declanwmagee

Crikey, that's good info, 1887! Is that from your own surveys, multiplied up, a la VR Court?

In my experience Mongo, the Q with the long loopless tail is the trickiest - 1+A. 1+C is the easiest. This might help...

Found an 1873 halfpenny in a stream I was playing in when I was about nine - sometime around 1977 I think...still got it, and only upgraded it the other month. Not for sale, and never will be, unlike every other coin I've upgraded since!

Ah. That 1923 was the one of the two I got. Still don't have a telly, thank goodness!

I expect you're right, Peter. I try and get my punters interested in esoteric varieties too, although not on the same level as Gary - stuff like 1953 Obv 2s, but they just can't get excited about them like I do. The 1923 florin mule I bought from you, Gary, will probably stay in my collection for ever and never go near a punter!

You don't want to try paying cash for car insurance, Peter! On the phone, before they give you the quote, they go off on their prepared script about doing a credit check. At which point I stop them right there and say "I'm not asking for credit, I want to pay cash". 9 out of 10 can't do it, and lose the sale. Sometimes they can get quite desperate - suggesting that we get someone else to ring in their credit card number, and we pay the someone else our cash.

No, but a coin I sold to the esteemed Mr Groom ended up in his silver book!

Hello Rob I strongly recommend to everyone who gets in a pickle with Outlook - and believe me, everyone does, that you switch to a web browser based email. That way, as long as your browser is working (and they're pretty robust compared to Outlook), your email will work. There are dozens of providers, and your existing provider may well do a web-based service which would mean you could keep all your emails. Even if they don't, you should be able to keep your email address by setting up a permanent forwarding to your new one.

Nice topical reference, Mr Accumulator, and bang on. I had the misfortune to get into my brother-in-laws car the other day and the thing kept bleeping at me. "What it doing that for" says I. "It's telling you you haven't got your seatbelt on" says he. So where do I type in "don't be silly, this is rural Gloucestershire"? If it had been my car I'd have been in the fusebox, but they probably send an alarm to HQ if you do that. Sooner or later, everything will be either mandatory or prohibited.

Out of interest, the 53 halfcrown isn't one of the ones broken out of the plastic sets, it's an Obverse 2 made for circulation. Commoner on issue, but as more of the plastic sets got broken up, and as Obv 2s got more circulation, I'm sure that high grade examples have become scarcer than Obv 1s now.

It's days like this I don't miss the old bus at all!

As I was just saying.... 1918 2/6

Agreed to all that. Big George V silver can look lovely in VF+. Perhaps that's why most advertised as EF and above are really only VF+.

I started off using the descriptions in the Coin Yearbook - I don't know if they still have them but I transcribed them about 20 years ago and have been carrying them around ever since: here they are Since then, Derek Allen has published the definitive guide: Derek's book It's a book I still take off the shelf at least once a week!

There sure is! I just identified a 1902 penny with a low tide too, tons to learn, but already enjoying my new hobby. that's a bloody good find in a box like that...well done!

Hours of fun to be had sorting through boxes like that, Mongo! Especially if you know about the more obscure varieties. Most boxes will have been cherry picked for the obvious, but most cherry pickers won't know about the stuff they know about on here...

You could get some decent info from Wybrit... Rarities and tips If the grades are low you can pretty much forget ship halfpennies, I'd say. Even the 1957 calm sea has to be above VF to be interesting. Wren farthings: nothing there either. Maybe 1953 2+A (Obv cross and Rev F both between beads). George V farthings: 1915 Ts of BRITT almost touching - careful with this one - it's very rare and the Ts are quite close on the common one. Look at a 1913 or before - that's the obverse you're looking for for 1915. Bun head pennies - most of the big boys here are far more qualified than I in this specialised field, but 1869 and 1875H spring to mind straight away. Later pennies: 1903 open 3 1908 1*+C (you will need a loupe for that one!) 1909 2+E (1st 1 in date to tooth) 1911 Gouby X (I of IMP and I of BRITT both to teeth) 1913 2+A (GRA: BRITT colon centred, : after IMP >< teeth, 1st 1 of date at tooth) that's about it really - don't bother hunting out H's, KN's or ME's under VF.

