Chris Perkins

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!

I just thought for fun I would reveal the big contributors to the British Coin price database on www.rotographic.co.uk. There are almost 250 coin price entries in there now and I have started looking over them and converting them to excel format for easier viewing. If you have entered 1 or 50 pieces of data, it's all good stuff, and I really am grateful to you, so don't feel bad if you not on this list. The top 5 database contributors are: Name (number of entries) Chris Perkins (80) Custard1966 (66) Master JMD (31) Kuhli (18) Mike Jones (15) The rest are made up from (in no order) William, Emp Oli, Edward, Half Penny Jon and 4 passers by! Keep up the good work.

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).

Looking good so far, I'm just concrned if it will be A5 size and at least 300dpi.

Well you have to don't you, no one cares as much about your business ventures as yourself, and if you don't try your hardest to promote them, no one else will.

Yes, I had spotted the link, and It'll be good to say on the inside...'Cover pictures: Florin sold by prececimal.com, £2 sold by Predecimal.com on the date....blah, blah.

Don't wory too much about the bandwidth, as this is an 'exclusive' area, not many people get to see it, and it is for the good of the project. Is it Collectors' Coins, or is it Collector's Coins.....I don't know, my English was always crap, didn't Geoff say it should be Collectors' Coins??

I've been asked by the advertising manager of Stamp and Coin Mart to send his editior (and him) a press release all about the CCGB2005. I think it basically has to sing its praises, give my contact details, inform them of release date etc etc. They want to help market the book (I suppose it makes sense, as competitors of Coin News, and with no annual price guide of their own) I've never done a press release before, anyone got any previous experience?

I thought we did it for the same reason as the French, but not because of them. Bronze is cheaper than copper and the coins were reduced in size to save money too.

I think you'll have to be a little more accurate with your sizes Bob, as farthing and halfpenny sizes changed sizes a few times from 1799 - 1967. Millimetres would help.

Probably some kind of advertising marks, or what's left of them. At that time many merchants stamped coins with adverts so as the coin circulated they would get free advertising. Or it could just be graffitii, that's common on coins of that age too.