Chris Perkins

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.

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!)

Not possible (as far as I can tell). To post anywhere you have to be a member, and to be a member you have to have been confirmed as a real person by me. The only way anyone could spam is if a real person joined and then started spamming. The vast majority of spammers are automated bots that search the internet spreading their filth wherever they can, and this measure will keep them out.

I'm not sure that there is a 1990 sharp edge coin. The later ones seem to have sharp edges, but I think perhaps all 1990 have rounded edges.

Same for me, the spammers seemed to post every few minutes. It was beyond a joke.

What planet do you live on Nik a Tron? You're quite young and naive aren't you. You can't exchange coins in most Bureau de Change places. They just take notes, they don't want to keep tons of world coins in stock. I can safely say that there are no quantities of 5p's within about a 500 mile radius of my house!

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.

If it was once coloured silver it could have been mistaked for a 6d. I have base metal GIII coins, including some very yellow ones that have remains of a silver colour in protected areas.

Yes I could, if I were in the UK!

Are you able to make pictures?

Is that according to your grading of the coins? Or is that what they cost you? I suspect the former.

It would have been silvered originally. I expect it has brass in it in some proportion!

You'll continue to be brushed aside until you're as old as Geoff and have a respectable beard like his! That's just a fact of life.

Why'd you have to come in with your wisdom about 5 mins after I'd emailed the designer with what we both thought were final changes! I've emailed him again with that last thing. (thanks)

Who knows what strange alloys the forgers used back then. Brass with lead, or who knows. But, the coin looks of inferior quality and it's too light. If it was gold and even heavily worn gold and thinner it would have to be over 1.7g in weight. I bet that it turns out not to be gold, and as mentioned above it's most probably a forged 6d made of god knows what. Do let us know.

Have they? What, from Dartford? Dartford is about the centre of the universe right on the M25. Who on earth wants to go to Bracknell!!

Then you need to get it tested (electronically or chemically) to find out if it really is gold and how pure it is.