declanwmagee

Good observations Mr Peckris. It makes me chuckle when market forces are talked about is if they were the weather - naturally occurring rises and falls, almost tidal. They are not - they are all man-made phenomena. Controlled by many or controlled by few is another argunent, but controlled they are.

We're house sitting for the minor gentry this week, and they've got this long thin table in their huge kitchen. As soon as I saw it I thought "ooh look, denominations down the short dimension, dates on the long dimension, I could get my whole collection on that" that's one evening taken care of this week! But I'll have to put empty 2x2s in the gaps that are supposed to be there (like 1941-1943 pennies) so it doesn't look like I have coins missing. are we collectors because we're mental, or are we mental because we're collectors?

you see, you can say what you like about fleabay, but there's no doubt it's put a rocket under the hobby.

for us it's only: British (no islands or colonies, except I do like fractionals and threehalfpence) Predecimal Currency - can't get excited about proofs or commemoratives, or even Crowns really Every date, every denomination up to double florin Any variety I can see with the naked eye - I like pointings like '53 farthings, but I can't be doing with measuring things so I won't do most of the Golden Hind halfpenny varieties, but I will do the Calm Sea. They have to be deliberate though, errors do nothing for me. A badly made coin is a bad coin as far as I'm concerned. Even overdates seem a bit close to that. I'd rather have high grade common coins than acres of gap fillers, and I don't mind duplicates because I can play shopkeepers on eBay with them. I started when I was 9 by finding an 1873 halfpenny in a stream I was playing in. Green, and smooth, but still legible, and I still have it. Slowly built up a collection as a child by blagging off relatives who had tins of old coins lying around, and only started buying coins systematically when I was about 17. Didn't occur to me I might be able to sell them till 2004, but since then have gone hell for leather, upgrading everything many times over. I haven't managed to get that far back in time, but my obsession is completeness, so I won't be venturing too far into Victoria till 1902-1967 is pretty much there. "There" meaning a high grade example in our personal collection, and a second best in the Shop. I love the idea of having one of everything in the Shop, even if it is only back to 1902. and I like to draw grids and graphs, lay the coins out in date order and do ridiculous analyses in ridiculous spreadsheets...

this is worth a read too...

I think it has to be welcomed. The only thing worse than an inflationary market, is a deflationary one. It's not like housing, where bubbles burst and leave people in negative equity, because even if you paid too much for a coin, you've still got the coin that you wanted. You're not in debt. And even if most of the new collectors fade away in time, there'll always be collectors - it's in our blood. Going back to the original question about new material - that's the key. New collectors are still being made, but the things we collect aren't, so basic supply and demand kicks in. Maybe it's something to do with a loss of confidence in traditional methods of saving and investment? I'd rather have a coin than an endowment policy!

if money was no object I'd be driving round the country picking up all these sacks of predecimal everyone seems to have in their lofts!

Just an observation from the bottom end of the market - down here it's going nuts... Is it going to calm down after the end of the financial year? Does that have an effect? I'm sick of hearing myself say "I'm not paying that, for that!". If I'm not careful I'm going to sell too many coins and start to get low on stock, and I can't have that. I'd rather wait to restock if it is going to calm down, or do I just have to bite the bullet and accept that I have to pay more now than I used to?

Hardly a Commoner. Some might say his blood was bluer than those German imposters...he was practically a Stuart.

I reckon anything with full lettering on the reverse is above average for these

I suppose that's why they're cinque-foils, rather than cinque-points. Cinquefoils are five-leaved things, but the only example I've got you couldn't tell they were leaves...

oh, and the cinquefoil is commoner...

Simple Paul - a cinquefoil is basically a 5-pointed star. Star stops are eight pointed stars.

stick 'em on eBay as a single lot, Paul - you can't touch it for reaching as many coinies as possible in one hit

ooh lovely - I'll look out for them

well, that's the thing really - that's why a decent camera has never quite made it to the top of my things to buy list. When it comes down to it, I'll always buy more coins instead when the old scanner can still do that...

this is about the best I can get for old bronze at 600dpi scanned but the newer stuff comes out better...

What amazes me is that with the exception of a few years in which a collective total of over 10 million copper coins were issued, none of them were produced in very large numbers (1806/7 might be exceptions but my books leave the mintages as 'unrecorded'). When the new bronze coins hit the streets in 1860-3, the numbers involved were humungously more than the copper coins they replaced. Since I have never read of small change shortages up to 1860, I wonder why we needed so many more coins starting in the latter part of the 19th century - maybe 10 or 20 times the numbers circulating pre-bronze. Yes, the population was increasing, but not by that much surely? Does anybody have an answer to this? I believe it's known as Quantitative Easing...

I've never even seen an UNC '58E, or '59S. Bought many that looked close, but none of them were.

and I bet the Nikons do bronze much better than any scanner...

Peckris, I have a HP Photosmart C7180 printer/scanner and have touble with the finished scans, they just dont look right compared to other peoples scanned coins. Any recommendations for settings and/or software for amending the images etc? Ditto - cheap Canon scanner; at least 6 years old. I scan a dozen or so at a time at 600dpi but don't ask the scanner to do an A4 scan - just a postcard sized part of the platen. It can do 1200dpi, but then that's one coin at a time. Sometimes they're a bit dull, particularly with older bronze, and I find a brightness tweak of about 10% and 5% contrast brings out detail you'd otherwise lose in the gloom.

I've looked at a few, but you can't touch Excel for making it do just what you want it to do, and for the ability to change your mind every 5 minutes

I can upload some of mine if you like Mark - some of the fields won't mean much to you as they refer to other bits of the database but if you're interested I can talk you through it. Yes please, I'd love to see them. Mark, try as I might, and ZIP as I might, I can't anything useful down to the 150k upload limit. Can I email it to you? cheers Declan

I can upload some of mine if you like Mark - some of the fields won't mean much to you as they refer to other bits of the database but if you're interested I can talk you through it.

Very good question! As my 45-year coin comparative values reference is based entirely on Seaby/Spink, that's the source I use. It's just that these days I take them with a hefty pinch of salt Also bear in mind that insurance companies use Spink too. I take an average of 4 to value the coins in my own collection: Tony Clayton British Coins Market Values Spink CCGB I update each one that's a physical book every other year, and Mr Clayton does his own updates. For coins I'm selling, I use my own historical records, corrected for grade, so a coins value is what I reckon I could get for it, based on what I've got for that particular date/variety in the past. Huge databases are half the fun of being a coinie! I agree with you apart from Coins Market Values - I've usually found them to be a bit "under" for values? Yes - a bit stingy, particularly at the bottom end of the market where I reside! I'm due to replace it this year - I have the 2008, but at twice the price of CCGB I'm hesitant. So I'm on the lookout for another source of values. I did find this the other day http://british-coin-price-guide.homelinux.com/ if you can get past all the flippin' animated GIFs and the idiosyncratic layout, the values given don't seem to duplicate any of the other sources I use so I'm not sure where they're from. They tend to come somewhere between CCGB and Spink.