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Behind every great man lies an even better woman, I have no doubt she was the Rock of the family. It's nice that you deem us worthy enough to share this turbulent time in your life, God bless Peter, I'm sure she'll be forever watching over you and the family.

Hi I'm Terry. I've been collecting mainly pre.dec. pennies for about a decade now. The collection was started by my mother in the 60s, and passed on to me . I have made quite a few discoveries, but have yet to share them . This one I think is the most important . At first glance it appears to be a Freeman 2 + d but no. What first caught my notice was the oversized colons with what appears to be a smaller button like dot in centre of all the colons, so I investigated further, and found the letters did not align with the teeth in the same way as other Freeman obv. 2 coins. Infact the V in VICTORIA and the F in F D point to the tooth. So I counted the teeth , and to my surprise was 145 , now the Freeman 2 has 143, and no other type has 145. I have only seen two others in three years of looking and they are both on London coins .

It is a recognised variety Brian and your figures are spot on. CGS have slabbed 70 normal and 2 like yours have a look on the site.

Liquid, it can easily be diluted in water and gives even coverage. Jerry

Patination is a chemical process, whereby a minute layer of surface metal is converted into insoluble compounds, oxides, chlorides, carbonates, sulphides etc dependent upon the environment to which the coin is exposed. Normally this will be a slow, multifactorial process under influence of sweat, water, oils,salts, air pollutants eg sulphides, carbonic acid and I am sure a multitude of other chemicals, and variety of temperatures. The main difference with artificial patination is that the variety of active chemicals is reduced, but the process can be speeded up by increased chemical concentrations and temperature. Liver of Sulphur may certainly be one toning chemical available, there will be others. I have only used it on a couple of coins, pics attached. The chemicals do seem to reduce the gloss of a polished coin, as does prolonged boiling in rainwater. The polished coin needs washing, and de-greasing first (acetone, petrol) to encourage even toning. I tried using the L of S solution hot initially, but the tone was too dark too quickly (see the 1863 penny), but later experimented with a weaker, cooler solution and more prolonged exposure (see the 1874, unfortunately didnt take a 'before' pic. Neither is perfect, but with more practice a satisfactory tone should be possible, certainly both look better than they did. I would hasten to add that this is a 'last resort' measure for coins otherwise beyond redemption! Jerry

would be interested to see how you go on Brian , please keep us informed preferably with pictures.

But we already do. M(ostly) S(mooth) with variants being from 60 -70(%) on said deficiency.

a new grade has been born smooth grade. I wonder if in time we'll get variants of said grade, smoooth grade being good smoooth and smooooth grade being Near smoooooth

Someone was looking hard at bun head pennies as early as 1907: http://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/1907.shtml (look for "The bronze coinage of Queen Victoria").

I think it's also a generational thing, a new tranche of collectors now have no experience of pre decimal UK coinage, and are taking an interest in change in their pocket so we get threads like this one on decimal pennies, or a recent thread in another forum on 2p varieties. If and when a future author produces a detailed work on the decimal issues listing these and other varieties, interest will be engendered and new discoveries may well be made We still await a fully comprehensive study of George V pennies