Red Riley

It's a trend unfortunately. Went to the last Warwick & Warwick and for the first time came home with nothing. Not a sausage. B*ggerall. Two people, one seemimngly called Mark(?) seemed to be hoovering everything up and nobody else got a look in.

No, go ahead.

Pity about the hole in the 1854 sixpence. It is one of the rarest years for Victorian sixpences. Spink 2011 prices them at £150 in fine condition, rising to £1750 in UNC. This is probably the reason someone attempted to fill the hole with solder. Given its rarity it may have some value but how much would depend on what somebody is prepared to pay. The other is more straightforward but I would still need a photograph before committing myself. Can you post one?

The other two aren't coins at all but commemorative medals. Bit out of my sphere bit they will have some value; question is how much.

There was an earlier thread on here - could be 3 or 4 years ago now, in which somebody pulled out a newspaper article from 1960 which said that of all the bronze farthings minted from 1860 to 1956 only about a third were returned to the mint for melting down. So if this situation were to apply at all times across all denominations (which I guess is unlikely), there would still be a million 1829 farthings kicking around out there. The opinion was expressed that the number of coins simply mislaid or lost was dramatically underestimated by pretty much everybody. With so many coins doing the rounds, I would, in the nicest possible way, suggest that a database is not really a practical proposition and we will always be reliant upon price guides etc. for estimates of rarity. One further point is that the official mintages simply record the number of coins minted or issued in any one year, many of which will carry the date of the previous or the succeeding year (e.g. 2.5 million pennies were minted in 1869 but it is reckoned that only 400,000 actually carried that date), so unfortunately any figure produced by the Royal Mint must be taken with a massive pinch of salt.

Lichtenstein too. The French however have the best National Anthem by a country mile.

The British (or whoever...) have got to be the least patriotic people in the world, and I think we've just proved that. We cringe when others wear their nationalty on their sleeve - when the Americans play 'God bless America' I hide behind the sofa! Their genuine national anthem however is way better than our dirge.

I don't know about the Britanny bit but wasn't Ireland named Hibernia by the Romans? My understanding is as follws; 'Britain' excludes Ireland 'Great Britain' is Britain plus the bits of Ulster that became Northern Ireland 'The British Isles' are the two main islands of Britain and Ireland (Britannia and Hibernia) plus all the little bits between and around the two 'The United Kingdom' is the lands of England (plus Wales) and Scotland

Yes, but it only applied to copper coins (pennies, halfpennies, fathings and half farthings) which were replaced with the familiar 1860-1970 bronze series. Both sets of coins continued in circulation, with the copper coins gradually dwindling in numbers until they were demonetised in 1869.

Actually, thinking about it, have you thought of putting some of your stuff on e bay, Derek. You might shift one or two bits of stock that are presently just sitting there dormant, as it were. I do sell the bum end of various bulk lots on e-bay but that's about it at present. I know it is not unusual for coins to sit in dealers' trays for many a year and that's okay, these pieces can happily hang around with prices periodically adjusted to reflect market trends until the right buyer comes along. I had considered starting an e-bay shop but for the moment I am happy with my website. Like many dealers I do frequently buy coins on e-bay which I consider to be undervalued and this has so far been reasonably successful both in terms of buying in and selling on. I have however noticed a trend away from items being sold in the auction format towards Buy It Nows which, if it continues could restrict the supply of stock to the trade.

Now I think we might just disagree on that one...

At the expense of sounding like the archetypal Daily Mail reader, some while ago I sold a batch of nice but not devestating coins to a customer through my website. They are now appearing on e-bay, each one with the grade increased by up to a couple of points e.g. GVF becomes EF etc. Where is the 'rage' emoticon when I need it!

Thanks Rob. I had a feeling that was going to be the answer but in filling the die they seem to have produced a whole lot more than just the appearance of an 8 over a 7.

I have had this 6d for over 40 years, but being low grade and common as muck I have never looked at it in great detail before. On examination, the 8 is clearly struck over something but what? ESC only lists one overdate for this year i.e. 8 over 7 but the line in the lower loop of the 8 seems to be veering off at the wrong angle and the left side seems to contain a large bulge, in fact the only evidence for it being a 7 is the small projection to the upper left hand corner of the 8. I'm foxed. Any ideas? Apologies for the poor quality of the photograph which is just a modified stock photo.

