Red Riley

I don't know whether this is s stupid question but... Say I put in a postal bid on a lot for say, £50 and then attend the auction. The lot opens up with the auctioneer holding a bid of £50. I really want this piece and am prepared to pay more but I don't know whether the bid held by the auctioneer is mine or one for a similar amount received prior to mine. So to actually purchase the lot, I might potentially have to bid against myself. Have I misread the situation or is this a distinct shortcoming of the system? I put the question to Warwick & Warwick who replied; 'You can place a bid on a lot via post or e-mail. However, if you turn up at the auction on the day, and you want to bid on this lot on the day instead, then you must inform a member of staff to cancel this previous e-mail bid.' which doesn't seem to answer the question. Does anybody know?

Off topic, but I've always wanted to ask an American about this. It seems reasonably clear that someone has sat down and painstakingly de-Frenchified, if that's a word, the English language. The obvious one is the OU that you have identified, but then there's Centre/center, Defence/Defense etc, etc. I have always assumed that this was something to do with the Louisiana purchase, do you know ? Je ne sais pas. To my knowledge standard spelling was not achieved in the UK until a certain Dr. Johnson wrote his dictionary in 1755, so up until that time you spelt it kind of the way you wanted - to most pwople it was irrelevant anyway as they could neither read nor write. I'm guessing that with the stretched lines of communications between Britain and the colonies, Dr. Johnson's writ never held sway in America and they just did their own thing. Oh sorry, I 'm not an American...

Due in no small measure to the large numbers of American servicemen stationed in this country.

I have always felt that the coins are just the tip of the iceberg and the true joy of collecting is the flights of fancy you can indulge in when handling a coin of any particular year. I did once sit down and work out the chances of a particular individual handling a coin assuming 1) Coin changes hands once a day; 2) stays in circulation for say, 50 years. Sadly, it wasn't very high!

I worked for half my life in the life assuaence field and whilst there were genuine qualifications set by the Chartered Insurance Institute, there was a parallel organistion called the Life Insurance Association. You didn't need any qualifications to get in, and all it was was an organisation where salesmen would trade selling ideas and exchange dodgy handshakes. Of course, all this hit the buffers a few years ago with increasing regulation of the field. Are you telling me that the BNTA is this type of organisation? What we really need is a genuine organisation promoting qualifications in numismatics, something like say, the Chartered Institute of Numismatics. Any volunteers to mark the papers?

I don't know whether there were regional variations, but in my area of West London, I must have seen no more than a couple of dozen well-worn veiled heads in the last two years of l.s.d. and perhaps half that of bun pennies. I wish I'd been where you were!

Must be at least a 42DD. Sorry, couldn't resist...

I remember it like it were yesterday... It was a great time for schoolboys like me to ferret through their loose change, but raities didn't crop up every 5 minutes - in fact most people that checked their change found sweet Fanny Adams, but there was always the chance. Perhaps the most interesting thing I found was an 1872 florin, but purely for its interest value, the only recognisable thing about it was the date! By 15 February 1971 there were very, very few Victorian pennies left in circulation, most having been withdrawn during the sixties as underweight. Nonetheless with the possibility of having no less than 5 monarch's faces on the coins in your pocket, currency was infinitely more interesting than today.

1887 Jubilee Heads though can be like a secondhand Lada when you come to sell. If you want to buy a set, make sure it is very, very cheap!

This adds a completely different dimension. It's not only provenance, but it adds to the history of numismatics as well. Perhaps we should all write something like this when we sell a coin. Sadly I don't think many of our missives would survive though.

These are nice, but for me a good early bun penny is about as good as it gets. Unfortunately, neither Bristol nor Sheffield are anywhere near me. Since the two towns cover nearly a million people, there must be somebody on this forum who knows.

I can't see any evidence from the photograph, but that might just be that it isn't detailed enough. Really needs to be looked at in a strong light and moved around to highlight anything going on under the 3. These overdates can sometimes be very difficult to see.

Well that didn't work did it? I tried to use multi-quote but without success so for my last post, see green box above. Can somebody tell this technophobe how to use it? I'm much more comfortable with a torque wrench and a pair of stilsons...

Yes, it tees me off too, and not only for the reason you state. As you say, a coin is either FDC or it isn't and most coins advertised as such, bearing in mind even the slightest hairline scratch would disqualify them, just aren't. At one time the expression 'proof impaired' was used but now seems to have gone out of use. If we were really being strict about it, almost nothing would qualify and if a coin was over say, 50 years old, forget it! The American Sheldon Scale takes the problem and throttles it to death with no less than eleven levels of condition (PR60-70) being used to sort the proof wheat from the chaff. Call me old fashioned though, but the Sheldon Scale just seems to lack the romance present in the traditional system and it would be a cold day in hell when I describe a coin as PR68 or whatever!

Both are technically gobbledygook as, to the man on the Clapham omnibus they mean nothing whatever (and surely it isn't possible to have a preposition describing an adjective?!). In UK grading 'About Uncirculated' still means that the coin has not hit Tesco's till but may have led a hard life at the mint or in less than ideal storage conditions. They are the equivalent of the American MS60-62. Its very lack of sense actually makes it less misleading than say, 'very good' and as such it is a useful grade to slot above GEF. I can't begin to get my head round 'About Brilliant Uncirculated' though...

I said as much in the grading book. In fact your rant is pretty much a 'toned up' version (would I expect anything less!) of what I said. There are problems with Michael Gouby's technique though, particularly where it comes to subdued lustre but it's light years ahead of all the nonsense that surrounds BU. Certainly, I will be adopting the system.

Didn't think of it like that!

Is it just me, or is e-bay not the best place to sell such things. Fair dos though, this guy's coming up with some interesting stuff.

Another interesting coin from the same seller; http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270606330709&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I can't be bothered to 'improve' it with photoshop, but it does look quite nasty and almost looks like it's been cast. Strange...

Welcome Bob (a few of those too!). Sorry about the silence; for me, Lockdale's Coin Auction and football plus getting blatted during the latter...

Hi Rob (we've got a few of those), welcome to the forum. Yep, unless my eyes are playing me up it's a 2d, which is a lot rare than the 1d. From what I can see, the grades are VF for the obverse and GVF for the reverse. The coin is not perfect though, as the edge knocks and the staining on the obverse detract. The 50p sounds like 'go away, I've got enough of those'. You could do far better and I would reckon you should get about £40 if you were to sell it on e-bay.

GVF for me too. The ultimate price of something like this is entirely unpredictable. I will be watching with interest...

And you criticized me for drinking ESB! Must have been a nice view from the gutter...

And badly in need of help...