Chris Perkins

Oh right, an Isle of Man issue. In that case it is gold and it's the same size as a normal British sovereign as far as I can tell. Which means that the gold value is about £110. It's something I'd buy for £110 and sell for £130, but that kind of thing isn't as easy to sell as conventional sovereigns.

That coin was never issued as a gold proof, so it's either something foreign (i.e. Commonwealth not GB) or a normal 1980 Crown that has been gold plated. I would be inclined to think the latter as I'm not aware of any gold ones from other countries either. It is possible that the Royal Mint struck experiemental gold 1980 crowns. I doubt it, and a solid gold one could be verified in seconds by the wieght. You'll have to post a picture, but I would get any hopes up just yet.

Jennifer has emailed me very tiny pictures of the coin in question. It looks like it's just an average circulated one.

Ok. I'll gladly take quality US coins and create a new US section on predecimal.com. I get a fair few US visitors. Let me know when you know what you're doing.

I've cleared it a bit now....had quite a few offers of things for sale, which is great. Re your US coins SM. I assume you want me to use your pictures and advertiase them at commission so that you send to the buyer?

I have a few in my forgery collection. GIII shillings are probably the most common silver coin forgery. In that sort of condition it's just worth a couple of pounds.

Yes, if the actual colour is silver then it's probably a real one...it does look very brassy.

The surface and execuction of design are all a bit wrong on that aren't they. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a modern copy, lost a lot more recently.

It's not a token it's a forgery of a shlling. Pièces de monnais faux! It would have been silvered originally so it looked like a real one. "honi soit qui mal y pense" was on all shillings at that time.

Right you are Kev.

It looks very much like the Britannia on the reverse of the 1806/07 halfpennies. What's the size in mm? It's about the worst one I've ever seen!

What sorts? I think perhaps a section of US coins on predecimal.com would be a good thing. My Canadian/Australian etc was certainly very popular.

A groat is a fourpence. In Victorian times (and a bit earlier) they were also a small silver coin, the exact same size as a threepence but with a milled edge (ridges) and Britannia on the back instead of the '3'. From the heads side they look about the same as a threepence.

Thanks for the 3 messages so far, some interesting things.

Those are all threepences (with potentially a groat hiding among them as they are the same size for Victorian and I didn't look that closely). They all look to be average circulated examples, the kind I call 'Christmas Pudding Grade' and have for sale here: http://www.predecimal.com/forsale/christmasthreepences.htm You can see from the prices there that they are not overly valuable. Only in superior-much-better-than-average condition are they more collectable and hence more valuable. Glad you like the forum, thanks.

Late last year I bought a couple of collections which provided me with good stock for a little while. I've now sold most of them and some of the denominations for sale on predecimal.com look very empty indeed. So, this is an appeal to all forum members with any spare collectable British coins. You know the sort of things I like best - 1797 to 1967, but also older milled coins and British colonial as well as some German coins. If you have any doubles or coins from collecting areas which you no longer wish to persue, please let me know. I always pay a fair proportion of how I price the coins and you'll even see them for sale too...all very transparent and I know that lots of members have already sold coins to me in the past.

I had a friend who saved all the Florins in the 80s when they were still used as 10p. He had loads, and they were all well circulated and just worth 10p, but he was proud of them. His younger brother nicked them and bought some DJ decks!

As usual, all the stuff with any potential goes onto ebay and get scattered about. What a shame. I can also obtain Silver maples and other new silver bullion coins. We could have swapped!

I buy coins, preferably whole collections of them. Let me know if you'd like to sell them all to me! Actually I'm very low on stock and shall be putting an appeal in the forum for doubles/spares etc soon.

I don't think even the over commercialist Royal Mint with their many obscure and needless commemorative issues could match the bland meaningless Euro coinage!

Can you post a picture? This is about how a perfect one should look like (apart from this one being 1924):

Maybe the Welsh will adopt the Euro!

Excellent designs! Can you also copy actual coins and end up with high res tiff files that look like that? That kind of thing might be something useful for my books when no actual photograph can be obtained (e.g. for my Irish coin book). I have a feeling the designs will be stylised and will take up the whole space, rather like the the current Act of Union £2 coin.

They don't sound that radical do they! I expect they'll probably give them a modern twist and make them look like cartoons or something.

There were half a dozen frantic posts containing different snippets of text and images about this one coin! I've deleted the useless parts and merged the important parts. You can reply to yourself in your own topics, there's no need to create a new one each time.