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One small spreadsheet, but a lot of work:- I mentioned a few days ago that I had taken pictures of all ebay listings of Victorian ‘Young Head’ copper pennies over a 5 year period, this was from September 18th 2008 to September 17th 2013. I did this with the aim of trying to compile some useful statistics when time permitted. Attached is my initial spreadsheet for 1853 Pennies, this may help clarify the rarity of the Plain Trident (PT) pennies compared to OT currently available in the market place………and I suspect fairly close to the original mintage percentages. I also attach images, at identical resolution, of the three different font types for numeral 5 (which I know of) used on the 1853 penny. Pete’s earlier comment about the ‘large 5’ was referencing Gouby Style A, sometimes also called Italic 5. This date type is very rare when found paired with the Plain Trident reverse, with a count of only 9 in the above spreadsheet. On the obverse of this variety I believe there may always be a small dot between the I and A of GRATIA, although I cannot be 100% sure on all 9 of these coins because of the image quality. I will follow on with images of my own piece, which I was lucky enough to find in 2014, where this dot can clearly be seen. I also think that this exact same obverse is paired with the much more common Ornamental Trident variety, presumably on coins struck around the time that the Plain Trident was first introduced…….so the I.A in GRATIA can also be found on OT. In this spreadsheet I also decided to include stats for the Peck 1503 variety, sometimes known as the Closer DEF colon, i.e. NOT midway between the F of DEF and Britannia’s toes (as is usually seen). Bramah references this as his type 15 saying “last colon is 1mm from the F, and 2 1/4mm from Britannia's foot; he also goes on to say:- Coming to the trident divisions, the O.T. class of 1853 is common while those with P.T. must be accounted almost rare. The sub-division No. 15 of the O.T. class of this year is also rare. I often wonder, with current knowledge and a blank sheet of paper, how one would now categorise the features that are seen on the 1839 to 1860/59 penny series. There are certainly a number of interesting things seen with regard to colon dots, but where does one draw the line? For example, if one just looks at the 1853 penny, the colon dots after DEF are not just seen ‘closer’ to F, and normally aligned midway to the toes, but also in a number of other ‘in between’ positions…………and the individual dots can be seen a) almost touching, quite distant from one another, and c) distinctly slanted in both directions. Indeed, Bramah again recognises this on his Page 108 by saying:- Another prolific source of minor variation is provided by the colons on the rev. Probably every die creates a colon variant and the only really satisfactory way of describing the position identifiably is by measurement and by the rather delicate indication afforded by projecting the line of each colon and so cutting the inscription opposite. Anyway, I do not wish to hog this site so I will cut off now and invite anyone interested in this area to ask questions or clarification on the spreadsheet numbers.

The spreadsheet was supposed to appear before the pictures!! Anyway, here is the promised 1853 PT Italic 5

Couple of beauty's coming up at Heritage. Think they'll be a little out of reach for me... https://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/world-coins/proof-pr64-ngc-/p/3066-31009.s?ic4=ListView-Thumbnail-071515 https://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/world-coins/proof-pr64-ngc-/p/3066-31012.s?ic4=ListView-Thumbnail-071515

Hi Pete, No worries! Those boxes with the three types of 5 fonts are all exactly same dimensions. I could measure numeral sizes but didn't bother because they all look around the same height and width to me, so no real startling differences to report...…...unlike say an 1857 numeral 7 or an 1859 numeral 9 where font sizes can be distinctly different. I guess the italic 5 looks a bit wider than the others, but then if you were to rotate it to stand upright you could say it would become narrower. I prefer to call this an italic 5 rather than a 'large one'. i.e. following the lead given by Gouby on his website:- http://www.michael-coins.co.uk/1853_penny.htm Hope that helps,

Well one out of forty eight shows how much scarcer they are Plenty varieties on the Coppers to look for. Pete.

A high five delivered by Anne Boleyn

A high five for the inbred

A good cheap compact reference in 5 volumes covering Ed.I to the Commonwealth.

1927 PF62 1/2 Crown sold recently for £53000 link