TomGoodheart

Rob here has a good stock of numismatic literature both for his own use and through his shop (RPCoins). Maybe pm him and see if he has a copy of the article? I've always found him most helpful. Alternatively I see there's a copy on UK ebay but it's a lot to buy the whole year for one article .. Numismatic Chronicle 1974

Sometimes you just have to accept what's available. This is pretty close to as it is. It's perhaps a little more colourful than in the hand, where it's velvety black. But it's also round, crisp and has the scarcer of the two reverses. Plus to my eye, it's quite attractive, though I can understand it's not to everyone's taste.

Yeah, I get this. In the end, I collect coins I like. The fact that they are 'cheaper' is a bonus and the fact that they won't sell for as much is something I can just leave to fret about until the day comes when I need to part with them. Even if I had the funds, perfect/proof/fine work pieces are only of interest to me as a reference when grading. I simply can't see the point of buying things that I won't enjoy owning. And I happen to like the quirkiness of hammered coins that show that they were hand made and have been around for a couple of centuries. If people only bought things 'of value' few would collect minor varieties, die numbers, pub tokens, bottle tops, whatever, the world would be less interesting and as Rob says, the cost would be crazy!

All sounds a bit extreme to me! And wouldn't you be worrying every time you open the box or whatever to look at your coins that those few seconds might start the 'rot' again? Easier to dip them in a removable coating if you're that worried if you ask me ... .. of course, I'd still recommend getting used to the natural changes coins go through with the passage of time, meself!

So I thought, if the Mayor of New Yorkcan do it , why not me? I learned to programme in FORTRAN IV so thought it might be fun. Plus I'd really like to understand what all the fuss is about webpages and apps, because I don't get it. So I signed up. First off it told me my browser (IE8) isn't supported and I'd need Firefox, Opera or Chrome. Wth? So I tried Wifey's computer which has ff. Middle of lesson 3 and it crashed. Then when I tried to give feedback it defaulted to Windows Mail which told me I'd need to set up an account and when when I'd typed everything in gave me a message saying that Microsoft no longer supports Windows Mail. I am seriously unimpressed. Hopefully the Mayor will have better luck or I reckon codecademy is toast.

Yes, Chris NameMaster is. Rest of us, Padawan only. Force is not strong enough in these ones.

Did you change your Personal photo, or your Avatar Peck? They are different and I'm not sure but I think it's the photo that appears next to posts. But I have both mine as the same pic, so could be wrong!

Yeah, but I expect the P&P will be prohibitive ...

Andy Howitt seems to keep a few of these, so might be worth looking at his site every now and then. He has an ebay shop too.

Might be free to list but you will still get clobbered 10% of the final sale price. And may have to pay for photos, depending on preference. Plus if you use paypal they charge upwards of 3%. You can avoid PayPal by having buyers collect, or accepting cheques. But if the latter, leave time for it to clear and definitely be in your bank before sending the item. And check postage costs for bulky or heavy items and make surte you pass on a reasonable cost to the buyer. Ebay have categories for most things. Search for a couple of similar items and see where those are listed and copy that is simplest. You can choose to sell for 3,5,7 or 10 days. Same cost so consider what day and time of day your listing will end to ensure (ideally) people will be at home so they can push up the final cost of your item by last second sniping! You can pay a bit more to have the auction start (and so end) at a particular time (£0.06!). Just pennies .. but they add up! My last listing sold for £80 + £6 postage. Money in bank after fees and postage .. £65 However part of that was a reserve price fee (£2.39) which I didn't have to have. The rest of deductions; final fee (£8), supersize picture (which didn't work!) £0.60, and of course Special Delivery post (£5.45) Only £1 was the listing fee!!

Was it free listing day on ebay?

Oh, well, I'm pleased to hear I wasn't a million miles out! Using ebay as a guide I often think my grading skills for milled coins are non-existent!

As Rob says elsewhere, before grading a coin, you need to know what a pristine example looks like. If all the coins that came straight out the mint were already weakly struck, it makes it difficult. Particularly for ebayers who may never have seen a really good example. This for example : CHARLES II FARTHING HIGH GRADE On the face of it and not knowing anything about the issue, so relying on my copy of Spink, I think it's had decent wear. The rim is worn and the details of the hair and shoulder armour are going. This is an issue with a fairly high rim which I'd expect to protect the lettering anyway so I'd say it's had more than "limited circulation" and grade as Fine. Now that's deliberately conservative (I'd stretch to "approaching VF") and doesn't detract from it being a nice coin. And copper experts here will know the issue better and grade differently and I'll defer to their knowledge. But 'high grade'? Not how I'd describe it. But if all you've ever seen are washers you'd likely think this is an exceptional specimen and it would then be easy to grade with your heart rather than your head! So yeah, grading should be consistent and there shouldn't be a difference based on age .. but ..

