Elizabeth II sixpence obverse varietys

[scott]

was looking at my sixpences for some reason. and spotted some interesting things. large beads, small beads different cross pointing, was wondering if these are listed anywhere

[DaveG38]

was looking at my sixpences for some reason. and spotted some interesting things. large beads, small beads different cross pointing, was wondering if these are listed anywhere

In my varieties book, I identify varieties in 1953, 1955, 1964 and 1965, plus some proofs. If you have found some others I would be interested to know about them.

[Peckris]

was looking at my sixpences for some reason. and spotted some interesting things. large beads, small beads different cross pointing, was wondering if these are listed anywhere

In my varieties book, I identify varieties in 1953, 1955, 1964 and 1965, plus some proofs. If you have found some others I would be interested to know about them.

I think you've got the 1964 "I in GRATIA missing" Dave?

On the subject of your book - I think it's a great read, and very very thorough. Just one thing though, I struggled to find much in the way of rarity assessment. I'm used to books like Freeman and Gouby and ESC where every single listed variety has a rarity rating. Any thoughts on producing one, and making it available as a supplement to existing readers? For me, it's a 'must have'.

[scott]

i havn't gone through them properly, i have a bag of em somewhere, i have only found differance on the 1965 though

[DaveG38]

was looking at my sixpences for some reason. and spotted some interesting things. large beads, small beads different cross pointing, was wondering if these are listed anywhere

In my varieties book, I identify varieties in 1953, 1955, 1964 and 1965, plus some proofs. If you have found some others I would be interested to know about them.

I think you've got the 1964 "I in GRATIA missing" Dave?

On the subject of your book - I think it's a great read, and very very thorough. Just one thing though, I struggled to find much in the way of rarity assessment. I'm used to books like Freeman and Gouby and ESC where every single listed variety has a rarity rating. Any thoughts on producing one, and making it available as a supplement to existing readers? For me, it's a 'must have'.

Well done! That's one I didn't come across - better keep it for a re-issue sometime in the future.

On the thorny issue of rarity assessment, I did consider what I could provide for this, but the problem was always one of identifying a scale (as Freeman does) and then assessing the numbers available against that scale. None of the sources I used have done anything like this and I could foresee major timescale problems if I attempted to do so, as well as a huge piece of work contacting/visiting dealers, going through their stock and then categorising the coins. I judged it to be a very long involved task equally as involved as the work done on silver edge nicks in the 1960s and 70s, and for this reason I decided against doing it. What I have done is comment generally about rarity where there is some published view available - a bit lazy I know, but I wanted to get the book written for people to use, rather than as a piece of historical research.

[DaveG38]

i havn't gone through them properly, i have a bag of em somewhere, i have only found differance on the 1965 though

Scott,

If you have found different types of the 1965 sixpence then you may be on to a bit of a winner, as one type - the obverse 3 type with the 'I' of 'REGINA' to a space - is much scarcer and can command quite a premium. Ive seen one recently sell for around £65 I think. Certainly, I've been looking for one in boot fair trays for years and never found one.

[Peckris]

was looking at my sixpences for some reason. and spotted some interesting things. large beads, small beads different cross pointing, was wondering if these are listed anywhere

In my varieties book, I identify varieties in 1953, 1955, 1964 and 1965, plus some proofs. If you have found some others I would be interested to know about them.

I think you've got the 1964 "I in GRATIA missing" Dave?

On the subject of your book - I think it's a great read, and very very thorough. Just one thing though, I struggled to find much in the way of rarity assessment. I'm used to books like Freeman and Gouby and ESC where every single listed variety has a rarity rating. Any thoughts on producing one, and making it available as a supplement to existing readers? For me, it's a 'must have'.

Well done! That's one I didn't come across - better keep it for a re-issue sometime in the future.

On the thorny issue of rarity assessment, I did consider what I could provide for this, but the problem was always one of identifying a scale (as Freeman does) and then assessing the numbers available against that scale. None of the sources I used have done anything like this and I could foresee major timescale problems if I attempted to do so, as well as a huge piece of work contacting/visiting dealers, going through their stock and then categorising the coins. I judged it to be a very long involved task equally as involved as the work done on silver edge nicks in the 1960s and 70s, and for this reason I decided against doing it. What I have done is comment generally about rarity where there is some published view available - a bit lazy I know, but I wanted to get the book written for people to use, rather than as a piece of historical research.

Ok, bearing in mind that rarity is a 'must have' for some people (e.g., I'm not interested in any minor variety where there's no scarcity between them - such as the 1928/29 large silver, and 1937, but I'd go out of my way to track down a scarce item) - how about :

instead of a thorough Freeman-style scale, then how about a five-level guesstimate scale? For example, Common - Normal - Scarce - Very scarce - Rare? And no rarity listed would simply mean that of the two varieties (or more) neither is scarce relative to the other. But where you have several varieties, such as the 1921 shilling, it really is (IMO) necessary to know the comparative rarity. Those are my thoughts anyway.

[1949threepence]

Very interesting. You don't tend to think of modern coinage having too many same year varieties.

[scott]

i guess its like the 1992 2005 and 6 10p's

[Peckris]

Very interesting. You don't tend to think of modern coinage having too many same year varieties.

I know! And Dave's book makes very interesting reading from that point of view. When you tot them all up (from 1920 silver, 1925 sixpences, through 1928/29/37 large silver, 1964/65 sixpences, etc etc etc), there must be quite a few.