damian1986

Based on 20% commission that runs at around £1150, so someone i's hoping for a quick large profit. It will be interesting to see where it lands, whats LCs selling commission? I think 10%. Good on them? it's a bit of a risk as it's gonna have to hammer at just shy of £1300 to break even.

Well Mark looks like a nice one I would like something that was minted at King's Norton and I do need an original effigy George V penny How did you get rid of the ghosting and the mushy obverse? http://www.jncoins.co.uk/JNC/en/bronze-and-copper/265-george-v-bronze-penny-1926.html (The URL slug has 1926 in it but is for the 1918 coin)

Will be interesting to see how the London Coins one does. I believe it's the same coin that went for $1500 in Stacks Bowers earlier this year.

Hello I'm a serious collector and I've got loads of money and I wanted to put together a set of 1893 proofs that all came from different sets and would happily spend an extra 6% on top to house them in a lovely if somewhat disheveled and actually honestly unimpressive but probably authentic case that the coins don't belong to. It's not the fault of the "penniless" that no one's interested in spending 3 figures on his plugged and dented pennies and the guy is deluded into thinking that his market is the "serious collector"! As frustrating as time wasters are this guy has brought it on himself entirely. No justification or sympathy

I was under the impression that eBay recently changed it so that postage is no longer exempt from fees. If so what's the point? - I just factor the postage into the BIN prices. I'd rather a seller operates at a profit and is still around in 2 or 3 years time than operates at ridiculous margins and gets fed up after 6 months. I think people like to think they've done alright but it's a false economy half the time - the amount of sweatshop-generated shit I've bought instead of paying an extra 50% for a quality product. The best one was the digital calipers that were out by anywhere from a few millimetres to a few centimetres every time. Precision.

Well it's only worth £4 as scrap and they go £20 to £30 in UNC so just thought if someone was going to go to £13 why not go a little bit more. Interesting point about the postage. 95% isn't bad I'll try opening some up to auction.

How does this realise £13? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1901-Germany-Prussia-silver-zwei-2-marks-coin-11-1g-/141467256588 Reason I ask is because I'm seeing a few coins do better than they ought to when opened up to bidding - which makes me think I should open some up to auction. There's a risk though and in many cases I suspect they're being shilled.

The example from the Colin Cooke collection was also ex Archbishop Sharp and realized £1300 in a Baldwin's 2012 auction. I think the one available on eBay is a slightly better example. https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=345&lot=2619

It is a tempting one. There are a few Peck 407s about this is a really nice one. The seller originally had this listed at about £700ish I think, so has made a small reduction just recently. Hmm. I claim the four seas.

I find these quite difficult to grade (and photograph - as is evident). Because they were darkened, any friction at all is evident on the reverse. The 4 below were all sold to me as UNC. I'd probably grade them EF, EF+, gEF, gEF respectively, which may be a little harsh but it depends how you look at it - a gem full black/purple UNC isn't easy to come by. These all cost more than 50p!

Regarding the international element of CGS, I reckon they let themselves down with the 100-point grading system rather than going with the established Sheldon scale. I actually really like the idea of trying to quantify grade, especially for milled coinage and if the population reports were comprehensive that'd be really useful. But with a large number of TPGs, many re-submissions, raw coins that have not yet been submitted and no attempts to record coins in museums etc. the population databases can't really be relied on. Nor grade for that matter but this has been discussed quite a bit already Anyway so what you have to do is spend a chunk of your coin budget on catalogues to try to figure it all out One big negative for me is the whole slab glorification of coins. It makes sense that the 65s and 66s skyrocket in auction, because they're nice - not because they have a number stuck on the front. Same with the CAC stickers - why is the coin worth 20% more with one of these stickers on it? I'll leave you with a conditional rarity: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rare-1862-Victoria-Bun-head-Half-Penny-NGC-Cert-MS65RD-/221550995387?pt=UK_Coins_BritishMilled_RL&hash=item339577e7bb

One of every denomination for every ruler Paulus, or coverage of all denominations across the whole range? Was just thinking good luck with the William IV crown Me too. Speaking of type collecting, my goals at the minute are fairly modest but then around certain periods I'd like to do a bit more and definitely George III copper falls into this bracket. Potentially anything that came out of the Soho mint is on the cards.

CGS only guarantee the authenticity of milled coins since 1660 (which is fine because there's nothing dafter than a hammered coin in a slab), not sure about the other TPGs. People have ruined plenty of coins in order to get them to slab a grade higher. All the shiny dipped coins that for some reason the TPGs tend not to penalize... of course a couple of Viking peckmarks and it's the end of the world but a few coats of silver emulsion and no one bats an eyelid. On the other hand, try performing an analysis of the price performance of raw coins over the past 50 years and it'd be exponentially more difficult and less reliable than coins that have been slabbed. Probably fairly accurate inferences can be made about the popularity and price of silver Eagles since the 70s as zillions have been through the doors at NGC - But this speaks to a wider problem of population awareness and a consistent grading system. The TPGS only go some way to solving this problem.

