Chris Perkins

Recently a coin dealer closed down in Chemnitz. He blamed lack of material and lack of demand. In the end he was forced to dabble in modern commemoratives. Actually, he was totally clueless, overgraded and overpriced everything and even cleaned things. Last night I drove from Boulogne to Chemnitz (12 hours) with my dad. It's about 700 miles in one go.

I wish my dad was clever enough to post in a forum at all! I'm sure he'd also be able to take part in here if he wasn't clueless, and also still on dial up!

DustyBoy, you keep trying to post, but the result is just 2 or 3 copies (quotes) of other peoples post, with no new reply. I have deleted 3 so far. Is there a problem?

Glad you like it Irishraider. That's why you can't usually use ebay price data....It's flawed by the millions of people bidding when they don't really want to bid. It's so easy to get drawn in.

There will be a period of downtime overnight tonight, while my hosts swap me to another server. Once up and running again, none of the posts, user id's etc will be affected. It just won't work for a little while! The purpose of the change is to enable me to turn on better search engine friendly paths for the new look predecimal.com so that it doesn't suffer in the rankings.

The images are back now. You probably noticed.

Oh, yes, so there are. They are no longer in the location they once were. I've asked my hosts if they have a backup of them from a previous date. If not, I may have to ask you nicely to upload them again.

I was up until 2.30 last night liasing with someone I found in Gravesend. We were able to fix it together (him doing the complicated bits). So, another little job. jobbed as they say.

Everything is back to normal now! I found someone that was able to help at an unearthly hour...And I'm now £45 lighter, but it was worth it and probably would have taken me days to do by myself.

It's all done now, and the forum has survived intact! But the shop area hasn't...At the moment you get a nasty error when you want to buy something. I know what's causing it, but I'm not clever enough to fix it and as everyone in Europe is asleep, I'll ask an American friend to put it right while I sleep. I just hope it doesn't scare too many people off and that they try again tomorrow.

It will only affect you if you use php to generate the URLs. For a static html site, you're already very friendly to search engines! Basically I'll be turning the URLS from something like this: http://www.predecimal.com/index.php?britis...sale.4566332134 to http://www.predecimal.com/british-coins-sale.htm (I made those up, so don't try them it won't work). Technically it's a change from generating them as cName to ReWrite mode. Search engines don't like the '?' charachter if it can be avoided. Anyway, to enable this to be switched on, I had to move to an apache server because it didn't work on a Zeus server. I just want to sell some stuff, all this technical lark is such a drag!

I found a 1934 penny in the garden of a 1930's house I lived in as a boy. I even knew then that it was worthless. But it didn't stop me trying to find the 1933 penny that could have been in the same hole!

Cabrio driving in an MG is great for posing, but sometimes I do find myself not wanting to be blown away and instead experiencing a car with less noise, more space for passengers and a few parcels, and air-con! The wind is fine up to about 50mph, but on quick roads it's pretty noisy, and on the motorways it's not very practical. Even with the roof up it can be very noisy on quick roads as the wind whips past your 3mm plastic roof. If you want a cabrio, I recommend having a roofed car too, for when you're feeling a little more conservative.

Are those dents aroud the door area or is it the light? A nice example. I'm sure $4000 in 1978 was probably a lot of money, it would have been hard for her to turn it down!

Many of the famous names in coin engraving in the UK have been foreign, but I don't think that hindered them from creating wonderful works of art. Coins should be works of art created by talented individuals. If you want an image of a moment in time, fine, buy a photo or a painting, but a coin is a form of sculpture. The artist often creates something that is not as true to life as a photo/painting, but that's what it's about, the artistic licence to make a bust of Queen Victoria, George III etc that looks better than they did at the time! I could no doubt say more, but now it's time for bed. A coin created by a computer may look nice, but it is not inkeeping with the art of numismatics.

They couldn't find enough talented people to do the engraving as quickly as they churn out the commemorative toot these days! Slightly hypocritical because I do often sell said commemorative wares, but only to encourage novices to get into proper coins, or at least attractive or meaningful ones.

I wouldn't buy something that had started as a photo and was turned into a coin by a computer (and finished by hand). Shame there appear to be no more real engravers creating proper works of high releif art at the Canadian Royal Mint.

Recently there was something on ebay that I wanted and didn't want, and now I've won it. And I didn't really want to! In fact I'll have 2 the same now. Even experienced ebayers can still get carried away sometimes.

No, that was allegedly for the 1997 £2 (but completely untrue). The 10p varieties involve the edge and different pointings. I'd describe them, but I don't have a Check Your Change to hand.

You're going to need 'Check Your Change' over there too by the sounds of it! There are lots of 1992 10p varieties you know and a couple are quite scarce.

If you have a look at: http://www.predecimal.com You'll notice (for those of you that ever go there and don't just use the forum!) that the BETA version is now live and has become the main predecimal.com. Everything that was available on the old website, should now be available on the new website (accessories, books, coins etc). I'm scared that I'll drop out of the search engine rankings now, and never sell anything again! I had to finally switch over, I was sick of the old site!

My book starts at 1797, so won't cover this. It's going to be worth a lot less than catalogue value with a hole. I'd imagine probably £5 or something like that, because it still is, no doubt, an attractive piece of old silver.

I answered this already in the forum, with an image! It's in the Members Only area.

Nice calipers! I'm always a bit weary of lead things, because its easy to melt/use and make forgeries or curios with; not that I'm doubting your piece.

Just helping out a fellow mammal in need. Took him to the vet again last night and he gave me some drops to put in Igor's food. If he still can't walk properly in 14 days he'll be x-rayed. Welcome Dean. It certainly is very active here. I don't participate at all in other (lesser) coin forums, but I am a member of a couple of car related forums, and they can be as dead as Dodos.