as a Christian name would have been virtually unheard of in those days. It is incidentally the family name of the Duke of Bedford.

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Posted it before, but this is my favourite; OK let's try again.

There is no officially laid down grading nomenclature but most people go with (in ascending order); Poor Fair F GF NVF VF GVF NEF EF GEF AU Unc. '+' and '?' are often thrown in just to indicate that it is (in the grader's opinion) better than or not quite as good as the stated grade. You will also come across 'Good' and 'Very Good' which are only semi-official in the UK although the norm in America and an attrocious mis-use of the English language actually being less than 'fine'! However, don't let me put you off from buying the book...

A classic case of e-bay grading I fear...

I was told that coins being kept for any length of time in something leather such as a purse can cause this extreme toning effect.

Don't worry, the author grades himself as 'clear date'...

I will now attempt to return this thread to sanity, which is rich coming from me. OK it's at least EF, whether it goes any higher is very difficult to assess on screen. Inspect the king's upper ear and the lions' faces on the reverse. Do they show any sign of flatness? If so, you have fallen to GEF, a little more and it's EF. High grade coins really need inspecting in the hand.

Not to be sniffed at.

A massive tangent here, but that is said to be why there are so many Roman 'minims' around. Your landlord in Isca Dumnoniorum was the victim of a nigh on 2000 year old tradition!

For those of us who are happier counting on our fingers and keeping notes on scruffy bits of paper, websites simply come as a package - even then they are capable of causing utter confusion in the untrained mind. Hence, although mine wasn't that expensive to set up, it is essentially a compromise and if I were to start from scratch I would include lots of features which it doesn't have and delete lots of useless things that it does. So I would urge you to use a little patience, the dealer is probably sitting screaming at his computer screen just as smoke is coming out of your ears while you browse his site...

I'd go with NEF/GVF but would need to see in hand first. In any event £166 is a reasonable price to pay, speaking personally I've never found them that hard to sell and have never sold one for less than or anything like £100.