Er .. if I understand you correctly Garry, it's supply and demand. How many pristine 1967 pennies are there? Thousands if not millions. How many 1867 pennies in pristine condition ... not so many. Does anyone want a vf 1967 penny when you can pick up an EF example for under £1? No. Pretty much scrap. 1965 shilling? £1.50 in BU from Chris here. Why bother with anything less than VF then? So the grading standards/ criterion are the same. Just as you go back in time then it becomes trickier to find really good examples and the price goes up. Look at the 1875 pennies in the Coin aquisition thread. While everyone might want a BU example there aren't that many and they will cost an arm and a leg. So most have to compromise and settle for less. Not so with modern (ie post 1950) coins. Most are easily found gleaming much as the day the mint sent them on their merry way so there's less appeal to a knackered specimen .. same grade, but .. unwanted.

I prefer toned silver, as I believe do most Brits. However I believe Germans rather like the shiny look for things like their 10DM coins and seem to remember that one of the firms there makes a sort of lacquer that will stop toning. Ah, yeah, it's Lindner: Coin Preserver Says it's not a lacquer but I believe it still 'preserves' by coating the coin and stopping the air getting to the surface. If you want to remove it, you'll need the equivalent remover. Chris, the owner of this forum, is a stockist for Lindner. Don't know if he can get some for you? Maybe pm him? (Chris Perkins)

A little story for new members (and Gollum!) I see people’s enthusiasm for collecting coins. Their questions about what dates and what kinds and value and grade. And thought maybe a few observations from *ahem* more .. experienced members, might help. So I’ll start. I have always collected. Seashells, stamps, pebbles, fossils, paperback books. But coins weren’t really an interest until my Dad died. He left his ‘collection’, cigar and sweet boxes full of coins picked from change and lovingly wrapped in little pieces of paper. A half-sovereign at the bottom or an otherwise anonymous envelope. A brief case with £55 in those 50p pieces with hands on them. 2 Geo VI crowns (red boxes). And, most importantly, a copy of the Coincraft guide from 1995. Of course, at first I was looking for value. Picked put the silver and sold it. Cashed in the 50ps. Kept the nicer bits. I went to the library and looked at coin books. I found May’s The Splendid Shilling. Now shillings were coins that meant something to me. I’d grown up with them. Spent them. And they had been ‘continued’ as 5p. I liked shillings. I decided shillings would be what I collected. Along with coins with George and the Dragon (covered the Geo crowns). I phoned a few dealers for catalogues, looked in Coin News, visited a dealer I’d seen and used the money from what I’d spent to buy a few modern shillings and was persuaded to buy two cheap Charles I hammered ones too. I got some bargains. A couple of VF shillings from a guy in Bolton were really EF. But I spent some serious money in Stevenage on a 1663 Chas II and a Northumberland shilling. And then my wife found out what I’d spent. She was .. Unhappy. But accepted it was Dad’s money. She asked how much I reckoned I would need to fund a collection. I gave her a figure and she halved it and said there you go! A one-off fund to spend as I wished. After a while I realised that to get a decent example shilling for the first year of reign and every major bust/reverse style change was going to be tricky. James II and W&M prices alone would make serious dents in my money. I’d already dropped the George and dragon idea. I also started to get bored with the later milled and started to wonder about collecting shilling equivalents that circulated in the 17th century; Scottish Merks, French coins, that sort of thing. I bought a copy of the Brooker Collection syllogue. I subscribed to Spink’s circular, set up an ebay account. And that’s where luck stepped in. I bid up the price of a shilling I’d not seen before and the buyer emailed me. Shortly after I bid on another coin and found myself in correspondence with a second serious Charles I shilling collector. I bought a few duplicate coins from one, but really the important thing was the advice and knowledge I gained. The articles they referred me to that outlined more varieties I’d never seen or heard of. Since then I’ve only collected (or only spent money to acquire!) shillings produced by the Tower of London mint during the reign of Charles I. I have learned that, most times beginners like me pay too much! I’ve run out of money on several occasions and had to sell coins to buy new ones - often at a loss! I know that better examples usually exist, even of the scarcest coins. That new examples do turn up (like the four known that became six with the Prestbury hoard). That patience and buying the best you can afford are worthwhile. And that only a handful of people are interested in scrappy coins, however rare they may be. The value of a common coin in uncommon condition will usually far outshine that of one-of-a-kind in F. Anyone else like to share?

