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The guy was lucky in that he bought some sovereigns that made a profit, even coming from LMO. 3 or 4 years ago I received a call from a woman whose father had died and spent a 5 figure sum on LMO things. e.g over £1K on a 1791 guinea in a pretty little box with a cert of authenticity and product description showing a picture of a PAS 1791 guinea. Sadly, the contents of the capsule graded fine. Two other boxes held a selection of low grade Roman and middle eastern coins with a retail value of 150 to 200 on a very good day. Cost was over 1200. Lots of other overpriced LMO goodies(?) were also purchased together with maybe a dozen sovereigns. Luckily for me she had done some homework before calling, and indicated she was prepared to get back only a fraction of what he had spent without me appearing to be the one doing the rip-off when my face dropped on opening the boxes. I wish all were like that. The day before yesterday I had to give similar bad news to someone that had spent a few hundred on gilt modern coins - pennies, 20p's, 50p's etc. Again, the resale value is a few pounds at most per item - if you can find a buyer. He will get back approximately 10-15% of his outlay. It goes back to the point I put to the BBC researcher. Nobody would spend £10K or more on a car without looking at it, taking it for a drive, and generally satisfying themselves it was reasonable for the money, yet people hand over similar sums to the LMO and Westminster etc without blinking, i.e. the consumer has to take at least some of the blame for their predicament. Possibly more than half the blame considering the amount of money these companies have to spend on marketing and advertising in the national press. Whether you like the LMO or not, they have to charge over bullion to cover their costs. The problem is the self produced tat they market, less so the overpriced collectable items. Let's face it, every one of us routinely pays a massive premium to intrinsic value, but we are generally saved by doing due diligence. Caveat emptor every time.

Good advice Peter your right.......and i dont

Rip Off Britain Series 8 Episode 14 Coins section starts at 14:50.

I am starting to think i sstttuuuutterrr

If it's any help, Matt, the Fitzwilliam museum have all old auction catalogues, and the Christies auction of 23rd October 1984, is amongst them. Here's the link It's a bit antiquated as you have to scroll down under C to find Christies. That shows that they hold the catalogue for that auction, but it's not clear whether you are only able to view within the museum itself, or whether they would send you a copy for a fee. There is an e mail address you can make enquiries at.

I would phone them...they didnt have one advertised when i bought my copy. Its the .......The M. J .Freeman collection of victorian bronze coins. Christies Tuesday 23 october 1984.

The die axis on these is fairly consistently inverted as far as I can establish, but the lines do not always follow each other on both sides, which you would expect if it was a mechanical process associated with the strike, suggesting the two sides were scraped separately. It is unlikely to be just a feature of Briot's machinery as you get lines across the bust right through to G2's coinage, though during W3 there is a greater tendency to have the adjustments made at the crowns on the reverse. The prevalence of marks on Briot's coins also appears to be greater on full or overweight coins (based on a sample size of about 40). Very few marks were seen on coins weighing 5.80g or less suggesting they were done to reduce the weight. I read somewhere recently that Briot's coinage was frequently rejected as out of spec weight-wise leading to a large amount of scissel, but can't remember where I saw it, The only question therefore is at what point in the process were the marks made? Logic dictates that to be more efficient, you would reduce the weight before striking to negate the wasted time.