Leo

I suspect you will also enjoy the grading manual. Welcome to the hobby! There is no way back

Lovely chocolate colour!

Have you received it, how much did you pay for customs?

There was one in London yesterday - I loitered around http://www.coinfairs.co.uk

Jester, I have taken a look at those two crowns that you mentioned and the cheaper one has signs of wear that the other one doesn't. Look at the belt thing across St George's chest (this wears very quickly), the visor of his helmet, the edge of Victoria's veil, and her hair... Now, does that justify an increase of price of 700%? It is true that the value does not increase linearly with quality, it is exponential (as relative rarity), and once you go higher than EF it gets really into very fine details. But more than a grand for a common 1887 crown is pushing it too far I think.

Very very nice florin. I also went for the 1902 set, being so common in high quality you get the 'best bang for your buck' if you want to focus on quality rather than rarity, and quickly put together a type set. You do know that the third farthing did not circulate in Britain though?

With the measurements that you have provided, if it was gold it should weight about 2.7g...

Who buys that?

These are the two, for completeness of the previous post

I picked these up in auction last month. A couple of small Spanish colonial coins from Lima - pictured below with a farthing to give an idea of the size. I find very amusing that these little coins are tiny miniaturisations of the larger 8R with practically the same design and details - and even the elaborate edge detail that was done turning the coin between two parallel linear dies. Such an awful amount of work! As the mints were paid on the basis of weight of silver minted, there was little incentive to mint small coins and these are quite hard to find in good condition. The vast majority of the silver mined in America at the time was used to mint 8-reales, often meant to be sent to Spain or for the trans-pacific trade. In particular and looking at these two little ones, in 1755 in Lima it was recorded 55,686 kilos of silver minted into coins, of which 53,111 were made into 8Rs and 4Rs and the rest (less than 5%) was left for smaller change - 2Rs, 1R, 1/2R

The quadrum foam ring is slightly overdimensioned to ensure it grips the coin, i.e. in the 19mm capsule the foam opening is about 18.5mm wide.

Try squeezing the coin out by gently pressing at the bottom of the pocket But careful that doesn't fall to the floor!

Of course there are more advanced methods but are probably not necessary. TBH the reverse looks like silver to me.

Throw it into the floor (carpet/ vinyl) and listen for the sound... It has a peculiar resonance that you don't get with CuNi

Yes, but beware that in high grade coins parallel lines can indicate die polishing lines or planchet adjustment, and do not detract. This Conversation on the subject is very illustrative.