What? Use coins to buy things you mean? Like in the old days? Nah, I can't see the public going for that idea at all Chris!

Now also spamming Coin People In light of the above I've blocked jaden from posting any more. Richard

It's a choice we all have to make. Do we lock up our coins and then we just have photos to look at, or do we have them around so we can look at them when we want? I guess it depends on how much you worry about them being nicked (assuming you're not saying your wife will break them up to pay the electric!) In the end, whether you have boxes of proofs or piles of circulated coins, eventually your collection will be precious to you and it's loss will be a blow. It could be argued that a collection of proof sets is easier to replace than a date run or a 1903 open 3. Certainly proofs would be easier to replace than what I collect, but I don't see the point of never seeing my coins except on visiting day! I take sensible precautions, like not telling people I collect unless I know them or they too are collectors, stuff like that. But who wants to live in Fort Knox? I live in an ordinary house, in an ordinary street, on an ordinary island, surrounded by 20ft of ordinary razor wire, patrolled by ordinary cheetah/shark/crocodile hybrids. The only known animal that can chase you down on land or water and bite your head off while smiling and crying at the same time ...

I'll keep an eye on it .. While new members are welcome, spam is not.

Yes, not counterfeits but modern fantasy creations often sold misleadingly as 'patterns' Not sure who they are supposed to appeal to. The same people who want an Edward VIII shilling perhaps. But since I'm fairly sure the ones you've listed are base metal, they are pretty much worthless. Except on ebay of course ..

I've only had Olympic ones. Not sure how many of the designs, they just got popped in the drawer with all the other commemorative coins from the last few years. I seem to remember I'm still missing Quiddich, Ice Cream Throwing and Extreme Ironing. Bog Snorkelling too, if that's now an Olympic sport ..! The Kew one looks nice though ...

Mmmm .. thank you. Unfortunately I don't see anything about British coins on the site linked, which makes me wonder if this isn't just spam. While there are some that might be interested in slabbed US coins and bullion here, most aren't. But in case you actually are a real person and representative of this company jaden, I'll say 'welcome' and feel free to join in the coin chat. Oh, and the website linked? It needs a quick search function that you can just type in a term, or name of a coin you're interested in, in my opinion. Tom

I think it's good we have a variety of collectors here. Some that like seried ranks of similar coins ("yes, it's just another shilling" my wife says!), some that like a denomination and whose collections show how the purchasing value, historical importance and design of something like a halfpenny has changed over the centuries and people who look on coins as little pieces of art and collect what has eye-appeal to them. Not that we all aren't a little bit of each of these (and more) in varying proportions. Just it's more interesting when we're not all chasing after MS65 rainbow cents or whatever. It's also nice that we have a wide range of budgets, from the detectorists finding coins for .. nothing, really, through change pickers and car boot collectors for whom £5 is a lot to spend on a coin, to those whose single purchase was more than the value of my entire collection!

My guess is it's going to be impossible to quantify however I know of three dealers who have both good websites but also sell on ebay. I suspect if you are running a proper business, rather than 'hobby' sales, the more bows to your string the better! Dealers here can tell you how useful to them it is to meet people in person at fairs and the like. But for myself, I'm an internet buyer. I once visited Spink on a whim and there was nearly nothing in stock to interest me. Whereas online I can see hundreds of coins on sealer sites and auction listings in an hour. My only recommendation is that when online, you include reasonable photos. I will not buy from a site that just lists coins. "Charles I shilling, 1638, mm tun, VF" tells me nothing - I need to see the coin. And sites where you have to click on a link or thumbnail pic to see a coin properly, or to view the reverse irritate me. I like a reasonable photo at the start with the option of enlarging those I'm interested in. I also get annoyed with sites where I can't right click to open coin details in another tab. It's annoying to me to have to backtab all the time to get back to the main list, to only have the option to have one image viewable at a time, or to have only a photo but to find the details and price are back on the original listing page. In short, I'm fussy about what I consider 'good' website design and if it doesn't work the way I want it puts me off visiting again! OK, if I collected milled it might be different, but I think I'd still like to make up my own mind about grade.