declanwmagee

Just PayPalled you, Dave, for the silver book...

that declanwmagee is a bit pricey though, and he needs to get his head round cameras rather than scanning...

If you log in to your PayPal account (i.e. from paypal.com, not from ebay or another checkout system), you'll see a tab marked "Send money", next to the "My Account" tab that you normally see. Then you'll get a chance to copy and paste an email address in as a recipient. hope that helps!

Put me down for one, Dave! I'll PayPal you presently, either if I get outbid on this afternoons shopping, or when someone comes into my Shop! Means I can put off getting a Davies... Declan

Yes, as a date run collector it wouldn't matter to me, especially as I couldn't tell. I wouldn't want a 1927 silver 3d in my date run though, so as long as some were issued for currency, Maundy would count.

Yes, Dave and Julie are very decent sorts, and we've had many very satisfactory dealings with them. Perhaps we should have a "Decent eBay Sellers" thread as well as eBay laughs?

Fantastic answers, chaps. Here's a photo of my 1919 (left) with one of the 1921s (right), and even I can clearly see the difference in the gap between the rim and the legend... thank you for that! Declan

I've bought an 1834 threehalfpence and a 1903 florin from him recently, and they both qualified to go straight into the Collection. In fact, he's one of a handful of sellers whose coins always catch my eye.

Do your normal search... Then select Advanced search (just to the right of the Search button, at the top of the page). Scroll down almost to the bottom, and you'll see a section marked "Sellers". Check the box labelled "only show items from", and choose the "Specific Sellers" radio button. Choose "Exclude" from the drop-down, and paste your blacklist into the box immediately after it. It looks like it won't all fit, but it will. Commas to separate, no spaces. Then choose your Sort Order and your Results per Page, hit search, and marvel at the amount of crap it's filtered out. Before you move on, save the search by choosing "Save this search and alert me later", at the top of the page on the same line as the number of results returned. You'll get a little pop-up - name the search, take the email notification off, and away you go. Access the saved search in the future from My Ebay, down the left hand side, look for Saved Searches - it'll be in there under the name you gave it in the previous step. Hope that's helpful

Did you get that list I sent to, Mr Leviathan? I fired it off to the yahoo address in your profile...

When I'm rich and famous I think I'll spend sovereigns at their face value. I've always wanted to do that. Before the Great Cupro-nickel Shrinkage of '92 I frequently slipped pre-47 silver into circulation when I'd kicked it out of my collection - no point in trying to sell it to a dealer in them days, of course. Pre-ebay too. Never tried to spend a crown though. What about a piedfort? That'd be a laugh.

We've bought from nyame too, and we were happy. One of Richparfishing's favourite coin sources, by the way.

Worth a punt? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230472060827

We found a 2002 Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games £2 today in change - and I said to the Pwincess: "I think that's the best one - Scott will know!" can you confirm, Scott?

No. Not allowed. Sometimes I'm a bit embarrased by markup, but then I'm not altering the coins, I'm hunting for bargains, and that is allowed.

It was about two years ago, maybe a bit more, that they brought in the "Bidder 1" business on the UK site. Before that, you always knew who you were up against, and who sniped you at the last minute, which was rather fun in a small hobby like ours - almost felt a bit community-like.

More than welcome to it! Of course, it's based on excluding sellers that are of no interest TO ME - they may have stuff you want, but if it would save you some time shopping, I'll PM it to you. I'd better not do it in public - there are 61 sellers on it, and that's 61 real people, some of whom might be here (but I doubt it!). My text-string exclude list can't possibly offend, so here it is - again, this is just the stuff I personally don't collect - change it if you need to. oh, and if you don't know where to copy and paste all this to, in eBay, let me know... "-cufflinks -keyring -pattern -copy -holed -guernsey -201* -200* -framed -decimal -£1 -199* -jersey -cover -5p -197* -wedding -mum -churchill -reproduction -50p -£2 -198* -20p -gold -2p -sovereign -1967 -token -festival"

Hm. 100 multiplied by any number of amateur chancers, still = a whole lot of crap. I'm not hopeful this will do more than slightly dent the problem, especially when you consider those people can just create a sockpuppet and put in another free 100 Judicious use of the advanced search works wonders. I maintain a blacklist of sellers excluded from search results (currently 61 names on it), and 31 text strings that stop an item appearing. Combining the two cuts the number of coins in the British section from 50-odd thousand down to 15,000 or so. Any new sockpuppet appearing just goes on the list and is never seen again!

I'm constantly falling into the trap of assuming everyone collects with exactly the same methodology as me, so I wonder if you advanced types could clarify how you do it.. I see all these lovely coins being discussed here - and that 1909 dot penny is a good example, and I wonder, have you completely finished with lesser coins, have you tucked away a full set of Elizabeth II in BU, and that's that dealt with. Have you got rid of them? Did you ever inhabit that area or did you go straight into the serious stuff? If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now? Just thinking aloud really...

Lay 'em out Scott! Let's see 'em in all their glory! There were 700 coins on that table I used....I'm sure you can beat that if you can find a big enough floor...

Quite agree, Rob. The idea of completion terrifies me, so I'm always looking for new gaps to create. Most recent was the Bird's Foot flaw on the 1918KN. I got one, by accident, so it went into the 'A' collection as a new recognised (by me) variety, and thus created a "Shop-gap" in the 'B' collection so it needs to be upgraded. I'm trying to do the same with 1953 halfpennies (plenty of ex-set 1+A examples about, but can't find a 2+A), sharp-cornered '48 3d, round cornered '41 and 1937 Pennies. Part of all this is due to just acquiring a Freeman, but I'm sure once I'm done I'll be looking for a Davies.

I'm such an obsessive neurotic I hve to have a system for everything, and coin collecting lends itself beautifully to that. I even have a system for digging the allotment. Then you can constantly review the results and adjust the system, see if that works. I'd feel helpless doing it by instinct!

Colin, I think you may have shone a bit of a torch on where I'm struggling! I can't seem to get past the level I'm at now, and it's not for lack of spending any money...I spend tons of the stuff on coins, but only money that is earned from coins (PayPal, to be precise - I could never really justify spending sweat-earned cash on them). Conseqently, it's dead easy to identify "an amount to spend on coins" as you put it, I'd just look at my PayPal balance. The bit you've clarified for me is quality rather than quantity. If I've got say, £30 to spend, normally I'd try and fill as many "shop-gaps" as I could with that - the logic being that if a punter is looking for a specific coin, that's what he'll search for, and his search results will bring up a list of examples from different sellers. If I'm not in that list, there's no chance he'll pick me. So I've been going for breadth rather than depth. I think, in future, if I've got £30 to spend, I ought to go and find a coin that I need for as close to £30 as I can get. I can spend the change getting commoner shop-gaps filled. Means I have to shake off the bargain hunter mentality though. You know how you sometimes miss something fundamental when you've been doing it the same way for so long...

I'm a lucky man, Mr Peckris, it's not every coin collector who has a Pwincess who understands why I might want to spend an evening doing that.

Declan, that's exactly the potty, bizarre sort of thing that I would do. You're not an only child as well are you? No, Derek, one of two, but as as child I could never get my little sister to take her visits to my pretend coin shop seriously. Now, thanks to eBay, I don't need my little sister anymore, I can play shopkeepers to my hearts content. To me, that's what coin collecting is all about, not investment or profit, but the buzz you get looking down that unbroken run of halfcrowns back to the first gap (which is 1905).