Chris Perkins

No, it's clearly up there in the OMN!

Yes, but as far as I know they have all turned out to be forgeries in the end.

There's not enough junk around for the boot sales. It's all on eBay.

Whoever you are, I think you just made the 100,000th post, so as a treat, pick £10 worth of things on predecimal.com and I'll send them to you post free!

To tell the difference, from memory nickel is sort of wishy-washy magnetic I think. Steel on the other hand really sticks to a magnet and takes a bit more persuasion to remove.

I like that and the fact that it pre-dates the copper plated steel coins. It's what's known as an off-metal strike, i.e. the wrong metal for the coin it should be. Whether an error, or someone trying something out at the mint, or passing the time, we'll never know for sure. I suppose the most likely explanation is that is was some kind of experiment relating to the forthcoming copper plated steel coins, assuming they already had that idea floating around in 1990 (the historical copper price info for 1990 to 1992 may help answer that). It's great that you've clearly kept it from new and it is therefore still in very good condition. There isn't a massive following for off-metal decimals but It's certainly worth a few pounds due to the condition I'd say. I'd be pleased to buy it.

No no, you lot all make it want it is! Now that things have settled down this end, I'll try to be a little more active. I bow down to the superior knowledge of many of the regular members here. I'm just an SE London street urchin who started this website on an old laptop, sitting in his underpants waiting in the launderette for his clothes to finish. 14 years later and my abilities for soaking garments still by far out trump my ability to soak up and disseminate numismatic knowledge.

That doesn't seem to matter any more. William has also married a commoner (much commoner) so technically Harry is next is far as I'm concerned, unless he marries a commoner too!

I counted manually. It doesn't actually mean that TomGoodheart is No.17, though he is certainly very early. There may well have been genuine members before him that were never active and deleted. In the past when people join and don't post anything for a number of years I have purged them (mainly to get rid of sleeping spammers).

I was looking at the membership list the other day and happened to notice that it was your 10th anniversary soon. And you deserve a bit of a fuss over it.

Good point, I'd forgotten about that one already! May be an idea to put the 2009 set on ebay.

Oh right, yes I've had them before in the white envelopes. I had a few 1970 sets still sealed in the white envelopes. I imagine my contact means the normal outer coloured card. And if 2009 contains more in face value then I suspect that was an oversight and that he'd pay more for it. He's very reliable. If they were mine, that's where I'd send them (and I'm not making anything out of it).

Would a normal sized motorbike fit into the back of a London taxi (LTI TX1) if one removed the front wheel and some other bits? Whaddaya reckon?

No, that means the coin is worth round about £200! Sometimes for slow movers coin dealer may have a 50% mark up, but for gold coins that's not really possible as the gold bullion content sets the value and gold is always easy to move on but has a minimal profit margin. You don't mention the date, so I'll assume 1980s. They started in 1987. Nearly 30 years later and the packaging will be pretty insignificant as there are no serious collectors for which the packaging/promotional material etc play much of a role. 1/4oz gold is worth pretty much exactly £200 at the moment. A coin dealer would pay £200, remove/discard the packaging and hope to sell the coin for £220ish. Then drink the 2 whisky miniatures!

We've nearly reached 100k posts! Sometimes the number seems to race up quicker than I can see all the posts. I wonder if it also counts the non-public, member to member PM's?

More info today: It was a mixture of coins and no banknotes. The victim estimated the value as £7000. So they couldn't have been from the WWI era (silver and gold), unless they were all copper denominations, which is also unlikely because 10,000 Roubles in copper you'd probably need a crane and HGV to steal. Something doesn't really add up. Either the victim had absolutely no idea what was stolen, or he's being dishonest about what actually was stolen.

Posting this here to raise awareness. It seems a lot, so I wonder if a lot of the 10,000 face value are banknotes: Good Evening Sir I am DC within the CID at Hammersmith & Fulham and I am investigating the theft of around 10,000 Russian Roubles from around the time of the First World War. As I know very little about this area I am hoping to use your expertise to assist my investigation. I have come across your website through Google and I am hoping any suspects may have done the same? Could you please help me with the following: 1) Have you heard of anyone trying to sell any Russian Roubles to this approximate value in the past few months? 2) How easy is it to sell the coins, would you need some ID etc?3) Are there any specialist dealers in the local area or could these coins have been stolen to order by a collector? 4) Any other information you can think of that would help me? I apologise I can tell you no more about the coins, as the victim had no photographs or serial numbers of the coins to pass onto me. You can reach me by replying to this email or on 0208 246 2655. Kind Regards DC *Name removed, just in case they don't want it broadcast here*Priority Crime UnitAvenue House, Hammersmith Police Station

My art teacher would ask if you were suffering from 'verbal diarrhea' (or in this case the written equivalent).

