Chris Perkins

They are Brass Guinea/Half Guinea copies. Probably made as gaming tokens by the Victorians, rather than as forgeries at the time. Not worth a great deal as far as I'm aware. Pop them on ebay and post a link here, i'd like to see how they do, as I have quite a few somewhere.

I've emailed Geoff, telling him where to go.

Blieb cool man, I know! And I know it's in good hands.

I had a feeling someone would say that! No doubt you beat Oli to it. The thing is, no one is ever out of line in here, so at the moment Sylvester and I can more than handle things.

Well i'm disheartened by your lack of attention, especially as my only moderator! We're not talking about much special, just the number and type of entries in the Rotographic coin database.

I have been known to wash waxy bronze/copper it soap and water too but I always fear that the action of getting them wet may do harm! I suppose that probably isn't the case if they are dried properly.

That's a very good point Edward, but like you say, at the moment I really need everything. From 50p coins to £50,000 coins!

I think it would work out much more than 10.2p per mile, if you take in maintenance costs, and of course ridiculous insurance costs for a 19 year old on anything more powerful than a Reliant Robin.

I happen to know that young Sylvester does actually have a driving licence. Don't you old chap?

Are you going backwards from EII, or forward from Edgar when you get stuck at GII William?

Yes, lucky me! As you know, all you lot are officially helpers anyway, so you'll all get one. At this stage I think Mike Jones deserves one too!

Here's my timetable: 9.30 (or thereabouts, often later) Get up. 9.31-23.00 (or thereabouts, often later) respond to ridiculous badly puctuated, lower case enquiries about Princess Diana coins from Tuvalu, and other such rubbish.

The rich list thing in the papers, I fail to see how it can be accurate when the Queen is concerned. I know that the public have a claim to some of her luxuries, but how can you possibly put prices on those antiques and castles? Can you imagine how much the Crown jewels would fetch on eBay?? No one could guess high enough.

Probably, but after the Crown jewels! Stranger things have happened. I read that the Queen is selling some of her London demi palaces near to Buck house at the moment. I think the cheapest was £13.5million. I didn't realise she owned the whole of Regent Street!

Not heard of any.

I think India was 'lost' under George VI (hence the removal of IND IMP from coins in 1949) and our very own Elizabeth II misplaced South Africa in the 50's.

I meant ex colonial, not ex friends! JMD it was George III, and the history books say 1776, although it was not officially recognised by the British government until some years later, it wasn't quite as late as George V!

I don't think there's much chance of us converting to American! There are far too many collectors/dealers etc that are perfectly happy with Brit, most of them prefer it, so there's not much chance of that. At the end of the day people seem to forget that the Royal Mint is basically a business. Ok, they make coins for the nation, and several others, but a major part of their business is to make a profit. They sell all kinds of crap directly to collectors, many of those collectors will be American, and this is obviously an attempt to get more money off our (ex) colonial friends by combining the name 'Royal Mint' (which many Americans probably imagine is a big old building with a draw bridge, guards with long fluffy black hats that live in little 2"x2" sheds and all the employees wear bowler hats!) and of one of their much cherished 3rd part grading companies. It's very clever, and I doubt very many of those slabbed modern proof gold bit and bobs will be returning.

Isn't he sweet Sylvester: You da ladies man!

Looks like a young lady to me, perhaps the PC in college (I assume) still has the old one stuck in its cache. Perhaps they all use MSN messenger these days. Talking quietly among themselves. Unless the weather is nice, that always reduces the number of visitors. What's the weather like in the UK lately?

As it's a bmp it should be ok as long as the text/graphics are smooth and not pixelated. Can you zip it up and send it? Bmp's compress well.

I mean a pure white background around the coin. Email me just the coin picture and I'll see if I can do that and send it back. Try making the whole thing 2x the size it is, or even 3x. If it's too big it can be reduced better than it can be enlarged.

Yes I did, but I need you to draw a circle round the florin so that you can cut it out and leave a pure white background. Can you do that? Can you also make it A5 sized? I don't think the bmp is big enough.

So can you email me large bmp versions? Perhaps I can test how big they need to be for A5.

That's pretty good, perhaps it should be renamed 'Collectors' BNP Coins 2005'!! Are you also saving these as bmp peeps, because jpg's with compression loose so much detail. (I know the forum will not accept bmps as pictures).