mint_mark

Or we could all take turns...

I think I would be concerned with any adhesives used as well... I think some of those can leave unpleasant residues that can spread...

What can I say? I'm shocked and sad at the same time. I have bought many coins from Colin, including my first ever purchase on ebay. I will miss him. I'm sure our thoughts are with his family and friends.

If it has verdigris is that the coin equivalent of blue cheese?

A look back to decimalisation at this BBC link, along with a timeline of other British currency related news stories from the archives.

If you find yourself in possession of a valuable coin collection, but otherwise destitute, do they force you to sell it before you can get any help from benefits? I know they expect you to spend your life savings...

OK, a quick web search suggests that Victoria and Alfred Waterfront is in Cape Town in South Africa. Normal South African pennies did feature a three masted sailing ship in full sail (not furled) but only from 1923 onwards. There were no normal South African coins from queen Victoria, just a few patterns (prototypes) for cape province. Parts of South Africa were certainly under British control for a long time before having their own coins, so I expect that ordinary British coins were in use (similar situation in Australia and New Zealand), including Victorian pennies. My guess is that there was a machine on the waterfront where you put in a penny and it stamped one side with the ship and seagulls design to make a souvenir. That explains how you can have two pennies with the design on different sides. I have no idea when that might have been though... it looks like there's something there called the "Penny ferry", so maybe the souvenir pennies come from there?

I got the result I expected but with an unexpected showing in second place for the greens! Hmmmmm.... As for BR striking all the time... that's cos they didn't have a proper service motive in place. I would love to see someone try a system that actually rewards the behaviour they want to encourage. It's very easy to get it backwards and conclude that a hospital full of ill people is more "efficient" than an empty hospital and a healthy, productive population. Or that frequent arrests and full prisons are better than bored police and crime-free streets. Et cetera...

Yeah, but that's just because you don't remember how wonderful British Rail was before Anyway, if Geoff would like to see a voting exam I would put forward a similar suggestion for a parenting license. And some final thoughts on economics, I would say that free markets maximise profit, wealth can gush away as well as trickle down and some aspects of society might benefit more from a service motive rather than a profit motive. I have scoured the manifestos but not seen a single policy related to coin collecting! Although there was talk a while ago about taxing ebay transactions...

Apparently not, but they are often accepted anyway. That seems to be true for at least the channel islands and the isle of man. I don't know about the status of places such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. The most authoritative references I could find were travel information websites...

This is some reference to the forthcoming election of a new prime minister?

I read that he was conscripted into an anti aircraft unit in Munich... which is of course a significant location for the time.

I'm not sure the gas hob could manage it... I understand vending machines will often accept coins from the channel islands, Gibraltar, Falkland islands etc... but it's not really appropriate.

As I understand it, the person elected could be taken completely by surprise and not have a name ready... they could just say "I'm flattered!" and then we have Flattered I

Do we know how large it is? Comparing with some books, I think it looks more like the reverse of a third farthing (looking at the position of the colon compared to Britannia's helmet)... which would make the jeton pretty small.

This Royal Mint link shows that five pence coins are made from cupro-nickel. A book I have says it is 75% copper and 25% nickel... so no lead.

Well, if a halfpenny turns into a pound that's equivalent to an interest rate of 47900% over 116 years... doing the calculation suggests that this is equivalent to an average annual compounded rate of 5.47%. But, looking at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ we can discover price index data going back to 1800. This shows that between 1888 and 2004 prices increased by a factor of 84.66, so the halfpenny having grown to 480 times its face value has only grown by a factor of 5.67 in real terms, which is equivalent to an average annual compounded real rate of just 1.5%... so nothing too special. If you'd saved a brand new perfect halfpenny from the bank (now worth say £40), that would be equivalent to a real annual interest rate of 4.5%, which is an excellent return! Of course, this is unlikely to be true for modern coins saved over the next 116 years because there are hundreds of millions minted each year (compared to millions) and inflation is likely to be much greater over the next 116 years than over the last... OK I know, too much time on my hands

I think it would be safe to say "a few pounds". It would have to be practically perfect to be worth more than ten pounds.

Well, it's not too hard to achieve this by searching for appropriate sets of dates... ebay lets you use wildcards and you can exclude as well as include patterns.

... assuming everyone lists in the correct category! I gave up trawling a long time ago... I search for what I want. Ebay has some quite powerful features in the advanced searches and it can email you automatically as new matches turn up... let the items come to you!

Thank you Kuhli and aleroit, What you say about the 2003 Krause makes a lot of sense, given the number of other mistakes I have found in it (misplaced or missing listings mostly). I do have the 2002 edition as well (thank goodness), but the 1997 is the last 200 lira listed in there and I supposed that the 2003 information would be better! They could have all been recalled or something... Anyway, on a related note, has anyone seen the new 19th century catalogue? After the 2003 experience I am reluctant to spend that much before seeing some opinions on it... Thanks again,

Hello Italian experts! I have been sorting out some Italian coins... when I looked up the 1997 commemorative 200 lira coin (Italian naval league) in my 2003 copy of the Krause catalogue it says the mintage is only 36,000 and the value is $65 in unc. Is it really that scarce? Surely not...

Hello aleroit2000, I have just posted an Italian coin question on the non British coins forum

I have heard of brass threepences that have a compartment inside... said to have been used by wartime agents to smuggle secret messages. Never heard of one with another coin inside though. The smaller coin sounds like a farthing which would normally have the date on the opposite side to the king's head, just below the seated figure of Britannia.

*sigh*... maybe they read this forum Perhaps more of us should complain to ebay about it. At least, it must cost them a small fortune in ebay fees each time they list it with a high reserve.