Leaderboard

I thought long and hard about this. The conclusion I came to is that no update to any volume can be complete as new varieties come to light, meaning that whatever numbering system for an existing reference is used, is going to become overly complicated with suffixes to existing numbers that are unlikely to be in any rational order starting with the first few recorded additions to the published list. This led me to a very deep rabbit hole. Rationalising what people need, I realised that any reference cannot be logically organised on a 1, 2, 3, 4 etc numbering system, however simple this might be because of the above problem. A better alternative would be a longer reference along the lines of Gouby's numbering, starting with the date as the root, and finding a logical numbering system for an extension to this to account for the various varieties as they come to light. Just considering Davies and ESC, the former doesn't assign a different number to currency, proof, edge or off-metal strikes of a given denomination and date, whilst the latter is now just a mess, given the issues with proof-like being assigned a different number, despite being a regular currency coin and the obvious lack of proof-reading which has now consigned to print a large number of glaring inconsistencies. Both leave no room for later inclusions. A date ordered system would necessarily lead to long reference numbers, hence the need for intuitive extension references, but I do think it would appeal to the completist mentality inherent in most of us. It would not solve the problem of what some consider varieties such as the listing of various dots on pennies whilst others don't for example. Whatever system is adopted, it will have its critics. Given the complication involved, anything along the lines of the above would probably be best served as a number of publications, each done for a specific denomination. Some would be large, others a single page. The next issue would then be how too deal with undated coins in a systematic way. A disadvantage of any comprehensive detailed reference is the limited number of people to which it would appeal. Collectors are a diverse bunch, with relatively few interested in any particular sphere, even allowing for the disproportionate number of penny collectors on this forum. Any printed published reference has to have sufficient prospective buyers to justify the costs, though obviously a digital database is infinitely updatable. Another option that might be worth considering is a concordance of references. Whilst that would not help with unrecorded varieties, it would bring the various references under one roof, including those of relatively obscure specialist studies, but even this would be a considerable volume. Taken to its logical conclusion, what all this leads to is a register of all identifiable individual dies based on the observations of every contributor.

Thanks for that @Coinery - mine is certainly a different die and mintmark. All those seem pretty much the same, not matter how much the forger has tried to make them look different.