secret santa

Note how bottom of waves merge with the single exergue but are clear of the double exergue

No - the wife wouldn't tolerate a display of mummified beans around the house ! Regarding the number of entrants, because our local show awards the National Vegetable Society Medal annually to the best runner beans (every show can nominate which category it awards the medal to, but only ONE category per year), the runner beans are hotly contested. I would love to say there were several thousand entries but only approximately a dozen

You may all be mildly interested to hear that my Runner Beans took first prize today in our local Flower & Produce Show.

Thanks for the recipe - I'll get the little lady onto that, although the winning beans will be stuffed and mounted.

A set of 9 similar - I've been picking likely candidates over the last week and keeping them in the fridge until yesterday morning when I picked my final 9 from about 40 (!) and then wrapped them carefully in damp tea towels and bound them to wooden stakes to straighten and flatten them (a trick I learnt from the aged experts at my allotment). I also entered a bean for the longest but was outdone by a centimetre or two (story of my life).

Actually yes, there are 5 whiskers on his right side but 6 on his left ! Offers over £1000 please.

Got my first Peter Rabbit today so they're out and about.

I've never seen a copy of "The Victorian Bronze Penny" - is it very different from the "Bronze Coinage of Great Britain" ?

Not as clear as Gouby's example and I don't think I'd be convinced if I saw it for sale as such. But there must be some others out there somewhere !!

I see the 1933 penny went for over £149K at Heritage yesterday !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ooops, some of the searches don't work.

It's back up now

Jerry, is your coin one of the examples on my website ? If not, could I have photos please ? Richard

Does anyone know what these "carbon spots" are actually made of ? Is it truly carbon and if so, how does it occur ?

Interesting that my own specimen has been struck at a slightly different state of die fill.

CGS appear to have (generally) graded consistently and to a well documented standard in the past so I don't see why people should want to spend more money getting their coins regraded. A coin previously graded by CGS has a mark of authenticity that would still stand for me as a collector. The real problem seems to be the inability to verify that grading without charge in future or to view their library of graded coins. I guess the "Hall of Fame" feature will also bite the dust. I'm certainly glad that I never got any coins graded by them in the past but I don't think that anyone who did should feel that they have wasted their money.

Nice one Terry - it's good to have someone who keeps finding these new variants for us to go searching for.

Love this weather - the golf ball goes for miles on rock hard fairways. Stenson's got nothing on me !

Thanks Terry - your surname should be Eagle-eye rather than Eagleton

I've now added 1909 F169 to my rarest penny website and would be pleased if collectors could let me know of further examples.

Spink 2016 (51st edition) Page 491 has the following values: 1897 VF-£3; EF-£30; UNC-£95 1897 dot VF-£100; EF-£500; UNC-£1600 Hope this is what you wanted, Paul.

I, too, have an F13 with these repairs,

I agree Jerry but with the probable thousands of F10s around the world, we aren't going to get this analysis in a hurry. The fact that the new 2*+D is only (so far) found paired with reverse D* (curved rockline) suggests that it was not minted in huge numbers but then the fact that 3 of the known examples are around Unc suggests that there may be many of them, unless they were early strikings at a time when people were putting away shiny examples of the new-fangled bronze coinage ?

You may be right Terry - I'll go through the records and have a look at how many 2+E (F169) specimens have been sold.

My Gouby X isn't on there I'm sure I sent some pics, but if I haven't then my fault haha I'm going to remove the 1911 Gouby X sometime as it's not as rare as the other coins up there. Like this Quote