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I've always firmly believed that marketing offers should be something you click into, not out of.

I have been studying 1887 sixpences for fifteen years and can confirm this as a recognized variety. You should see from the coin that the Rs all have both serifs left and right at the base of the upright so this coin is a variety of the R over I that is in most books. If you look at the R in BRITT: you should be able to see the R/I very clearly. This is a distinguishing feature of this die variety which has come to be called A over A but, as pointed out, it could be an inverted V. The specimens I have do not show a bar to the "A" but you will have noticed how weak the strike is from your own specimen. They turn up from time to time on ebay and fetch fairly normal prices but then most people don't know what they are looking at. In a survey of 1,518 sixpences I have found 5. I don't look for them any more. Extrapolating this would give a mintage figure of 12,107. Given You have one and Nick has one the sample then would indicate 17,000+. It is most likely this pair of dies had a normal use and so the actual figure would be more like 30,000. Well done on spotting it. There is a specimen in The Royal Mint collection RMM8457.

All I will say is that the general thrust of this article is about right. No, they don't have a grasp of the detailed prices/values, but they have reasonably accurately identified the main 'rare' coins in circulation. The prices they quote for them are mostly off, particularly the undated 20p which is nowhere near £100 now, but was in the early days. But as has been said, it is the Daily Mail, so what do you expect, though I'm not sure the working man's beano (The Sun) or the Mirrror would have got it any better. However, I somehow, I doubt that this guy is making quite the sort of money claimed, though there is, it seems, a healthy market for modern 'rarities' and he's just tapping into this. He's got stiff competition from other 'dealers' who also sell these coins and although the mark up is considerable it takes a hell of a lot of sales to 'make' £70k a year in sales, let alone profits. Having said this, I notice that there are many people selling Isaac Newton 50ps, yet these don't seem to be available in change yet, which suggest that people are bulk ordering them from banks and then selling them on at a profit to those who aren't willing to wait for one in change. Maybe he's one of these people. Maybe, one day, he'll branch out into predecimal and become another general coin dealer. Who knows? The only other thing is that I'd hate to have to rely on the Post Office he uses, assuming he uses the local counter. I've been at the front, with just a dozen RD or SD coins to be processed/posted and the thudding of daggers in my back from all those standing fuming in the queue is quite uncomfortable.

Yes you often see these plates on antique fairs at a pound or two each - they cost £10-£15 when new . The royal mint in the seventies produced many special issues of coins as an investment , they turned out anything but, of course you are talking a different time but in general see the words "investment piece" and run for the hills , For many years I have just bought what I liked and will carry on that way

This I think is the problem. Just as with those commemorative porcelain plates, these issues are trumpeted as 'low issue' and 'investments for the future'. That relies on there being a steady - or increasing - market for them, which just simply isn't the case; people who buy such things for investment purposes are doomed to disappointment. Look at the secondary market for such modern issues : they can be bought at auction for usually less than half of the original issue price - modern proof sets are a clear example of this.

They're clearly not medals, but I would argue they are not coins in the normal sense either. The Mint exists not merely to strike coins of the realm, as their traditional role, but to survive on their own now as a profit-making commercial organisation. Many of these 'special issues' should be regarded as no more indicative of 'for general use as currency' as those awful commemorative plates were, that were so popular in the 80s and now can't be sold for love or money. The problem is where we - as collectors - draw the line. Obviously proof sets (which the Mint have been producing as annual sets since the 1970 set) are special strikings of currency coins, and have been struck for centuries. Yes, for collectors and "VIPs", but they could always be set side by side with their currency equivalents. However, since 1983, the Mint has been producing special editions in greater and greater numbers purely to be sold for commercial profit. Some of these were never issued for circulation, such as the Britannias and piedforts, and should they be considered coins? I would say not, but apart from the obvious non-coins like Britannias, it is a grey area. How many people have spent crowns as currency for the past 100 years? Yet they are legal tender, and the cupro-nickel versions in the decimal era have been available from post offices at face value. Yet I'm prepared to bet that few shopkeepers have ever had one pass through their hands.