Chris Perkins

I know what your picture is! I mean the one in the listing.

Silver bars? Where? Perhaps we could swap.

I got it for £10, so I'll send it to my friend at coinsforsale.co.uk.

Resting it on a lemon squeezer can only increase the value, surely?

924 (the cow) can't manage the stairs. Ok, ok, I'll do a picture right now. I've actually listed it on the website for £95 just now.

£20 and it's yours. Or is that too much? I don't really know about pricing hammered, and how badly the hole affects things.

Thanks. I'll wait and see if TomGoodheart wants it. If not, I'll send it to my hammered friend. I also have a quite nice 1624 shilling.

Tomgoodheart will probably want to see this. It's holed but not that awful all things considered. It has a crown mint mark. I haven't worked out which Spink number it is yet!

I met my local MP once and told him I wouldn't mind helping out. But he looked like a potato and all he did was drive around in a big Jag most of the day. He expected me to go knocking on strange people's doors in Gillingham (Kent)! Bloody cheek. And all the people that helped out were wierd scary people that you could tell were not very socially skilled. One woman proudly told me she'd been knocking on people's doors for over 40 years. Surely she should at least be in the cabinet by now? Then they kept writing to me and getting my name wrong, so I just ignored them and concluded that politics wasn't for me. I simply don't have the right background or cardigans to fit in with that lot.

As far as I know he hasn't noticed the forum and therefore hasn't seen us making public fun of him! The last email I got was yesterday. There was no swearing but he asked if my email was a threat and that he'd get the police involved. I pointed out that there was nothing threatening in my message and that if you compare his outbursts with my calm replies, the police would probably side with me. I said I would ignore his outburst and just put it down to him getting out of bed the wrong side that day. And just as another bit of thinly disguised patronism, I told him about how rewarding coin collecting can be and that he shouldn't let this little episode put him off.

It's unlikely to be worth a fortune at any point in the future. If you look at Victorian coins with similar errors (granted, that type of error was common then) most dealers don't add anything to the normal prices. Anyway, I can live without it!

Was being lazy! I haven't done pics yet. I will do.

I got a Chas II Crown recently. 1677 and a bit better than yours. Does anyone want it for £95?

I'll make a big thing of it when it's done, don't you worry. It's being put together by fellow forum member Red Riley.

I've never seen one, and I don't think I've ever heard about anyone having one.

Mainly on the bust, the heavy wear on the veil and hair. Also the flattened broach and collar. The reverse is better than fine really.

To explain the grades in words is hard. Each coin type wears in different places first. Generally though, wear for VF or Fine is usually quite obvious when you've seen a few. What you need is the Official British Coin Grading Guide...A publication which will be published by my very own Rotographic and will appear next year. It will have photos of all coins types from the last 200 years in all grades! Possibly the most useful book for coin collectors ever!

I had a someone once that had an Edward VII sixpence, 1906 I think. It was worn so I told her it was worth just a couple of pounds max for the silver content. She got really shirty and refused point blank to believe me. It was 100 years old, how can it possibly just be worth a couple of pounds! I waste such a lot of my time with that kind of thing. It had reduced recently but now it's the school holidays, I wonder if that has an effect? I suspect my current biggest fan is very young, he certainly acts it.

Oh it gets better! I'm going to have to edit out most of his very limited vocabulary. Here's his reply: oh f* off mate just wanted to no dont be such a f* c* u sarcastic p* shame i have gt one u p* wot a f*in waste of time and oxegen u r you stain on society f* u c* To which I replied: Are you a child or a juvenile? You certainly act like one. If you are, then I understand your immaturity. Do you think that you are a better person because you are able to swear at me and say lots of bad words? In my experience people that resort to abuse and cannot construct proper sentences in the first place (or spell), rarely have rare coins. And, today you have proved that very convincingly. Tell you what: I'll continue buying and selling collectables, publishing books and selling accessories....You continue being childish and abusive, loosing your rag etc, and in 10 years come back to me and we'll see who has got furthest in life. Deal? You should watch out who you're abusive to in the future, as vengeful types might take the liberty of tracking your ip address and end up knocking on your door! So I hope you are equally as hard as your hard words. Keep looking for rare coins, one day you might find one if your lucky. I wish you all the best, Chris

I get a lot of comical emails from people that are just plain ingorant. This was one I got yesterday: hi i was given a 1965 coin of winston Churchill and looked it up on verious sits and books and was woundering if u would be intrested in this on the other side of the coin there is a picture of queen elizabeth 2 and i latin the sayin DEI GRATIA REGINA F.D. and i was woundering if u would be intrested i have recived a offer for it for 600 pounds but you cum highly reccemended so please if u wud like this i wll let u for 600 or 550 To which my reply was: What are you talking about?? No one that wasn't in a straight jacket or on serious medication would pay £600 for a Churchill Crown!! They are the most common modern crown and probably the ugliest coin in the world. You must surely know from looking at other websites that mint examples can be purchased often for less than £1?? I've just sold about 6 scruffy ones for less than face value (which is 25p). Are you trying to pull my leg? His reply: no to be hounest i have seen it in a book that this coin is valuled at 500 pound mate So he obviously saw the Satin VIP coin in a Spink book and completely ignored the normal one! In my experience, people that do that normally cannot write or spell properly, and this gentleman has just proved that yet again!

You're 17, you can still get away with being a Master for the next couple of years. Happy Birthday for today.

You can stay in that group as a mark of respect for your old involvement. See it as a bit like an honourary doctorate.

Master Jmd, long time no see. You must surely be Mr Jmd by now?

British coins in general in the forum, doesn't have to be predecimal despite the website name! The line coming from the B is the result of a die crack. On the inverted dies used for striking the coins, that line would have been incuse, not raised as it is on the coin. The crack may well have been caused by the blob on the Queen, which may have been some kind of debris picked up by the dies on a previous strike casuing a hollow bit of damage (and the crack) on the die and resulting in the mal-formed 20p that you have. Die cracks were pretty common in the past, but are rarely seen on modern coins, as least, not obviously seen on modern coins. The quality of the other 20p's struck after yours probably got worse until someone noticed and the really awful ones were probably rejected. Yours escaped into the pot and into circulation! I don't expect the value to be huge though. It's interesting in an anorak sort of way, but it doesn't have a wow factor! I'd probably give you a couple of pounds for it, which is many times face value

That's a little better, but NEF for the Crown is still inaccurate. Unless by Near EF you mean VF! For hammered info try my good friend Richard Varnham via Coins for Sale he's very knowledgable and knows all the right people.