declanwmagee

It's going to be a compulsory purchase, Chris. We live in a bus, and we'll be making a space for it on our one bookshelf. oh, and Mr Red Riley tells me one of our coins is in it, so it'll be something we have to show everyone we know too...

Surprisingly few people are Josie, that's the whole point of the book. I've probably said before, but will say again, that grading, particularly on the internet can fall to the level of the blind leading the blind and the book is an attempt to put a stop to that. Yes, there will always be some room for personal opinion, but I just hate seeing Fine coins being passed off as EF to young and inexperienced collectors who in their turn pass the bad habit on to others just taking up the hobby. I know, I know. Sometimes I catch myself questioning whether trying to be eBay's stingiest grader is a particularly smart move, commmercially - when I put out a stonkingly gorgeous coin as a VF+, because that's what it is. I know that many coinies would advertise it as an UNC, and get the bids, and we'll struggle to get the asking price because we've called it VF+. Maybe it's best not to put a grade at all, but I kinda like listing with a grade because it puts a bit of a spotlight on the more blatant overgraders, and might just serve some educational purpose too. Should have written a book....!

In 1977, as a nine year old boy, I found an 1873 halfpenny in a stream. It was green and smooth but just legible. I still have it, of course. I gradually built up a British pre-decimal collection, but had still never sold a coin till 2004. Even then, I had no duplicates, so tried to sell my worst coins to finance buying better ones. That doesn't work, of course, and was never going to. So the Pwincess came up with a brainwave - why not buy better examples of the coins you've already got, and then sell the worst? Brilliant. You can see who's got the business head - I'm just a coinie, what do I know? So, tentative steps at first - started selling on eBay (I know, I know, but nothing touches it for exposure), set up an eBay shop, started paying a few bills with PayPal, started cutting down on the amount of time we had to spend labouring for money (I mean really labouring - farm work, building sites, etc), and now here's the thing - in a couple of weeks we're going to live in an old bus and really try to survive on this hobby that started with that 1873 halfpenny. Can it be done? We'll keep you posted - it's a brave experiment...

Thanks for the reply, Chris. It's been quite a gradual process for us. Over the past couple of years, the coins have made up a greater proportion of our income - not because the income from the coins is increasing massively, but after a few occasions where we came in from a hard days work only to find that we'd earned more from the coins that day than we had from the hard labour, we had to sit up and take notice. The universe points you in the right direction sometimes. We came to realise that I didn't HAVE to spend eight hours a day bent over a pickaxe, and frankly, we're not getting any younger and won't be able to for much longer! So we deliberately started cutting back on hard labour, deliberately started cutting back on our day-to-day overheads too, and started skimming off from the coins to pay a few bills, and it seems to be working. We still haven't managed to persuade our local petrol station to take our PayPal but we're working on it! We don't have huge ambitions, really. We don't fancy having a bricks and mortar business - even the term "business" is over-egging it a bit. We just fancy living in our old bus, growing our own food, building up our "pension fund" (the coins) and skimming off what little cash we need from it, whenever we need to. we won't know till we try it, and the thing about dreams is that they'll always remain dreams if you don't give 'em a go. all the best Declan & Suze

That sounds more interesting than what I found Gary! This is from "A New History of the Royal Mint" by C.E.Challis: "every effort was made to discourage excessive demand for coin, and it was during the War that the issue of silver threepences was first confined to those required overseas and then discontinued altogether. Bronze demand was also discouraged, and the Mint was fortunate that existing supplies were large enough that for much of the War it was not necessary to strike pennies to meet domestic needs. When the issue of pennies resumed in 1944 the Mint adopted an earlier practice of discolouring them so that demand would not be inflated for frivolous rather than practical reasons." I wonder if there was an "Official" reason, with everything being planned and under control, and only later did the real reason, as outlined in Freeman, be admitted?

OK I give up - what's the difference between this one and the common ones? And before anyone says "go and buy a Freeman", I am trying - I get an email whenever one pops up on eBay but they always go out of my league! cheers Declan Declan, There are two basic types for 1909 penny, one with what Freeman describes as reverse D and the other reverse E. The reverse E type is the rarer one. They are characterised as follows: Rev D: • The waves to the right of Britannia are coarsely cut. • Britannia’s central trident prong points to a tooth. • The first ‘1’ in the date points to a gap between two border teeth. • Both legs of the ‘N’ in ‘ONE’ point to border teeth. • The uprights of the ‘P’ and ‘E’ in ‘PENNY’ point to border teeth. • Britannia’s fist, where it grips the trident is smaller and less spread. Rev E: • The waves to the right of Britannia are more finely cut. • Britannia’s central trident prong points to a gap between two teeth. • The border teeth are arranged so that the first ‘1’ in the date is centrally over a tooth. • Both legs of the ‘N’ in ‘ONE’ point to gap between border teeth. • The uprights of the ‘P’ and ‘E’ in ‘PENNY’ point between border teeth. • Britannia’s fist, where it grips the trident is larger, and more spread out. Less easily identified is the fact that reverse D has 167 border teeth whilst reverse E has 164 border teeth. Hope this helps!! DaveG38 Dave you're a star - thanks very much - top information! all the best Declan

good for you Scott - it's work like that that will fuel the enthusiasts of the future - be encouraged! Fine Job.

