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DrLarry

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Everything posted by DrLarry

  1. DrLarry
    I never knew that snippet of etymology re: aluminum aluminium I always just assumed it to be a suffix for an element ..,.you earn something every day here
  2. DrLarry
    Could anyone let me know if they have any experience using CAD to scan images and analyse changes in the contours, marks on the surface or subsurface of coins. 3D scanning of two dimensional objects like coins. I have been doing a lot of work for the last three years on something very strange in the bronze series and need someone who might have had use of this technique to advise me of the best training or package suitable for this purpose. I know it is a bit niche.
  3. DrLarry
    No break them free!!! don't lock them up in those plastic prisons .....too much £ I am sure Campaign to free coins from plastic C.F.P LOL
  4. DrLarry
    I love them too I am hardly of the generation that seeks instant gratification I simply want to have the information accessible without paying for some special privilege to access these esteemed publications and websites. I know it has been a great help to go onto the farthing and the penny websites and look at wonderful examples of the varieties it took me a few years to find them though. I have walked the Camino de Santiago a few times and all along the path are bright yellow arrows Las Flechas it would be nice to have a few more yellow arrows to point the way in an online way so we dont get lost. Even on this path, which is 1000 years old, sometimes one route points one way when another an alternative. if you walk it a few times you can change and try the other path the next time...if lucky enough to have the opportunity.
  5. DrLarry
    I have registered as a wikki editor now so there is no problem with that from my point of view I will try to verify my findings with at least two examples of each I have and then anyone that wants to add to things can do so as they wish if they register. To be honest it is quite a nice open way to detailing a coin in my own collection with some novelty which can be used, when I die, to sell off my collection for the charity. The alternative was a rather boring spreadsheet and lots of self orientated notes. I like the idea of sharing it, giving people a more even playing field, on which may allow us to discover new things in our own collections. Like that strange 1879 lighthouse flaw, it was just down to luck that J had another which he purchased and we could compare the pictures to see they are exactly the same. The thing that is important for me after this is to ask the question why? it may be that there is no mystery which is absolutely fine. However, we may find a transition, or a reason for its existence beyond just novelty.
  6. DrLarry
    I am happy to buy books and have spent my life buying expensive text books but when a copy of a book is £150 on Toy coins for example it restricts the opportunity for any new collector. Ok so it interested me on this topic for a while so I bought the book. It is a wonderful collation of information if a little out of date. Then a secondhand copy of Peck will set me back £60, same with Dalton and Hammer but I have them and enjoy them and in many ways they have paid for themselves as I have built up my collection to give to the charity one token or coin you can pick up might make it pay for itself if it is a rare variety. But it would be nice if we had a bank of knowledge that did not sit with an individual open access and yes of course any source material should be looked at with a sceptical eye if you can afford to look at it at all. Yes I have what I would consider 8 new varieties of 1860 penny because of things like repunching of a smaller older style letter in the legend by a more robust larger solid punched letter the same with the halfpennies of 61 and 62 . I see them as subspecies, in fact I tend to approach my collecting in a phylogenetic way one leading to the evolution of the next. It is still important information to know of these different types. In the same way for example that in genetics the whole of the human genome is mapped out as the redundant aspects of the DNA can sometimes give us as much information about human evolution as those that give rise to obvious traits. I just think the purpose of a collection is to lead us to better understanding notwithstanding you are all experts and have different opinions, information can be added to even by the "lowest" in the collecting ranking. I just think it is important to let the system breath and the first step might be greater access to information. when i started collecting four years back the purpose was to find something to get me out of a chemotherapy haze, I had no idea that I would find many of the wonderful things I have found, it's like being an explorer of some lost history because as we know the Royal Mint are not the best custodians of information when records are lost or there is something to hide. The thing is when I find something out of the ordinary like the repeated B over R in the bronze series it is interesting from a human perspective but also it makes me look either side and ask the question why does it keep happening, more importantly what does it tell us about the workers in the mint. Reading the diary of L C Wyon gives nothing away and I am glad they reduced the price to £10 for that old dinosaur of a reference. If ,whoever XXXXXX is, cannot open their mind to the issues raised by these variations away from the normal then they stand ready to be judged as hampering the scientific approach. We rely on things that do not fit the normal the orthodox to be signposts to events that break out of the accepted pattern and by ignoring or suppressing the information we could lose vital steps to improve our understanding of the chaos that must have existed as the country and the mint tackled a new material, design and all under political scrutiny, which when artists are at work can cause major eruptions potentially.
  7. DrLarry
    I should like to ask the newer collectors, of which I am one having only started four years back, a few questions. How easy do you think it is to get access to information on coins you want to collect? I find that reference books seem to choose arbitrarily which varieties they want to list and which they do not want to list. there appears to be no reason for the source of this discrepancy other than whether one person who has a variety want to push the books like SPINK to include it. It does not seem to be that they only choose the most common because some are listed as "PU possibly unique" it would be more useful to have access to the information in wikipedia at least that way if we searched for a coin type we could get some information. One long term member feels that there are just too many varieties to list in anything other than an encyclopedia. It seems that the science of digital photography and greater access to microscopes as well as "increasing number of collectors???" may be presenting too many new listings. I wonder then if we each of us find them why we cannot just list them as wikicoin pages. It seems clear that the books available in print form cannot keep up new findings so why can we not do it ourselves. I believe that you just have to register to begin making new events or pages. It may be that when a letter is put over another letter that it does not tell us much on the individual level put surely if there are enough pieces of information we might learn something new about the making of the coin or its history. Let's face it records have been lost by fires and the death of a collector who might have spent ages looking for things the only way to change that then is not to rely on the British Museum, or the collection of Cambridge or Oxford but to make the information freely available.
