declanwmagee

Confirmed: 300 chr absolute limit on query length, but 100 between brackets. so, use 3 sets of brackets, with <100 in each, then you can get round the 100 chr limit. I use one set of brackets for dates, once for denoms, and one for words, like this -(1967,1972,1977,1981,2012) -(20p,50p,£1,£2,£5) -(commemorative,cover,decimal,Diana,doubles,festival,jersey,gold,man,mother,pounds,proof,token) then you can go up to 300.

Wow. I don't think the seller knew what he had. I love it when that happens. I did look at it earlier when it was normal money, but only checked for slender 3. Forgot all about Open 3. I actually checked it this afternoon, decided that it was the same 3 as mine (therefore the common one, not the slender), and that mine was tons better anyway. Never gave it another thought. So, you lot gave me a slight heart attack when you brought to the forums attention this evening. Having checked mine in detail now, it is, of course, neither open nor slender so I can now relax in the knowledge that mine is a £10 coin. Phew!

cheers Scott! Now we know...

It's a bit inconsistent. Some of the searches I have edited have allowed more than 100, others haven't. Confusing. Results are inconsistent too. I can add one exclusion and have a couple of hundred results ADDED to the tally! Makes me wonder what I might be missing. Not much, probably. I've also been playing with Google custom searches for off ebay shopping, as a direct result of this nonsense. Build a list of your favourite dealers websites and search them all for something at the same time. It's not perfect yet, but it's promising.

Blimey. You know what we're going to say... - High res large closeup photo - Proper lighting - Externally hosted then we might stand a chance!

Oh! Wonder what's different about me? Definitely 300 here. Maybe they like the name.

what are we looking at, Chris? Weak lower serifs?

also a great example of what the 3 in a 1903 open 3 should look like!

Well, it's interesting anyway. Here's mine for what it's worth... are they all broken, or has anyone got one that isn't?

It's a halfpenny, right? My 1893 halfpenny has the same break. Shows how closely I look at my coins - I never noticed before you brought it up, Chris!

Thanks Nick - I'm experimenting with that at the moment! I have found that it gets in a pickle if you have numbers (i.e.dates and denominations) in your brackets, so I'm using the format above for them, and your format for words... dear me.

which is exactly what my complex, wildcard littered searches always used to do. I filtered the 60,000 down to under 20,000 with one click. Severe re-engineering required now though, and once you type out every date from 1968 to 2012, rather than using "-1968 -1969 -197* -198* -199* -200* -201*", it doesn't leave much of your 300 characters for filtering out: -50 -enam* -"Isle of Man" -Diana -churchi* -fift* -guin* -whitm* -africa -shell -gold -token -20p -jers* -commem* -gibr* -guer* -canad* -hamm* -1967 -fest* -£2 -1p -£5 -medal -patt* -millen* -olym* -proof -polish* -sover*

Correction: I've just run into the character limit that I was assured doesn't exist! It's 300 characters.

What are the wildcards you can or could use and where do you find them? I thought you had to type in what you were looking for - say 1723 sixpence, or went down the category tree and searched within the denomination or era. Will this render specific descriptions impossible to use. Say the wildcard was 'all', then 'all new' or 'all unc' wouldn't be allowed. Sorry, confused. Saved searches? No. It will soon only allow specific descriptions, rather than accept the asterisk as a wildcard. For example, to search for coins from the 1860s you could just use the search string 186* (where the asterisk matches zero or more following characters). Now you will have to list every year separately. It was also extremely useful to be able to remove items from searches. Here is an example of one of my searches (for third-party graded items): (ngc,pcgs,cgs,anacs,ms,graded) -(pou*,sov*,gui*,£2,£1,50p,isl*,doll*,penn*,halfp*,farth*,olym*,aust*) which will now become useless unless all of the variants can be specified in less than 100 characters. Any search that you type into the eBay search can be saved to save you typing the same thing time after time. Just got confirmation from ebay that there is no character limit, so it's a ball-ache, but it's only a ball-ache once

Me too! My saved searches have taken years to perfect: "-50 -enam* -"Isle of Man" -Diana -churchi* -fift* -197* -201* -guin* -whitm* -africa -199* -200* -shell -gold -token -20p -jers* -commem* -gibr* -198* -guer* -canad* -hamm* -1967 -fest* -£2 -1p -£5 -medal -patt* -millen* -olym* -proof -polish* -sover*" for instance. Wildcards a plenty.

Ah, but is yours slabbed? There's a whole can of worms right there, Gary! At the end of the day we're coin collectors, not platic collectors. A slab doesn't make a £1 coin any more than a £1 coin in a slab! I've only got one slab - it's a 1928 silver 3d, which I'd grade at VF+. PCGS MS64! So, instantly, there goes any incentive I might have to crack it out, as raw, it'll still only be a VF+. When the time comes to sell it, the best I'll be able to say, to cover myself and preempt the inevitable disappointment from the buyer: "slab says MS64 but please make sure you're happy with the grade of the coin, rather than the grade on the label". So I become as guilty as London Coins, and so the slippery slope begins...

I value my '62, which, I might add, is tons better than that one, at £1.75. I think that's realistic, including postage!

Oh for goodness sake Bloody hell my collection is worth a fortune!

Ah but then you'd have gaps, Gary! What to do, what to do...

Well there we are, that's unanimous then! Thanks Peck!

That's weird. That link comes up with "Your search returned 0 items" (for that seller). ????? That's just a link to his current listings. There were 3 earlier this evening - they must have finished. There's always Completed listings - it's worth checking out for the uniformity of look!

Ah...dipped! That makes sense. They're always the same colour!

Thanks gents! not just me then...

Not a PM, Gary 'cos it's only book prices that anyone could look up, but I just fed it into my creaky old Heath Robinson valuation machine and cranked the handle... Here's what came out on the ticker tape - an average of CCGB 2011, Spink 2012, BCMV 2012 and Coin Yearbook 2012. EF-: £98 EF : £124 EF+: £166 I'm sure the grade is in that range somewhere! If I had that sort of money, I'd bid £82.50 at EF. I don't, of course, but that's what the machine would tell me to bid if I did have. It would certainly be a handsome upgrade for my VF-.

I wonder if anyone can tell me any more than Peck can about the varieties of 1941 and 1948 Nickel-Brass threepence: This is what Peck says: "In practice the Royal Mint found that the life of the dodecagonal collar was shortened unduly by the development of cracks in its sharp corners. During the early years of the War, when the quantity and quality of steel suitable for die making were on the decline, the corners of these collars were made more rounded, and this resulted in a substantial increase in the effective life of the collars." Although Peck makes no distinction in his rarity ratings between them, for both 1941 (when they switched to Rounded) and 1948 (when they switched back again), I have found that the Rounded 1941 is harder to find than the sharp 1941, and the Sharp 1948 is harder to find than the Rounded 1948. The difficulty arises when trying to distinguish a worn Sharp from a Rounded, particularly with 1948 - which is a difficult year in high grade anyway. I'd love to find out if there's an easier way to tell the difference, like a pointing or something like that. I understand that because we're looking at collars, not dies, it may not be that easy. Any ideas? cheers Declan