OK I give up - what's the difference between this one and the common ones? And before anyone says "go and buy a Freeman", I am trying - I get an email whenever one pops up on eBay but they always go out of my league! cheers Declan

right you are! thanks chaps - I'll get snipping them up pronto : )

thanks for the response Chris; they are strips of five identical coins, each coin in an individual compartment within each strip. The plastic is less transparent than the 53 sets, but more flexible, and the coins are UNC. here's a pic...I'd be interested in whether you, or anyone else has come across them before, and what their provenance is.

...and how about the strips of 5 sealed in plastic? We bought a load of them a few months ago - various denominations halfpenny to halfcrown, ranging from 1957-1966 Did they get sealed up by 3rd parties too? cheers Declan

Well there we are - what a cracking idea - just what we all need.

We're just in the process of switching from horrid PVC envelopes in plastic Chinese takeaway trays to Lighthouse Coin Holders in 100-slot boxes...

that's a really good point Geoff. Do you know I've never had anyone do a sanity check on my grading? I use the guidelines from a Coin Yearbook from the 1980s sometime (I don't have the book anymore, but I do have the information, and still use it on a daily basis). You probably all know them - "Edge of beard just visible" for a George V VF, for instance. The customers seem happy with the grades I give the coins they buy but would they really tell me if they disagreed? I suppose, because I'm a chap who likes to have a system, I've fallen into the trap of thinking all coinies are systems people too. Having a system just saves me having to make too many decisions after a hard day at work - I can just flump myself down, run the thing - it'll throw up the coins to sell tonight, and it's done and dusted. Beyond the basic principle of "buy better than your best" and "sell your worst", I'd still be fascinated to know how other people manage their collections though...I'm keen to learn and keen to streamline! thanks Declan

Hello there. You all seem like wise people - I'd be very interested in your thoughts... I am trying to come up with a scoring mechanism - a Magic Number that tells me how good a coin that is, so I can identify the worst coin I have in stock, and make sure I sell that one before a better one. We run a little eBay Shop, and, like most collectors, I imagine, fund purchases for our collection by selling duplicates. It's easy to decide which is the better coin when you're only comparing a few at a time, but when you're trying to choose from hundreds, you need a system. That system has to be able to compare apples with pears, as it were. Is this UNC G-VI halfpenny better or worse than this Fine George V halfcrown? Which would I rather keep? I think I'd keep the UNC, but what if it was a 1925 Halfcrown? Oh, well that might be different - I might keep that and sell the common UNC. Do you see what I mean? What I do at the moment is take the following factors: 1) Grade, converted to a number (I use a home-made 50 point grading system) 2) Rarity Rating (according to ESC or Peck), converted to a number 3) Metal composition combined with weight, so a halfcrown gets more than a sixpence on this measure, for example, and a silver coin always beats Cupro-Nickel, Copper, or Bronze 4) How much we've been able to sell examples of that coin for in the last 12 months, adjusted for grade. (For each coin we sell, I calculate an UNC equivalent figure, i.e. how much we could have got if that coin had been UNC. Then for the coin that's being evaluated, I take that UNC equivalent figure and factor it down from UNC to the grade it's at.) 5) then I bung in a tie-breaker of Age, so two coins that score the same thus far will be separated by 1 point per year of Age difference. Each of these inputs is subject to a fiddle-factor that I change whenever it throws up something I don't like, so I might reduce the importance of grade if it's throwing out low grade Scarce G-V silver and keeping all the 1967 UNCs, for example. This is all great, at the risk of turning Coin Collecting into adventures with Excel, but it has never really settled down - I seem to always be changing the fiddle factors.... How do you good people decide what to sell and what to keep? thanks for listening... Declan & Suze the Pwincess and the Coin Collector

thanks for answering Chris. Believe it or not, this is designed as a timesaver! We tend to put a few out each day just to maintain a presence, so this tells me instantly which few it's going to be. The arithmetic behind it is complex, but the daily operation is very quick. I suppose the question behind the question was about systems and methodology - stock control even...