damian1986

Interesting, why are they called cobs and how come they were minted like that?

Thanks Matt me also. It's the first French emergency token I've bought too so 'fills that gap' in a manner of speaking.

Thanks Scott. Yea I noticed quite a few varieties of each type just no others with the lower bust and mint mark to the left of the ribbon. Yes I agree, though I had a hard time of it when hunting down the second issue reichspfennigs of the Third Reich. I didn't do the notgeld piece justice with my photography but the original image does

Getting carried away now, the best last (not a great photo though unfortunately):

French emergency money. I'm not usually a fan of zinc but I reckon this is actually embellished by the toning, on the reverse at least.

I've been doing a bit around enlightened absolutism so a Joseph II purchase was in order. He introduced the serfdom patent which proposed to give peasants the right to move between estates to find work and to marry whomever they wanted but some of the Austrian states refused to either 1. tell the peasants or 2. enact it at all. Anyway I'm concerned about this one. The B mint mark is in the wrong place for me - usually it's directly beneath the bust on the obverse. This particular issue was purportedly minted at Kremnitz and you do see some differences between Austrian and Hungarian Kreuzers, and across the 1770s in general, but still... anyone know much about these to be able to help?

Daniel Dupuis did some nice work (course he was no Pistrucci ) but then his wife killed him in his sleep. Maybe he ought to have engraved "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort" (liberty, equality, freedom, or death) which was the phrase commonly seen around the time of the French Revolution. I suspect they'd had enough of death by the time of the Third Republic though...

What's a paint spray addict got to do with coins?? Even your full link (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381461/Addict-Kelly-Gibson-arrested-sniffing-spray-paint-covered-silver-mugshot.html) says what it is... Sorry forgive my shit sense of humour. I'll make up for it with a few interesting ones coming this week.

Don't know about 'good' but some Russian coins. Though not for cheap I'm afraid. ma-shops PGN Cheers yes I use MA Shops quite a bit. Actually bought a Joseph II 20 Kreuzer off there yesterday. Tell you what though they do like a good dip on there, here's a link to one of the dealers. PGN looks alright thanks Ah "the boom" - I picked the right time to start collecting didn't I? I suppose the roubles are nice coins and anyone wanting to invest in numismatic silver is going to be drawn to them. For me I'm trying to build up a picture of the so-called long nineteenth century so the coin has to tell the story and that is the main requirement - unfortunately it's the portrait coinage, i.e. roubles, that do that best.

Whoa - all this talk of the Freudian Numismatic Society is what it is... Me too although it's hard to know really as there doesn't seem to be the same level of interest / outlets for sale of Russian coins as, say, French or German. Maybe comparatively fewer survived compared with other countries. If anyone knows a good dealer of Russian coinage do tell. CGB have some but don't seem very interested on the whole.

I would like a few Russian coins as they were such big players in early modern European history, but most really don't appeal to me. This one does though with the monogram of Catherine the Great, except I'd have nowhere to put it as they're ginormous aren't they. Do you have any roubles Scott?

Please check scans to confirm condition. As in, "grading is subjective so it could go a little either way but I'm pretty sure you'll be happy to purchase as an EF or thereabouts." Is this coin even worth the postage?

Yes unlikely he bought it as a 2+G I suppose, is he just pulling a saxby? I'd give him the benefit of the doubt except that it's still listed as obv. 2 and he says he has higher res images available on request so I don't understand why he didn't use those in the first place!

Me too. This coin is still being listed as the 2+G, did either of you get a reply from the seller? He insisted it had 15 leaves in the wreath, so must be obverse 2! I pointed out that the photo wasn't of sufficient quality to examine the leaves but that the position of the bust was the clincher. He didn't reply further! At this point then he's hoping somebody buys it and doesn't send it back. Must be an awkward position to be in though if he actually bought it as a 2+G, but surely now he just has to take the hit?

Me too. This coin is still being listed as the 2+G, did either of you get a reply from the seller?

Yep I was being a bit of a bell-end. I'm actually not a huge fan of the supposed defenders of the language who get on their high horse on radio 4.. language evolves. But I do begrudge undeservedly-famous cretins naming their daughters Rainbow presumably for a bit of press coverage. Gotta keep up the profile.

That's brilliant! They actually accepted that one? Full credit to whoever named their twins Benson and Hedges.

Ah the name-bashing is maybe a little harsh on second thoughts, except since no one had the bright idea of naming their daughter Rainbow in the last 500 years, which I estimate is about as long as we've been actually referring to rainbows as 'rainbows', why start now? Incidentally, in case you weren't already aware, Rainbow Aurora celebrated her first birthday last month. This one didn't make it into The Times but thankfully E! Online picked it up.

I thought the same about Tracey. I'd like to see Boley brought back, in place of Chardonnay, Rainbow or Peaches (now is this last one going to cause offence?) This came about as a result of some research I was doing around the half farthing - trying to gauge public opinion on them when they became legal tender in Britain. Apparently the public thought them unnecessary and letters were written to The Times but I haven't been able to find anything. In fact, what I did find is a letter from A Friend of the Working Man championing the coinage of the labouring classes, at least insofar as it was "of importance to the labouring man this his shilling should be divisible into many parts" (February 1st, 1845). He goes on to propose a decimal system based on the French franc - one where the base unit, in this case he suggested the shilling, be divided into 100 parts. They got to this... in 1970. There are many other calls for a decimal coinage at this time. (17th of September 1853).

