Chris Perkins

He has a new email address and doesn't want to make it public. I'll ask for his input on the points raised.

Michael Freeman has asked me to bring this to your attention. "Could you mention that Heritage are auctioning next month the only known 1926 penny with Modified Effigy AND the 1927-36 reverseS. 4054A.In Long Beach auction no. 3042.I am sure lots of British penny collectors don't know this, and would be very interested in it."Here's a link: http://coins.ha.com/itm/great-britain/george-v-modified-effigy-penny-1926-au-details-altered-surfaces-pcgs-/p/3042-31060.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-071515

Oh dear Peter, what caused it, do they know? Or did she just slip, fall and bang her head?

I've got an MGF rear bumper here somewhere (plastic part), and I think the metal part that holds on the front bumper, if you want them. Both are GEF with the odd minor edge knock.

Very good points. Most of what goes on on facebook is very low level stuff, usually relating to inexpensive modern commemorative coins or finds in change. It really is surprising how many people really like and passionately collect commens and coins from change! There are also a few people floating around that have recognised that such coins when actually sold as hyped up new items are nothing much more than a money making mint effort. And like Dave says, there are such a lot of know-it-alls that often give false information, and there are also a lot of people trying to sell old rubbish for far too much money. Posts appear and if there ever is anything interesting, it's gone in a matter of hours and you can never remember where you saw it, or ever find it again!

It's a tough one and I don't think there is a software solution for it as yet.

Sadly the popularity of forums is in decline, I think it's mainly the social networks that are taking over. People join groups on fb and ask the same questions.... where they often get wrong answers or no answers at all, but as they are already there and active they don't tend to use forums much. I've seen a lot of it lately.

I'd also be interested in publishing all of the new prices for all of the BU and proof sets from the 70s to now, but finding the info is indeed hard.

Welcome to Antoine, he is known to me and is a good lad. Very enthusiastic about his coins and also very knowledgeable.

Michael Freeman has asked me to add the following to this thread: Everyone is entitled to opinions, but not to distort facts without having any knowledge about them. I did not 'self-publish for decades because I had to'. In 1963, I chose to publish 'The Victorian Bronze penny' myself because my friend, Stanley Langman, had a printing company in Glasgow and he gave me a reasonable price; and I had 'hands-on' involvement with everything. It seemed a good idea to try to sell them myself, which I did. This was a success, and in 1966 he printed a second edition for me. The same facts applied in 1969, when I wrote 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain'. I did not ask anyone to publish it. In 1983, living then in England, near London, I wrote another book on the subject of buying and selling coins, which Hutchinson published (in the name of Barrie and Jenkins, an offshoot company). They also published the 2nd edition of 'The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain' in 1985. I did not approach anyone else to do this. In 2006 Spink asked me if I wanted to write an updated 3rd edition; but settled for permission to re-print the 1985 book. I had sold my collection in 1984 and 1986, so took no interest in bronze coins from then on. The late Laurie Bamford, whom I had known for many years as an expert, offered to give me a list of what had been discovered since then, to bring me up to date, but by 2006, I did not have the same enthusiasm as I had when I was a collector. On the matter of my rarity estimates, I based these on hard statistics. In the case of post-Victorian coins, I withdrew large numbers of bags from banks, to augment what I had already noted. This was in the 1960s, when all the coins covered in this book were in circulation. There was no better way of assessing rarity - mintage figures do not give die varieties. Regarding Victorian pennies and halfpennies, by 1966, when they were withdrawn by the banks for melting, I held over 62,000 of the former and 3,000+ of the latter. A fair proportion of them were badly worn, but enough were not and I can think of no better means of assessing their rarity than this randomly assembled collection. It enabled me to compare and assume relative rarity to the point where I felt I could assign 40 different degrees of rarity. I developed a sharp eye for identifying very worn coins with only a few areas visible. An example was the 1862 obverse 2 penny. The top leaf on the bust points to a lower area than on the usual obverse 6. I wrote to Peck when I discovered it, as he had hinted at its possible existence in a footnote in his book. The same applies to many other distinguishing features, such as in identifying the rare reverse F from only parts of the silhouette of Britannia. I sold all my legible Victorian pennies at 2 1/2d each to Corbitt and Hunter of Newcastle in 1966. A crane lifted them, and the doors in my parents' house stopped swinging to the place where I had kept them! I have no doubt that my estimates are pretty accurate where I had thousands of examples, such as in the 1895-1901 Veiled Bust series. Where I had only a few, or one coin, of a type or die pairing, clearly there was not enough to go on to be certain of assigning an accurate rarity estimate. As I stated in my Introduction to the book (which is important and often not fully read), I knew some were likely to be wrong, and I think this applies to the very rarest, some of which, judging from auctions at the excellent London Coin Auctions, are less rare than I assessed them to be in 1969. I considered that melting down millions of coins would increase rarity; and I also took into account the fact that some types had become unidentifiable as a result of having suffered heavy wear from over 100 years of circulation, making the rare ones moreso. I am fortunate enough still to be alive at almost 75, so able to correct the unfounded criticism I have read on this forum. And flattered and happy to see that, worldwide, my book on bronze is used by top dealers and auction houses as the standard reference work." Michael Freeman

Thanks! I couldn't find those old emails with the 1849 penny Bob, try as I might!