  8. DrLarry
    ok sure then I suppose the best thing to do is to start creating wikipedia pages for varieties then at least when I or others find something and do a search they will come up as the first entry then we can have a coin library online the size of several encyclopedias that way it would be available to the masses. Sorry I am wanting a place to aid me in understanding coins in a more esoteric way, as well as the history of dies errors and events that surround the human need to make them. 50 million round metal discs that tell the same story seem a lot less interesting to me than one round lump of metal that tells an individual story or helps create a pattern. it is exploding the listing as the science changes allowing us to see and record so perhaps there's need to be a change in the way we record these pattern changes.
  9. DrLarry
    yes I can but why then list any variety or error.... that was the underlying question really rather than the fact that there are hundreds of varieties of all number of coins in a series. So perhaps my question would be best ask as follows: why do some get in the list and others don't? to say that they only list the more common would also seem not to fit because they list the E over R in DEI as extremely rare, some they list as Possibly Unique . I am trying to understand the logic in the choice what to publish and what not to list. But perhaps there are volumes and volumes of books picking up dust someplace. Again I ask so that as a novice I should not bother the room with the many overprints I would like to ask you about which I have the R over B in the 61 halfpenny along with 10 other varieties but not 62 R over B. I am just trying to understand as I say
  10. DrLarry
    ok then perhaps I can ask a more mundane question: if SPINK sold one in 2005 E over E over R and SPINK are the people that publish the book we most of us use which list rare varieties like the E over R in DEI why have they not listed the one error they sold in 2005 ...that to me as a novice is strange behaviour because how are we supposed to look out for things?
  11. DrLarry
    Here are some better images. Possible I suppose
  12. DrLarry
    anyone have any thoughts about that I over a 1 . i have looked long and hard at it and whilst there is no evidence of an inward change in the upper right side serif ie the right side seems to descend straight down if offset crooked to the right side there do not appear to be any scars for the removal of the right extension. The base is interesting the metal clearly varies across and the base of the "1" is higher and 1 or 2 degrees off centre. Let me know if you would like more images
  13. DrLarry
    i think the curve is created by the R , the punch is rotated and the R's on the half crown are very "bulldog" so I think the rotation may have given rise to the appearance of it as a B
  14. DrLarry
    here are the other images the first three off the better example and the last the lower grade. Does appear to be three letters there is a spike of metal centre higher than the lower one
  15. DrLarry
    yes and the die also has three other errors the bar in the A is missing in MAL and the I in FID is over a 1 I think
  16. DrLarry
    i will add some more images
  17. DrLarry
    yes I think you might be right it is curving back
  18. DrLarry
    is that the Collection of Adams (half crowns) a Baldwin's Sale ?
  19. DrLarry
    thanks Rob I am a bit of a novice at looking these previous sales up but I will try
  20. DrLarry
    I would be grateful for some help with the error of an E over an R in DEF in the 1817 half crown please. I understand there are a few errors in the 1817 half crown but I cannot find any reference for this one it appears in the two specimens I have found to be a triple error E/E but also E/R. THe E over R in DEI is recognised on the obverse I have three specimens I have collected but I would be interested if anyone collects GIII half crowns if they could let me know your thoughts...many thanks
  21. DrLarry
    yes I am the same if I were in a place of access it would be much simpler.
  22. DrLarry
    well I would happily take on a big chunk of the work I cannot think of a nicer way to making a contribution and I have thousands of hours to put in the pot. I think sometime I need some direction with these things as much as photos are great I learnt many years ago how interpretation of images is the learning process that leads to better understanding.
  23. DrLarry
    no it seems to have some kind of euclidean geometric arrangement I first started noticing it in silver from the late 17thC the format seems simpler but it is still a complex weave pattern there seem to be three major pictogram elements that fold in on each other. They also have a form of rotational symmetry so that the lines and dots that make them up appear random at first but then gradually I seem to have made sense of them. I know its a little bonkers I suppose the simplest way is to explain it a little like a watermark in a note which is somehow imposed on the metal I tried some experiments with metal rolling a design which had some success but it seems a very complicated way to stop counterfeiting. Perhaps I have just looked at too many coin surfaces under the microscope for the last three years. well whatever they are they have taught me how to look and I have managed to learn the skill of oil painting from them so I cannot complain even if its 3 years down a dead end, I have learnt a lot about minting in the process and metallurgy. I love microscopy work so it has been a pleasure.
  24. DrLarry
    the other thing I would suggest is to download an app called cozymagnifyer + to your phone and it will allow you to see things in magnificent detail and you can also put the images in reversed light which allows you to see lots of details on the older coins. it allows for magnification and clarity and for the silly price of £1.85 is worth every penny. I use it with my microscope to take really nice images.
  25. DrLarry
    hi K depends on the date for the half crowns when I want coin specifics for a date I usually look it up individually silver coinage was changed a couple of time in the 20thC for silver and the Cu Ni ones also. they are only a few pounds and weighing things actually help understand a lot and I am sure you will do it more as you collect
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