Oh I forgot there was an actual purpose to this thread. I think we reached an agreement to stop. I did anyway, implicitly. Are you actually entertaining the notion of getting a new machine? I never once said that Macs aren't excellent at what they do - bob into the Apple store and try one out or borrow one from a fellow northern forum member for a couple of days...

I zoomed the screen on my Mac and could just about make it out - never mind that the coins were converted into low denominations, just think what they'd be worth now in UNC! Mind you, the silly girls would have been long dead... A truly excellent feature of the operating system! Sorry yes there is a larger photo didn't realise it had been scaled down.

Yes I'm probably being a bit harsh on the graphics but for what you're paying I just don't think a 775M is good enough. I did say high-end video editing and gaming for which a beast of a card would be better - granted you may not need such a card but £1700 is a pretty good budget for a new machine you could easily accommodate one. Again 1TB is fine but in the context of price I'd like to see an ssd in there. They're edging their way towards being standard issue and many-an-old-laptop could be salvaged just by replacing the hard drive with an SSD - the performance improvements are that significant. I have had problems with a few older webcams and a graphics tablet in the past but you're right probably the whole of the hardware market is writing drivers for macs now that OS X is so prevalent. And actually the latest flavours of Linux don't seem to have too many problems with hardware so this is becoming much less of an issue. I only really had two points to make: (1) that Apple do charge a premium on their products by virtue of the strength of their brand and (2) they do not offer excellent value for money at the hardware level. The first point I haven't really addressed but it's fair to assume that they're not operating on tight margins! And as to the second point I think this is covered. Now, as to what constitutes value is partly subjective - if you're invested in Apple technologies and deem their software to be superior or better-suited to your needs (both in terms of what you need now and what you're likely to need in 2 years time) then excellent: make the purchase and be happy with what is ultimately a very good product. Just to add, are viruses etc. really keeping most IT technicians in business? I don't know that Apple have ever done networking and IT infrastructure that well and certainly when we get to the servers running the likes of Facebook and the BBC you're looking at an operating system like Red Hat.

The Times, 6th January 1854.

Thanks Peckris just trying to figure out your logic here. Different legends for Liz II and George VI and one of every effigy of George V. Suppose there'd have to be a darkened penny in there and possibly a KN (but not likely in BU!) for the mint. How about the bunhead coinage what do you reckon? I only really got as far as older features, Heaton mint, younger features and beaded border. Yes, you got my idea. (1945 for a darkened penny, and a 1918KN in VF). For bun pennies, the differences in obverses and reverses are subtle. I'd say a common type of 1860 beaded border, then 1862 or 1863 in EF minimum. 1874 is the first 'aged' obverse (subtle!), and any date between 1889 and 1893 for the last main subtle obverse type. That would also sweep up most of the main reverse types, provided you ignore the 1860/1861 'signature below foot' '..below rocks' '..below bust' 'no signature' variations. For wide / narrow date varieties, both exist for 1875 and neither are especially expensive. For Heaton (H) 1882 is the cheapest option. If you want one bun in genuine BU, 1890-92 are the cheapest, with 1889 not far behind. For halfpennies and farthings there are far fewer variations and also they're more affordable. Thanks Peckris with the halfpennies I've gone 1887, 1875H and 1862, partly because I already have them and partly because I do notice the obverse differences between 1875H and 1887. My thinking is to add a beaded border type and thereafter let funds, availability and desirability of individual pieces dictate whether or not any other varieties are added which probably works better for me. Appreciate the advice, cheers

Well there's scope for getting it wrong but it's not that difficult nowadays to piece together a system of compatible components. One thing Windows did get right is support for the myriad hardware available - so long as you go with a known and trusted vendor I don't see too many problems. If you were looking at going down the Intel route you'd have probably only half a dozen motherboards to choose from for any given chipset. As to viruses you're correct but if Apple suddenly consumed the whole of the desktop market I'm pretty sure you'd see many more start to appear. Apple aren't invulnerable (which is why Comet were marketing Macs as "do not get PC viruses" rather than "do not get viruses" hah). Sorry, but most of this is untrue. Well I didn't just make it up!!! The Dell P2815Q is a 28" monitor with a resolution of 3840 x 2160! It's one of the first affordable 4K screens to come to market and has its issues with refresh rates but at £527 is testament to the quality of monitors the likes of Dell and Asus are pushing out now. Mac monitors are excellent but you can find a quality alternative at a similar price point.Bear in mind that the iMac is £1700 and I think it's completely fair to hold the processor to the very highest standards. The i5 is a decent processor but better-performing ones are available if you have this sort of budget. Turbo boost is a bit of a gimmick. Really the fact that a CPU can be boosted to perform a bit more quickly is by the by when you can safely overclock a CPU by a good 0.5 Ghz. The benchmarks (see here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_ddr3_2400mhz&num=2) attest to high speed memory being much better. And while 8GB at 1600Mhz may be enough it's poor for a machine that's costing £1700, especially given that you can get high speed ram at the price I quoted above.Solid state hard drives have dipped to less than 50p per gigabyte of data now. A 250GB solid state drive + a 2TB mechanical drive for additional storage can be had for less than £200 so we're still within budget here.The stock graphics card in Apple's £1700 machine is not very good. It gets killed by the GTX 580 which is two (nearly three) generations old. The GTX 760 will set you back £170, again well within the budget of a £1700 machine.