Leaderboard

Well yeah as it's the oldest coin I've found so far. Been detecting a month so give me time to get some beauties

As Richard says the 7 has a narrow ribbon , with the 8 being wide , and as the obv.8 can only be found on Royal Mint 1874s its a good identifier , but it might be of interest to some that the Obv 7 on the 7+g F71 1874H has a slightly wider ribbon than is to be found on the normal Obv 7 . As far as I can tell all the other combinations of 1874 and 1874H with Obv. 7 have the narrowest ribbon. I think I read about this in freeman, who thought it was a transition feature between 7 and 8 , Examples below in order 8 / wide ribbon 7 / narrow ribbon 7

Thanks for the comments guys one day you'll see me upload something amazing. I know these are not in good condition but the excitement you get when you pull any coin up I love that feeling.

The biggest difference between 7 and 8 for me is the gap between the tie ribbons - obverse 8 has a thicker outer ribbon and the 2 ribbons virtually touch for the first half of their length (i.e. almost no gap between them).

Sound as a pound genuine.

Josie, That is a excellent idea...free trade and movement between The USA and the United Kingdom. Our countries have been friends since 1814, it seems to me it would be a good fit.

It's an obverse 7 Freeman 70, Paddy. Here's an obverse 8 - the difference is very subtle, but note the slightly straighter, longer nose, with a shorter gap between nose and lip:-

problem is most of these have done multiple rounds of people looking to do the exact thing, so you have to rely on 5/6+ people all missing out on something.

Thanks for your comments I also found these 3pences

Did you find any bad ones Josh ?.

And only a few miles from me. Be still my beating heart.......

The Rotunda of Mosta. Note the damage to the dome where a bomb dropped through during WWII. The bomb did not explode thankfully. A replica of the bomb is shown inside the church.

Some photos from Malta. The St John's Co-Cathedral.

I do a lot of trawling around local and small scale online auctions for coins - both bulk lots and individually. You get to spot the different sorts of bulk lots after a while - there are some that are genuine "Grannies old jewellery box" lots, and that is what you really want to find. There are some lots that have had a cursory, non expert, sort - these generally have any gold or silver removed or put into separate lots, but may still have a few interesting bits left. (The non-expert rarely looks closely at coppers or tokens and has poor knowledge on foreign pieces, so you can do well there.) Then there are the dealers' junk lots - accumulations of the coins they cannot sell, sometimes salted with a few slightly better things to tempt the bidding and persuade you they haven't been through it with a fine tooth comb. Telling the difference is not always easy as some dealers go to great lengths to make the lots look original! But they can be great fun and provided you know your stuff and view carefully before bidding, you can do very well.

If my memory serves me correctly, on the earlier version of the Victorian Bronze penny, the picture of a reverse F penny was added at the back page of the book. The picture of the reverse F penny was on page 14 of the second edition.

Good clean and clear example, quite scarce