declanwmagee

But you can roll it in glitter Or dip it like ken1carp. Would have been nice coins under all that dip.

Well how about that! I stand corrected! Nice to see some micros getting the attention they deserve. Although I still collect them, I'd more or less given up on ever making money back on them.

You'd be very lucky to get a fiver for it if it's only around Fine. That's on a good day. More likely it'd go for 99p. Sorry about that - but grade is everything. Maybe £50 in EF, to give you an idea of the importance of grade.

Didn't they? That's interesting. So 9 would be VIIII then ?

I do hope that's the case - I wouldn't have any degree of confidence in diagnosing one without the tooth as an indicator.

You're quite right, Gary: 1915 top, 1916 below.... So how did one die make so many coins?

which also suggests a single die variety..? Possibly - do we know what the estimated numbers are compared with the mintage expected from a single die? On the other hand, the tooth may have been deliberately damaged to monitor the die, if the Mint decided the change was otherwise undetectable? That's a good thought - the deliberate marking of a die (and thus, potentially, more than one) Numbers: 1915: 11.4% of 47m - loads more than one die could do 1916: 18.7% of 86m - well that's conclusive then. It's more than one die, which means that the broken tooth has to be deliberate.

which also suggests a single die variety..?

Same die crack here too. Presumably the bird's foot, as a flaw, is only present on one die. If there were 3.6m 1918 H and KNs, and, according to V R Court, 32.6% of those were KNs, that makes 1.193m KNs. Freeman reckoned the Bird's Foot constituted 10% of 1918 KNs, so that means that this one duff die knocked out a little over 119,000 coins. Does that sound reasonable, or way off?

I think Freeman mentions them, just doesn't give them a number - a bit like Pecks treatment of the Bird's Foot. Only AnorakMan can save us now...

I have never dissolved a single coin in acid, so I have no personal empirical experience to give you a supremely irrefutable proof. However, I've seen enough alleged acid-damaged coins to now feel competent to express the opinion that IF all those separate and independent acid-damaged coins actually WERE damaged by acid (the lack of empirical proof notwithstanding), then yours falls into the same category. Verum esse ipsum factum. Justorum semita lux splendens. Sorry, that was my school motto...

Does anyone know off the top of their head what our DG added to the Freeman and Davies catalogue? Just out of interest, Steve, do you also draw the line at the F numbers, or do you fish out the extra Gouby's and Groom's? 1959 1/S 1944 1d 1918 farthings 1915/16 recessed ears 1912 halfpennies 1911 6d 1911 1d 1911 halfpennies 1911 farthings 1906 1/- 1904 1/- 1903 1/- off the top of my head (kinda). Sorry if I missed any, Dave!

Still doing the haymaking the old fashioned way on our farm. We even rake the corners out with garden tools so the baler can get it picked up. We stack in eights! The baler, of course, is early 1950s and spits out proper oblong bales that you can heave onto a trailer without a forklift. Pick them up with the knots to the left so you don't rip your legs on the spiky end of the stalks. 50 bales to a trailer, 4 high and two on top. Marvellous.

I'm a completist really, which naturally draws you into being a rarity hunter, because the rarities become the gaps that pathologically speaking, HAVE to be filled. Hence, to the likes of me who is beyond hope, the 1905 penny varieties are just as important as the 1903 penny varieties. A gap there would actually be more important to fill because there's no rarity excuse! Books definitely change things. I can't be the only one who adds a variety to the must-have list as soon as he knows about it. The more books like Mr Grooms that reach the public the better as far as I'm concerned, because I'm afraid they don't sell well in the 20th century series. I can usually get decent prices if I stick them in the Shop and wait - eventually another autistic completist will come along, but if I put them in the auctions I can almost guarantee disappointment. I had a lovely D.2121 1946 1+B shilling go the other day for a cruel £3.97, which I paid £13 for 18 months ago. I had to have it, back then, you see, because it was a gapfill for me. Even though I trumpeted its different status to the normal 1946, it's unlikely that the buyer gave a hoot about the micro - it was just a top grade silver shilling. 1+B is £6 (1982) in Davies, compared to £2.50 for the usual type, which gives you an idea of relative scarcity. Try to get anyone interested in Elizabeth II micros and you're onto a hiding to nothing. Bronze, I think, is a bit different. Freeman numbers seem to carry more weight than Davies numbers. Even recessed ears, not even given F. numbers, seem to fly off the shelves even at VF level. Maybe because they're in CCGB? That would be an interesting study - which micros are in which books, and thus which books stimulate more sales. Spink of course, made 1920/21 silver dead easy to sell when they started including the varieties there. I know they got them wrong, Peck, but that didn't seem to matter. Any publicity is good publicity!

Most people here must have one. What on earth do you store them in? I can find plenty of capsules that are big enough in diameter, but the silly 5mm thickness means none of them will close properly. I can't cope with one of my best coins squeezed tightly into a 2" PVC. It's just not right.

Scroll down to the bottom of THIS post. Problem solved...

Indeed. I have a kind of blurry policy towards unconfirmed Davies numbers. I let myself off the hook actively looking for them when I couldn't be doing with checking every 1937 silver threepence, but then I found D.751, an unconfirmed 1870 florin. So at least some of them do exist.

Hypervarietals: I love 'em. I just secured the last and trickiest of the 4 different 1889 threepences: 1+B D.1335 2+A D.1336 <<<this one! 2+B D.1337 3+B D.1339 Hard to avoid hypervarietals in the Vicky Silver series...

Ah, yes. Bernie. Sells under about half a dozen different names but always uses the same unique captions on his photos.

Ha! These are my excludes... -(80th,1p,1967,1982,1984,2004,churchill,cover,doubles,gold,2012,hammered,20p,£1,trade) -(1971,1972,1977,2002,10,diana,festival,fifty,india,iom,jersey,malaya,medal,pound,royal,token,twenty) -(20p,50,50p,£2,£5,1981,2010,2011,decimal,guernsey,man,mother,olympic,proof,sovereign,straits,tokens) Not to mention about 500 sellers...

You can fix the price range thing, Tom. Left hand side of the search page, look down for the Price bar, and hit customise. Then you'll get a little dialog with a box in it where you can type your range. The old boxes are just one layer further in. Yes, the search terms do mash up with the top of the results - not sure what we can do about that!

Straw poll of the 5 1911's that have passed through my hands is 3 flats to 2 hollows, so that backs the experts up!

I wonder if there's a cascade effect - in other words, someone will buy that 1903 halfcrown as an upgrade, which will chuck one out into the market, which will get bought as an upgrade and so on down the line till someone chucks out a nF which I could buy to upgrade my Fair.