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I bought an 1858/6 during the week, mainly because of the accompanying note written by Charles Wilson Peck, which I found quite interesting. Members will know that the 1858/6 was neither recorded by Bramah (1929), or Peck (1964). It is a reasonably difficult coin to find, particularly in a better grade, but I have always found it rather surprising that neither of these authors recorded this variety. I do not regard it as very rare, and it is also a fairly obvious type once you see one ‘in the hand’. Anyway, the letter from Peck (which I bought with the coin) was as attached, with my own yellow highlighting now added. You will note that the letter is dated Nov’66, which is just over a year before Peck passed away, in April 1968. Fortunately, I was also able to contact the seller of the coin, through ebay, and he replied as follows:- “the coin had been in my possession since I bought it in 1966. It wasn’t listed as an overstrike but I noticed it and had it confirmed by Peck who was the leading authority of English copper at the time." I think this letter is a nice bit of history, and it also contains a couple of interesting comments, for example Peck’s thoughts on minor date widths. I found it particularly interesting that he mentioned someone called Bressett, a name which I had not come across before. I now see that the American author, Kenneth Bressett wrote several editions of a book called ‘A Guide to English Coins’, starting in the early 1960’s (Peck was aware of the contents of the first edition). This made me wonder if I could find the edition in which he may have first recorded the 1858/6. If anyone reading this has a later edition then perhaps you wouldn’t mind looking to see if the 1858/6 penny has been noted. P.S. £10 in 1966 is now worth £230!

Next door's bananas from my courtyard while the angel's trumpet (brugsmania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brugmansia ) is in my courtyard. Next door grows a variety of fruit trees including avocado., citrus, custard apple and papaya.

the letter is almost more of a collectors' piece than the coin itself.

Michael Gouby sent me a photo of another 1861 F27 ! I've added it to the rare penny site. They're still out there !!!!

Still keep your own copy - last year something went awry and Google was incorrectly classifying people's personal files as pirated content.

Most of the auctions here, outside ebay, are 99% certified, and those not are usually inferior lots. And looking through ebay, very few people sell good quality raws, and most of those are from outside thd US. It's just the way things are here, so a good bit of my better pieces are slabbed, even though I'm fine buying raws.

Sorry if this is old news to most of you, but I only learnt about it today from a friend, who is a legitimate Ebay trader. Apparently the Ebay sellers' forums are all agog with this. Ebay, Amazon, Etsy and all online selling platforms operating in the UK are now required to provide details to the HMRC of the registered user's address, bank details and trading summaries. The HMRC will use this to send tax demands to anyone who has made more than £1000 profit in any given year and has not already registered to pay tax on this profit. They are expected to go back over the last 5 years or more. The expectation is that many well known sellers will be hit with huge bills and face criminal proceedings if they do not pay. Some are already running for the hills!

I've watched videos of people removing copper spots off gold with a torch. Seems to work, but not personally tried.

1908 Penny F164A. 80 plus 4 or 8 Postage to the UK ,PP or BT.

A recent find, now on Richard's site as the 8th known example. As I already have a better example I will be selling this piece; if any member is interested please PM me with a sensible offer. It is a little better than Example 7 (which was also my coin), and definitely better than Example 5, both of which were sold for £160.

I use telegram a fair bit, but for topical discussions like this, forums are superior... or would be if most people hadn't stopped using them. But case in point, I'm a recent member, because I feel forums are the best format for hobbies, and the like.

A few of us contributed appendices covering varieties identified after the 1985 version, including those recorded by Gouby.

All good now so must have been!