Chris Perkins

The 'E' indicates the coin (Queen Anne silver) was made at the Edinburgh mint. The so called semee of hearts concerns the German arms of the King. Some have tiny hearts in the background, others don't. And the Elephant and Castle is also a mint mark.

All we can do it hope that people stumble upon this forum before they spend money on Royal Mint novelty/tourist products!

Anyone want my trusty Krause world coin price guide for £10? It covers 1900 to about 2005. The 2006 edition, massive and incredibly useful if you, like me, end up with the odd foreign coin. It's heavy, postage is £14.00.

It's disgraceful that the Royal Mint peddle such utter crap and use the same language and sales tactics as the other well known peddlers of the same coin crap. The Royal Mint represents the country and it's making a bloody fool of itself. I think the RM should be banned from commercial ventures like this (i.e. involving older re-packaged coins) because it's very mis-leading that an official govt and Royally backed institution should be allowed to sell over priced toot to its trusting public. The new issues are bad enough. Just because they are who they are, people fall for it and coin dealers like me have to pick up the pieces when the owners want to sell them in a few years! It's deception on an official scale (and the coin in the image is also clearly a lot better than 'very fine') and something needs to be setup to inform the public.

BNTA members are not allowed to knowingly sell fake coins (apart from those described as such, contemporary forgeries and such like) and I certainly don't know any members that would. If a good forgery did get through - and it would in most cases have to be very good indeed - then I'm sure you'd have no trouble getting your money back, even months later (or however long it takes the buyer to verify authenticity beyond any doubt, which certainly shouldn't be years).

Grüss aus Sachsen. I've got all those somewhere, if I dig around a bit! Is this book a commercial venture, in German or English? Got a publisher?

When these things turn up they are more often from the 60s that any other period. I reckon some of the mint workers got bored and played about a bit, especially in the late 60s when they realised they were off to a Welsh field.

What would the spam bot do with it? Clearly a ludicarious concept. I've deleted a few, now down to 976. I bet I could delete a couple of hundred if I could be bothered. That way it would never get to 1000.

I think most of the members are spammers that never actually got around to spamming, or have spam in their signatures that I haven't spotted and zapped yet. Most days there are 1-3 new members and probably about 10% are actually real people that take part. And yes, as Rob says, around 30-50 are here regularly. Way back in 2003 (nearly 10 years, good grief) I was of course the founder and only member. I was talking to myself for ages until Sylvester and Emperor Oli came along to keep me company. Sylvester is still around (he was 19/20 at the time), Emp Oli was about 15/16 in 2003. No doubt both are married (not to eachother I suspect) with kids by now. I'm sure I saw Geoff The other day. MasterJMD was very active pretty early on, but I seem to remember him being as pale and British as you and I, Peck! There was a young William and a young Jon.... HalfpennyJon, or something like that. I ended up buying back some of the coins I'd sold him, so I imagine he's out of coins for the moment. Oh and the 82 online at once is complete fiction! That was a particularly heavy spam-day before the membership restrictions were so tough. I should imagine the online at once record is probably about 10! But 82 does look better and I can't find where to reset it...honest.

Is it our friend with the shop in West London? I got a full set of them from him in order to do pictures for Check Your Change, before the error was known about.

That includes my one? I wonder if it were on the news or had anything near the exposure that the dateless 20p had, if another few hundred would turn up overnight (most of which would probably be people nicking photos or selling the normal one with misleading wording).

Anyone see the Dutch diplomat/politician Tiny Kox on the news recently? I thought it was an error, but he's a real man!

Technically the head gets worn first but the date is (annoyingly) the first thing to wear away completely.

I know it's ghastly, but you could have this one for £20: http://www.predecimal.com/florin-1905-goodvg-reduced-p-9197.html

Oh, it was something to do with her female house mate and I asked if she may be a lesbian and never heard from her again. I was just making conversation, it wouldn't have bothered me. Nice pussy by the way.

We did have a promiment female member here years ago, but I scared her away! These days I understand there is another regular female member, so in an effort to not scare her away, I wondered if she may like this. It's an engraved love token with the name MARY SHARROCK and date 1788. What is perhaps a little unusual is that it is engraved on a Parys mines (Anglessey Druid) penny, assumed to be of the same vintage. £10 plus postage.

It can of course be described as an Arabic '1' because it looks like that, but to me, that's not really what it is at all. It should be described as having an odd date with what appears to be altered 1 and 4 digits. Or words to that effect. Nothing more. The '4' is shifted in such a similar way that it's uncanny, even if it is 'messier' than the '1'. Is that an Arabic 4 over a Latin 4? No. The reason it isn't is because Latin and Arabic 4's have never played a part on British Coinage. Such varieties are not documented. Latin and Arabic 1's are known to exist and are well documented on certain coins, so based on that knowledge, that must mean it involves an Arabic 1 and it can't just be an alteration!? I just don't buy it. Get it re-slabbed and perhaps it'll become a non-serif '4' over a serif '4' next time round.

CGS can of course put what they like on the slab, and they can interpret things as they see them, but 'significant discovery' seems a bit far fetched. It does indeed look like an inverted '1', but so does the die crack on the 2008 20p and that doesn't mean it is one either! It's from re-touching, nothing more. And shame on CGS/London Coins for implying it to be something that it almost certainly isn't. They do worry me sometimes, on a lot of levels. What's worse is that these things end up in slabs with descriptions that are accepted as gospel and that's the worrying thing about slabs and certification (let's not get into all that though) especially slabbing and certification by the same company that then benefits from selling the same coins down the line via auction. Does that situation or a similar one occur anywhere else in the world or in any other industry or field of collecting? I doubt it. It's a conflict of interests at the very least. It's a nice coin so I hope it cost about the right price for what it is. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but to me it just doesn't really look that unusual or special. I'd be interested to hear what others think.

Bit of a coincendence that the '4' is also odd and looks very similar. Something is clearly awry with the date (re-punching going on etc), but I'd never go so far as to call it a small arabic 1 over a normal Latin 1! That just sounds like they've invented a variety that isn't one, in order to sell it for more.

A fake. I've also seen wrong dates on fake Victorian sovereigns. I think they may have been made for trade use in Arabic countries and/or other parts of the world. They are usually good gold, but not as fine as 22ct. On the other hand, it could be modern and Chinese and not made of gold at all!

There was one a couple of months ago, but nothing came of it. The git sold it before I had a chance to go round!

Nope, fraid not. I did all of the larger silver last time.

I sold one or two of the last batch to a forum member, but generally it is a rather poor show so far!

A waxy deposit of some kind. I've ever so carefully removed it as best as possible. There is a slight stain, but the surface is absolutely unaffected.

I've just popped some new coins onto the website. Mostly copper, with a couple of silver things including a lovely 1878 Maundy set. The highlight of the copper is an 1831 Bronzed proof penny (1831 proof farthing also present). Penny is here: http://www.predecimal.com/penny-1831-bronzed-proof-p-20065.html And all the latest editions can always been seen from here: http://www.predecimal.com/products_new.php I do hope you gentlemen were not entirely bombarded by proposals of marriage on this February 29th!