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Several questions need to be taken into consideration when pricing rarities. Where did the coin come from? If purchased privately, then there will have been no sales data to back up the CofE price and may additionally reflect the cost to them in acquiring a coin for which there have not been any recent transactions. As I understand it, there is a furious amount of number crunching done after the September sales, which are then entered into the database to provide a revised figure for December publication. In the case of the York groat, Jon purchased it out of the Brady sale for a hammer price of £2300 (£2852). For it to return to the market with a price tag of £3500 is not unreasonable. In the case of very rare pieces, it is always a case of how much someone is willing to pay, rather than adhering to the book. They tend to work on the principle of ignoring the prices for those where people with bottomless pockets slug it out to the bitter end, as they tend not to be indicative of prices in general. You can however find that rare pieces will outdo the book as a matter of course, however low the price is. When discussing the revised prices for the groats post Brady, it was clear that some of the sections which had not been internally revised for a while needed doing so. In the current market, anything decent will do well, anything decent and rare even better. This comes into the latter category. With so little data available, and as described, known from only 15 examples, I think it is a case of the downward adjustment in the price being too severe. The Brady sale had its fair share of chased coins which meant inflated prices over and above the expected price. To compare with another repriced example, I bought one coin in Brady - the Rawlins signed 1644 F2 groat. As far as I am aware there are only two examples - one in the BM and mine. The Oxford groats were all priced around 700 give or take a bit prior to Brady. Mine is now at £1350, but I paid just over £1750 for a coin that's a bit less than VF and it appears to be the only one. Is the book too low? Should prices be double? Clearly I wouldn't sell the coin for around the £1K mark which would be what the book suggests I do. Any relisting would have to be around a minimum of £2500-3000. What cannot be excluded is the ability of the market to produce multiple examples of rarities once a high price is achieved in a sale. Suddenly the unique coin is clearly less than unique, which means it is always better to err on the side of caution. Consequently, in the knowledge that I would have gone a bit higher than I did, the price was set at £1350. In the current climate it is obvious when a coin is being chased. The difficult/impossible bit is to come up with a number which satisfies all trains of thought, as deciding the uncompetitive price requires you to assume that the people who buy the coin don't particularly want it. Sort that one out!! The number crunching is sub-contracted to some extent.

I thought that most of the oil is off the Shetlands and the previous time independence came up the Shetlands said they would stay with the English. Hmm. Shades of Alaska? Anyway, if the Scots raised the price of Brent crude it wouldn't make a lot of difference at the pumps given how much Dick Turpin George Osborne takes in fuel duty. Quite right. The extortionate quantities of money taken by all governments just so they can buy votes and help their mates is excessive. Reduce the tax take and reduce the handouts, irrespective of the direction they are heading. Most vibrant economies are so because of less, not more government intervention which is invariably skewed with a view to political gain. Remove the bias and we could all do better.