And the key to THAT is to have a lunatically high disposable income!! Also, to add to the point that Richard (I think it was) made recently, our standards change over time ... some coins I considered keepers that I would have never wanted to upgrade when I acquired them have been superseded as my expectations and experience have increased ... I would imagine many relatively new collectors go through the same evolution / learning curve? Yes. Add to that some laziness and impatience for me. Regarding the sale of coins, I hadn't, for example, given much time to the 8 Reales until you posted recently. That's now on the wants list. So a couple of "duplicates" (actually coins of loosely the same type as another coin I have) can go. And stuff that's never going to form the basis of a collection can go (if anyone wants to buy a Napoleon 1 Franc let me know ) as the potential costs of building a collection become clear (if anyone has a spare S1142 let me know ).

He mentions remortgaging his house to get a Sestersius on the petitioncrown website.

Cheers both. Yes the second coin had no mention of patina but I figured it looked lacquered so included it as was curious. Mainly the last auction a few mentioned patina but probably not relevant. I don't know what peoples' thoughts are on lacquering in general (I assume it's not looked on with any fondness!); I think it's a shame as otherwise that's a very nice pattern.

In the last couple of DNW auctions quite a few coppers have cropped up described as 'patinated' or 'with patina' or something to that effect. Unusual choice of words except to suggest that the coins have been lacquered (coins with a natural patina are usually described as toned)? Nothing wrong with the coins, and it could just be the pictures and my untrained eye just wondering what you think? September auction: http://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/catalogue-archive/lot.php?department=Coins&lot_id=164910 Lacquered?: http://www.dnw.co.uk/auctions/catalogue/lot.php?auction_id=318&lot_id=1026

They're churning out a lot of new commemorative coins every year so I think this waters down the quality a bit. And opening up designs to competition in theory gives you a wider pool of talent to pick from, but then the individuals aren't personally and creatively invested in the coinage as the likes of Wyon would have been. Saying that, de Saulles' 1902 florin design borrowed heaviliy from 'la Semeuse' over in France and so arguably wasn't as original or as wonderful as people see it now? (It got a lot of stick too, "where's the beading?") And plenty of moaning was done around the end of the 19th century - no one seemed to think much of the veiled head Victoria or of the re-working of Britannia. So the coinage has been poor for a while... There are still 3 (soon to be 4) effigies for Elizabeth II following on from Mary Gillick's work, you just have to not care / be selective about which reverse designs you pick

Sorry John (Bergdahl) but the £2 looks very cartoony. Scott I see what you're saying there's a distinct lack of detail on most of these coins. The Battle of Britain commemorative is... lazy. I do like the Churchill portrait!!

Really? Who wouldn't want to own one of these... Brian: http://www.dnw.co.uk/auction-archive/catalogue-archive/lot.php?department=Medals&lot_id=54027

Interesting. There'll be a market for it. I've got a few things off eBay this week but otherwise a frustrating experience.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181475765706 Nothing new to see here, but there are a few of these types of sellers who occasionally list the odd item of numismatic interest / some decimal so I have never blacklisted them but I am now going to. Regarding this one specifically, it's out of order to use Percy Metcalfe to market such a horrible piece of shit. I only recently came across this which he designed: http://brentmuseumandarchives.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/metcalfe-lion-1924.jpg so for all my time wasted hunting through crap on eBay at least I stumbled across something useful.

Wouldn't worry about it Neil. There aren't many dealers able to source well-priced high end raw coins and certainly not at a rate of a list per month.

What I don't understand is that if that particular farthing made its way onto a dealers website any time within the next 12 months priced at any more than say a couple of hundred quid it would probably sit around for a while. So what is truly the value of these pieces that skyrocket in auction? I was under the impression that a lot of common coins in high grade were being picked up by the buy-slab-whack-on-ebay "dealers" (the 1819 crown slabbed MS64 that came out of London Coins (as aUNC) for £600 and then re-appeared on ebay.com for £2500 being an example (can't find the link)). But that requires at least some level of restraint, which we didn't see in Kunker, so the assumption is that the collector market itself is very strong (and very wealthy) right now. What can we expect to see over the next 5 years? Do all the best pieces get snapped up and put under lock and key for another 20 years with the odd trickle out, or do a few sizable collections make their way onto the market at once to level things out?

My approach is to focus on the denarii and antoninianii of legitimate emperors and to build around that. Generally those who ruled exclusively and ruled the whole of the Roman Empire. I'd argue that the British series covering a similar period to date (~ 500 years) can be as unforgiving... myriad mint marks, the odd threefarthing, a civil war, and many an A over T and what-not...