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Well treat yourself to one of those nice Gouby Xs instead.

I'm waiting for a kinky comment from @Peter, it is from East Anglia after all!

Yes - but if your bid is the only commission bid he has it should start with something like "I have £300 with me..." and then each time another bid comes in, online or in the room, he can take the next increment "with me" until your bid is passed. At any point that the others give up, that is the price you should get it for. If he has two or more advance bids, then he starts at the first bid that clears the others. If he starts at £2000 when yours is the only bid he has then he is breaking the law and risks losing his auctioneer's licence or worse. If he starts at £300, has no bidders online or in the room and starts taking non existing bids to try to bump the price up to your bid, he is also breaking the law - this is referred to as "taking bids off the wall". Some auction houses have bad reputations for either of these illegal practices and regular bidders avoid leaving bids with them.

Wouldn't you get it for whatever the auctioneer started at Mike - somewhere near the estimate? You'd only pay £1900 if someone else had bid £1800. Or have I missed your point? If it was LCA you'd get it for £2000.

Although Derek's book covers coins minted from 1797 through to 1970, you should be able to take the broad principles that he has identified and extrapolate them to earlier types. It won't be an exact science, but it should still give you a good feel for grading of earlier coins, especially since there is no definitive agreed guide for determining grades anyway. On this basis I would keep the book.

I managed to get this nice coin, and it filled a gap too.

I think @bagerap was referring to the average kind of internet claptrap where people air their prejudices freely left right and centre. It's harder to do that in 'real life' where you have to look people in the eye, and you can hear their tone of voice and see their body language. No opinion is fully and completely informed, but a link to a reasonable website (and I will leap to the defence of Wikipedia here) to back up stated facts, never goes amiss.

No one is "entitled to an opinion". They are however allowed an informed opinion. By which I mean that they know what they are talking about and not just spouting the last thing they heard /read.