A contact of mine that normally buys books said: 1971-1982 4.00 quid each as long as they have there outers depends on if there red or blue prices are as follows up til 2004 without a 5 pound coin i will pay 5.50 each with the five pound coin i will pay 11.00, the 1989 i will pay 11 for aswell after 2004 i will pay 15-20 pound per set.

That had occurred to me too initially, but the proper Metropolitan Police email address re-assured me!

And my reply to DC ****: Dear DC *****, 10,000 Roubles as in 10,000 One Rouble coins, or 10,000 Roubles in total face value made up of a mixture of Russian coins? The 5, 10 and 25 Rouble coins were gold. The 1 Rouble down to its 10th part were silver and the very small denominations were copper. Or, were there banknotes among them? In normal used condition the vast majority of the silver and gold coins are just dealt with for the value of the metal they contain. The large quantity to me, indicates that the coins were probably in normal used condition because collectors tend to have far fewer examples (e.g. one of each year) in the best possible condition and would have no use for such a large amount. So it would be very likely that whoever stole them did so for the silver/gold value rather than any (if any) collectable value. Whether gold or silver, it's a huge amount of coins to have in the first place! I would be a little bit suspicious about the victim perhaps confusing the face value of the number of items etc, as anyone that has 10,000 or anything would surely have some kind of rough idea about what they looked like. If they are mainly banknotes, then banknotes, even 100 years old, tend to very rarely be worth much at all (despite many owners believing them to be valuable)! If they are coins, then I would imagine the thieves would try to sell them for the metal content. A huge amount of Russian coins offered as collectable coins would cause any dealer to be very suspicious. To address your questions: 1) No. Not heard of any huge quantities of Russian coins recently. 2) Probably not, especially if they were sold as gold/silver. Although the quantity would also make most reputable metal dealers very suspicious too. 3) As mentioned above. I would think this unlikely as even the most prolific collector wouldn't have 10,000 face value of anything because that would involve duplication! I can't however rule out that they could have been stolen to order by someone who wanted the metal. 4) Yes. If you provide more details of how many actual coins it was and if many/any were gold and silver then I can pass the text and your contact details to the British Numismatic Trade Association who represent the 80 or so leading UK coin dealers. The BNTA will send a message to all the members and will also post details on their website to get the message out. That might help. If the crime happened months ago then I would think any recovery chances would be slim. Mr C H Perkinswww.predecimal.comwww.rotographic.com

I don't think there is an easy way around it! I reckon the best way to maximise the money from decimals is probably to break the sets up and sell the coins individually, but that's a massive lot of work for the sake of a load of coins worth not much more than face value. I'd probably be interested in the £5 coins. Are they all in their card packages or just loose and BU? In the card packages I can pay £6.50 each and if loose then £5.50. I sell them for £8 - £10 and have all the images already so that saves time. For proof sets: dealers I know usually value them at face and a half. I try to avoid them as they're bulky! In saying that though, I did ok with some 1980s BU sets in Germany the other month so perhaps you could talk me into it.

The 'Rover' V8 was the engine used in the TR8, but I know it was based on the US engine originally. The TR8 is very rare in RHD form, I think they made less than 20 for the home market. It's common to find TR7's with retro fitted V8 engines. That's another engine that saw decades of use. Range Rovers had them until recently and TVR may still be using them I think.... just googled and complete engines are still made for when people need replacements. Peck rightly mentions Austin. The Jaguar XK engine is another that was used for many years, from 1949 to 1992 in sports cars and saloons. The Rolls Royce 6.3 and later in 6.75l form is still in production and has been used since 1959! A police Daimler Dart bagerap! That must have been a few years ago. Dad had a Daimler V8 250 saloon in the 80s, which of course had the same engine, at least I think it did.

Quite long winded that, esp without being broken up into paragraphs. I've never read past about the 2nd line. It's a Triumph 2000 doing a wheelie, and that's all that counts! The 6 Cylinder 1998cc and 2498 cc were also based on the 4 cylinder Standard engine... so was the V8 Triumph Stag engine. It was typical British practice (not just at Triumph) to spend about £50 per year on product development in order to keep using 1940s engines for at least 60 years. In my opinion that is why the British owned car makers are no more. The R&D people simply didn't have enough money and that meant a new car design was more about raiding the existing parts bin than actually making something radically new to compete with the other world car makers. In saying that though, even with the limited funds they had, there were some gems created against all odds. We can't even successfully make London Taxis now without Chinese help.

Rear wheel to rear wheel, which is also about the inner dimension too, it's 1.4m / 4'8" wide. I think you're right, the rear bike wheel would also need to come off. I'll have to see. The way it's looking though, I may not even have time to find a bike and try it.