Who is that chap in the USA that does an excellent job at fixing damaged coins?

My uncle Billy was on HMS Hood, aged 19, when it sunk. http://www.hmshood.com/crew/memorial/pq/PerkinsWG.htm

I'd have said 'at least EF' going on the pics at the top, but high graders are difficult to grade from pics as we all know. The digs on the reverse are plentiful and somewhat distracting. But aFDC! When someone mentioned aFDC above I actually thought it was a joke and I too had no idea where the coin was from. When you say 'too harsh' with a grade Neil, do you actually mean 'accurate'?! I understand that people are more likely to look at coin images when they have a higher 'guide' grade associated with them (because they look cheap perhaps?), but surely once potential buyers have looked at a couple of coins that in their opinion are not up to the stated grade then they are more likely to click on less, or go somewhere else. Isn't it it best in the long run if the coin image/price and grade all correlate roughly? I've not looked at your website for ages Neil (heard it was a new design) but do you also make clear that the grades are guide grades and not always the actual grade of the coins? I don't want to cause trouble here. I have nothing but the utmost respect for your late boss and his successors, I'm just trying to get my head round it.

Transferwise should be ok for the moving part Prax, but obviously you'll need a Euro account to send it to. I find that UK to Germany is there next day. https://transferwise.com/u/e32272

I've used transferwise since November to pay German suppliers, Polish and Lithuanian printers, a camper van deposit and also to send money to my own German account and I don't think they can be beaten on fees. I've saved hundreds! And it's quick too, often there the next day. This is the link they encourage me to share: https://transferwise.com/u/e32272

That's good to know.

I don't know much about ipads, but I do know that the standard Ipad prog for epubs won't work and that you have to use a third party (free) app to be able to read it. Apple are very tight about running things on their own software. If that doesn't work, do what Dave suggest, get it setup for Kindle and I'll refund the epub version.

The elders among you will probably remember something similar in the 60s for 1950/51 pennies, except back then communication wasn't as quick and things didn't explode onto the scene like they do with the internet now. It is a fact that there is (through whatever reason) huge demand for the Kew 50p at the moment, for example. So prices are high and I think they'll actually stay high for quite a while. They won't rise especially, but these hype situations have a long residual effect. I think a lot of people see these things as an investment, as if it were easy to invest in coins with little or no basic knowledge. They buy them for their children, grandchildren etc and it's mostly people on low incomes from what I can see. There is a massive interest in decimal coins at the moment, and I suppose that can't be a bad thing. 1 in 100 will go further than just the stuff the media feeds them!

It goes to show that values are all due to the hype (and the perceived 'rarity' generated) and nothing to do with the mintage numbers. I think with the coins in sets, packs etc the Kew coin mintage is actually more like 500,000. A really rare one to find would be the 1999 standard £2 coin. 38 million made, but I bet you can't find an UNC one. They didn't go into sets and buying annual sets is the easy (dare I say, lazy) option that most people take. And the 2007 slave trade £2 without the DG initials (all the coins in sets had DG on the reverse). Very rare in UNC, again, because people just collect sets and not actual coins. I'm currently putting a website together in conjunction with my "Collectors' Coins - Decimal Issues of the UK" book. Here: www.checkyourchange.co.uk Oh, and a lot of the hype would appear to originate (although I can't confirm this) from companies that have a vested interest in certain coins becoming higher in value. Pump and dump someone called it.

Blimey, no, this other fellow has a Turkish? (or Eastern of some kind) looking name. The other Aiden was the one that worshipped Ian Paisley like a god and then started to become offensive very quickly.

Yes, that name rings a bell! False alarm here.

Hello John, Are you also the chap that tends to loiter on facebook, posting pics of amazing coins among the (mostly) Olympic 50p's, coloured snowmen and Tristan Da Cunha medallions?

I don't think you can go by the RM sales pics normally, as they are usually made up processed pictures and always look better than the real coin. To compare you'd have to see pics of other actual coins. I think the RM initially actually showed the wrong obverse on their website for this coin.

Blimey, get well soon (like right way) Peter.