Hi there I've just changed my avatar (for the first time in 5 years!) and what I found is that your profile picture and your avatar are two different things. If you want a photo to appear each time you post, like my little cottage, use the avatar. hope that helps

It isn't a rare coin.Even near perfect I wouldn't want to pay much more than £15.The mintage was massive. 113.7 million! That was, at the time, I think, the biggest mintage of any British coin.

That's interesting, Huss. Do you do that with all metals? Would the deionised water that you get for car batteries do the job, or do you use something purer than that? Are there any coins you wouldn't do that to? How about drying? Sorry for the cascade of questions...but I am going through my collection at the moment getting them all into selfadhesives, and a quick dip like that before they go in might be a good idea if, as I'm sure many have, they've spent some time in PVC.

Looks like a decent enough coin from the bit of it we can see. Only decent enough though - not spectacular. I don't think the doubled date does anything for value though. I wouldn't pay extra for one. Of course, if you were trying to put together a collection containing nothing but doubled dates you might! Nothing to stop you doing that...

Oh I did that too! Sold a sovereign in 1987 for £55 to buy food and marijuana (not necessarily in that order!), and sold two half sovs in 2009 to put a floor in my bus. Since then the rule is to only sell something once I've bought a better example, although I still don't have any gold.

Wrong. So-called religious wars are almost always about power or economic oppression, and you can include the Inquisition and Crusades in that. And Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot were all either atheist or else non-religious. You have to go back to the English Civil War to find wars fought on grnuinely religious principles. It is notable that those who - wittingly or unwittingly - start or originate a religious system are pretty much all peace loving hippie types. The common thread in all religions is The Golden Rule which can be loosely expressed as "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you". Quite right, Mr Peckris. Although you could argue that even the English Civil War was really about a power struggle between Parliament and Monarch - simlar to the struggles between Pope and Holy Roman Emperor on the continent.

Religion is the cancer in society, continuing to foster warfare and a host of other ills under a feeble veneer of legitimacy. When will we all wake up to reality? Ah, but it's not about religion, it's about that which pretty much every conflict ever has been about - LAND. That's what makes maps like this so fascinating. What are marked here are borders. Not borders that any government has drawn, like the arbitrary straight lines that divide up the indivisible Sahara, but borders that people drew themselves, street by street, house by house. Comparing 1971 to now, it's remarkable how many of those borders have remained in exactly the same place, despite the utter transformation of the urban topography. Not a yard has been given up in either direction, even if the houses have been replaced by factories.

That's really interesting, Declan. Two points I note: some streets are partly green and partly orange ~ that must have been difficult. Also, the RUC station is in the green area ~ awkward. I had to go to Belfast on work related business back in 2003, and despite the Good Friday agreement and all the talk of peace, it was obvious that sectarianism was a total way of life on both sides of the divide. Very, very friendly, hospitable and outgoing people, nonetheless, with a great sense of humour, and quite a lot of humour about the sectarianism itself. At one hostelry I went in for a meal, I got talking to a guy who said to me in a quiet voice "SShhhy, I'm the only f***** protestant in this pub, and they don't know" Was a good two weeks, and I was almost sorry to leave. It is fascinating isn't it? The streets that crossed the divide in 1971 no longer do, in most cases. They were where the barricades went up in August '69, and most of them stayed up till Operation Motorman in 1972. Ironically, Motorman was supposed to dismantle the barricades and thus the "No-Go" areas, but what actually happened is that they were replaced by Army barriers. Now, the divides are built into the city infrastructure, so for instance, Dover Street stops at the "Peace Line" on the Loyalist side, and new housing has been built straight across Percy Street. The barracks at Hastings Street was one of the first to be attacked in the early days and no longer exists. Streets like Coates Street are even more interesting, as one side of the road would have been Protestant, and the other Catholic.