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Jerry, I must admit what you say does make sense. Maybe my recollection is blurred! I therefore need to trawl back through the correspondence to confirm exactly what was asked for by the FLO. However, I was certainly asked to obtain valuations prior to the PAS submission but since all of this was being done through my MD club (it was a club site on which I found this gold artefact) I am now wondering whether the club was asking for the valuations in order to negotiate a settlement with the landowner once the PAS process gave the all-clear which is what eventually happened. Frank

I am surprised that this happens in your area, it certainly doesn’t in mine (Wales, Hereford and Shropshire) for non-treasure items and for two fairly straightforward reasons; firstly, valuation (and it’s costs) is not a funded part of the FLO’s remit, and indeed could open him/her up to challenge -and secondly, for a non treasure item a museum ( or other State entity) has no right of acquisition and therefore advance valuations would be a pointless expense. Of course, should a finder wish to sell a non treasure find, then normally both parties will seek valuations informal or otherwise and hopefully reach an amicable settlement. I have recently undertaken to donate a Saxon coin that I purchased at auction (Noonans) as it is an important Herefordshire find to the Museum involving a £5k gift on my part , the purchase price was taken as the market value. That coin had been through the PAS and recorded by the EMC in 2022 without valuation - difficult anyway as a unique coin. Even for Treasure items, valuation comes late in the formal process and then only after a wish to acquire has been expressed. If Treasure is disclaimed and returned jointly to finder/ landowner, it is up to them to sort out their financial commitments to each other - hence the need for prior agreements. As I stated earlier, it does not appear that this coin, if indeed a find, ever entered the PAS process. Jerry

Good point. Unfortunately, the peddlers of overpriced slabbed tat still manage to attract buyers....

The PAS will not value a find, though ‘Treasure’ items are valued by the ‘Treasure Valuation Committee’ as part of the Treasure process, if found to be Treasure and a museum wishes to acquire. As a single find it would not qualify. But this coin does not appear to have been reported to the PAS, and I suspect that the landowner is unaware of its existence, if genuine. To my mind it is not an obvious fake, as most are, and indeed may be a die duplicate of the PAS one . Jerry

Love it! The individual coins are no longer collector's items but the dish on the whole is an item of beauty and rarity.

I felt that I contributed too much detail on the thread on Half pennies showing all the overstamps and errors I had found in my own collection collected in the last 6 years. Every coin has come from eBay and I have never attended an auction and I have enjoyed the challenge of finding errors already discovered and covered comprehensively by M Goulby in the specialised edition Bronze Pennies from 1860 to 1901 and others mentioned in numerous excellent websites created and administered by long time members of this forum and others who I am unsure if members. I wanted to photograph and record all my examples for my own catalogue in readiness for donation to the Trust I hope then it will be used after my demise to help them sell off my collection. I may replicate examples in other places with this in mind. I will use the prefixes used by Goulby and so that I can start to remember them the Freeman nomenclature. I find errors surprisingly interesting, Perhaps because of the turmoil in the transition to Bronze from Copper they illustrate a somewhat chaotic time at the mint. In previous discussions others have explained some of the problems there is an interesting back story which involves a lot of politics and a great deal of personal intrigue in the life of L C Wyon the designer of the new reverse and obverse. The royal mint seems to have been undergoing a lot of changes which may contribute to some of the story and sadly most f the records for this period are lost because of a fire in the records office of the Royal mint in the 19th C. If you feel you would rather this be included in some other thread then just let me know and I will stop and relocate. It takes a lot of time to photograph and record these errors. More than anything else I would be eternally grateful for your own examples that will help verify any previously unlisted. This goes for the half pennies in particular which do not get the same limelight as the penny. So please add your own Thanks

Stephen Etheridge ? I think he gave up collecting and sold his collection through Colin Cooke (Copthorne collection) in 2016.