Chris Perkins

Ok, here's the text. Images of obv and rev to follow.

I'm putting together a re-print of Richard Plant's 'Arabic Coins and How to Read them' and need to put a coin on the cover and also to transcribe the Arabic on it. Can anyone here confirm what I have already gleaned from websites/google translate etc?

These days communication and the selling/buying works a lot quicker doesn't it, and therefore people get in a tizzy. Things were slower in the 60s when coin collecting took off (people old enough to have been there may be able to verify), but it was the same principle, e.g. I think 1950 and 1951 pennies were comparatively more expensive back then than they are now. Some would say they are as a result of the 60s still too expensive! And I suppose in the last days of the old money there were a lot of potential 'rarities' over the past 100+ years and people knew that when the decimals came in there would be no opportunity to check for the slightly scarcer coins, so everyone kept them which probably made them harder to find. As a result of that there are still tons of low grade 1912/18/19 H/KN pennies and they're probably more plentiful that the non H/KN, simply because everyone kept them and the rest got melted! I'm always surprised by the volume of pre 1947 silver coins that come out of the woodwork too, often untouched in sheds/attics for 40+ years until the person that originally put them to one side dies and the heirs discover them when clearing out. I think 90% of all the stuff I get offered (the low grade toot) was originally accumulated in the 60s. I've even heard on more than one occasion first hand, that bank managers were advising customers to keep sealed bags of 1967 pennies!

My Rotographic predecessor even had 'Check Your Change' in petrol stations, it was that popular! 1.75 million copies sold, or something along those lines. He was non-stop printing (on his own printing gear) thousands per day.

What's the date? Pictures?

Shameless plug. If anyone is into 20th century UK and US Amusement tokens, I've got a lot of 85 on ebay. There are a few unusual ones among them: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=271454941127

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).

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!

It was exactly this day 10 years ago that the 17th real member joined the forum. With the exception of me, I think he's the only remaining early member from those early days that is still very active. He keeps an eye on things here a lot better than I manage to. Ladies and Gentlemen - Our moderator, pillar of the community, informed friend, Charles I shilling nut. It's TomGoodheart. Thank you for being here for a whole decade.

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.

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