I think that's the point. This gentleman in the USA has obtained a collection of coins with a statistically unfeasible bias towards a scarce variety, probably before the variety was even noted. He must have got them from somewhere. As Sherlock Holmes said, when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

That's the fellow, Mr Accumulator... I've never found one before, and I've looked at a darn sight more than 5, so I'm with you on that one. Then 6 turn up in the same Jiffy bag. I must do some number crunching of Mr Court's paper - I do have it, but I haven't given it the attention it deserves! I recall being at a W&W auction in the 1990s where one of the lots was a collection from someone who had clearly pulled a number of near Unc coins from circulation in the 1950s. Included was a haul of 1957 halfpennies, most with full or nearly full lustre - the majority were 'calm sea'! That may be the origin of your 1944s, retrieved from circulation at the same time and ending up in the States still together. Possibly, although I think Declan does have a point. Where very small numbers of identifiable coins have been produced, it has been possible to trace where they were issud e.g. 1950 penny - Northern Ireland; 1951 penny - Bermuda/West Indies. The same should therefore be theoretically possible of coins with certain identifiable die traits. I say should, but really I meant 'would' as it is far too late now to do anything other than speculate.

I don't have or if I'm honest, desire to have too many coins from outside the UK. The odd one does however come up from time to time but the cost of Krause is completely out of proportion to the use that I am likely to put it to. All in all therefore, this could be a handy website for me.

Looks very useful. I would suggest that Kraus are none too happy!

The good ship Venus.

Had to be a PLymouth lighthouse, and a little research confirms this. See here It is probably just a generic lighthouse ( the design does change subtly over the years). The introduction of the lighthouse on the coinage may however have been influenced by Grace Darling's heroism at the Longstone Lighthouse in 1838.

Looking at the background, I think it's just that the subject is not quite perpendicular to the camera. I think the bottom is slightly nearer the camera than the top and given a low depth of field the top half is slight fuzzy. I have a tiny spirit level which I use to adjust the tripod/stand once it is in place.

The problem with collecting is that you start off thinking it's a finite art ~ that you will collect a given series and then leave it at that (for a time at least). But the reality is very different. Once you start it's exceedingly difficult to stop, especially for those of us whose interest becomes all encompassing, verging on the obsessional !!! Even in any given series or date run, it's knowing the best time to call it a day in respect of that specific collection. Do you limit yourself to just dates, and then the odd upgrade. Or do you go beyond in the hope of obtaining every different listed type ? Do you content yourself with a mid grade rarer type, or do you practically re-mortgage your house in a bid (no pun intended) to get one of the few outstanding examples ? It is these philosphical points I frequently ponder in my quieter moments When I was collecting pennies, I had every date and major variety from 1797. What constituted a major variety was saomething I usually made up my mind on early on and stuck to. For example, I would always regard the 1874-79 wide/narrow dates as 'major' even if Spinks didn't list them as such and the portrait changes of 1874 and 1881 (far more noticeable in my view than 1926) too were major. On the other hand 1903 open 3, 1897 high tide and coins with sundry dots on just didn't seem to have enough different about them to make collecting worthwhile. There came a point where I tended to upgrade rather than add new varieties and once this became prohibitively expensive, I gave up and became a dealer!

Purely out of curiosity, have you just bought this coin? Yes I have just bought it. Were you after it too, or do you know something about it perhaps? Rob - thank you for the photos, very useful! I will have a proper look at the coin again tonight. Yes, so I know how much you paid for it. Not unreasonable, but I wasn't prepared to go quite that high. For the record I thought it was P1327. On balance, I thought it was just too pale for a bronzed coin but I only had one picture to go on and may be wrong. Peck's assessment was that the bronzed coins were scarcer, so more likely to be plain copper I suppose.

When I looked at it, I was undecided as to the reverse, as Rob has said, the breast (which often doesn't get fully struck up) and the vestiges of hair under the helmet all make me wonder whether it should be NEF rather than EF. But for me, the obverse is straight EF.