Chris Perkins

Well done....Smooth.

You're right, Mr Average anywhere is absolutely thick. The fact that we and other forum members can put a few sinsible sentences together is a lot more than most people. It comes down to effort too, people just don't make the effort either.

I looked at them all. Diabolical over grading all round.

Just noticed your post AardHawk! Are you also able to send me your 5p's? I'll return them once I've had a look and I'll make sure you also get at least 2 free books. (thanks for sending your 5p's Josie.

I noticed that the other day and you have reminded me to have a word! I've asked the seller that if he's going to quote my prices and get the grading so wrong, that I'd rather he quoted Spink prices!

That's horrible (especially in proof form), it looks like they've got a team of Chinese forgers to make the dies in order to save money. Pistrucci really must be turning in his grave. The stylised 2005 was bad enough - but interesting in a 1935 Crown sort of way - the 2007 rendering really is awful.

Josie, Are you able to label the 5p coins you have and send them to me? I'm putting the finishing touches to Check Your Change and this is good info, but I want to see them for myself. I'll return them and send you free copy of CYC and CCGB2008!

The next book expected in the Rotographic family will be 'Check your Change 2007'. The first new edition since 1970! It's another important milestone in terms of layout too because for the first time colour has been used within the listings (not just for the images) to give it a very modern feel but also to make it easier to read. Pages 3 to 45 can be downloaded to inspect here: http://www.rotographic.com/books/CYC3to33.pdf The basic information in what you see was put together by our very own forum member Kuhli. The PDF has very low resolution images to make the file small (total about 2.5mb). A bit of an international effort so far: concept in the USA, typeset in India, coin photos done in Germany and layout designed in the UK. In about 6 months it will be printed in Latvia. Let me know what you all think.

Surely £1000 is better than £5! It looks pretty grotty, so if I'd got £1000 for it i'd be over the moon.

Some good ideas. Spiral bound might even be cheaper than perfect bound. I think that the vast majority of CCGB owners find that the existing format serves their purposes for a year, so I think most of the print run would be absolutely fine as they are. I do recognise that there are a few fanatics like Josie that use their books an awful lot, so I'll see if I can do some special ones next time. For 2007 I did actually almost do a few limited edition hard backs.

Is the binding not strong enough?

Has he offered money for them? I wouldn't give them away for free, but I probably would be able to sleep at night if someone gave me a tenner for them. The oldest and 'most' foreign would probably take effort and time to research, and would probably end up to be worth very little. So for £10 they're out of your way and someone else has to put the time in! Unless anyone here thinks any different.

Josie, Check the dates of posts. There is not much point replying to over 5 month old topics.

I think stretching back to 1760 with mention of the Victorian immitation guineas and a couple of forgery illustrations is the way to go. It might take some time, so would probably be something for CCGB2009 to give me time to source the images etc. For 2008 I'll shorten the decimal section even further, to just a list with no illustrations. I'll make sure Check Your Change is mentioned prominently. I think the most noticable new feature with CCGB2008 is going to be a new - much easier on the eye - layout. 2007 had colour images (and gold coins for the first time) and 2008 will make even more use of colour along similar lines as the Check Your Change layout. It's all very exciting you know! Even when I think back to my first CCGB which was the 2005 issue, it's come a long way in such a short time and I keep getting new ideas to make it a little better each time.

I read your bronze disease note on the use of gloves and of course it interests me as a chemist. It's probably a mixture of the copper salts of acids produced by the breakdown of skin oil (sounds appetizing, eh?) As such they are not water soluble, but I've found something that works all right. Now I wouldn't advise this with an expensive coin, but if you'd like to stabilize a lesser quality coin, try the following: 1. Mix household ammonia one to one with distilled water 2. Submerge and swirl the coin until the barest tinge of blue appears in the liquid. 3. With gloves, remove the coin and stroke the spots with a cotton swab. 4. When finished, rinse well with distilled water and dry immediately with a clean cotton towel. Get the coin thoroughly dry. The ammonia will bind any copper ions and the alkali should dissolve the acid parts. Ammonia can attack copper metal, so don't leave it too long.

Thanks, I'll put that in CCGB2008.

Well spotted, I've made a note of that. The 2008 edition will have a very different decimal section as decimals will of course be covered in a whole 84 page book (Check Your Change). Do you think I should remove decimals completely and perhaps push the book further back to the start of GeoIII's reign? Mind you, the currect decimal section in CCGB is very small.

As you may have noticed - I've given up! The volume of spam just became too much and I (and the other mods) were spending too much time trying to keep it under control. Over the last couple of days the spammers got quite aggressive, posting new topics in most areas and adding their filth to existing topics in a quite random fashion. We have banned 100's of IP addresses and ranges of IP addresses, and email addresses, and probably whole countries, but it was pointless, they simply moved on to use one of the other billions of IP addresses. I will personally moderate new membership applications, and from now on only existing members or manually approved new members will be able to post. It's such a shame really, because I always wanted to keep the forum open for all, as I believe it encouraged people to pop in and make enquires. There may be less casual enquires now as a result, but there should also be zero spam, which has become a real annoyance and risk to all users.

The 10p varieties are covered in Check Your Change, an have been mentioned in the forum. You'll have to buy a CYC in June!

No it should be ok, I can gather some myself in England next week.

Thanks Josie. I'm in the UK next week so I'm going to collect 5p's and see what I find.

I need to see it with my own eyes! 2 1990 coins side by side showing an angle that shows the date and the edges at the same time! Of you have both types of 1990 5p nic a tron I'll give you £1 for them (inc postage).

Are those 1990? If so, it proves it, because they're square.

But is there really also a square edge 1990 small 5p? Has someone got one?

No, because guests can read what they like and look almost everywhere....They just can't reply to topics or start new ones. (a few hours has passed and no spam yet!)