Peckris 2

nice bit of Photoshopping! Though I can see where they got each letter from

..though not quite as nice as finding an UNC 1951 brass 3d with good lustre, and an EF 1888 6d ... for 20p each in a crate of coins @ 5 for £1!

they'll certainly have earned their commission after typing all that out!

As I understand it, a cud is simply a bit of stray metal (from the previous strike?) that's got onto the die/planchet, i.e. a one-off misstrike. I don't know the word's origin except in relation to cows!

Looks like a cud to me.

Speculation: The Mint were not satisfied with the satin finish on Unc CuNi and wanted to get back to the glossy finish they got with silver coins. Why only a few 1950s coins should have been affected is anyone's guess. However, throughout the 70s you see Unc coins getting more and more mirrorlike, though it's not consistent by any means. But 10p and 5p pieces from the mid-70s do seem very glossy compared to early decimal 'silver'.

there are many uncatalogued examples of 'polished die' CuNi from the 50s - I can't remember offhand but I have one halfcrown (1955?) and a sixpence - as well as the 1961 crown and halfcrown.

Is that the very rare pre-1983 double reverse?

Is that the extremely rare 'large L in HALF' variety?

Spot on. I read a book recently debunking the entire concept: "AI" either uses big data (e.g. the big chess and Go computers, which can't actually do anything else), or the large language model like Chat GPT, or has 'learning circuits' which have approximately 0.0000000001% the capacity of the human brain. On the other hand, human intelligence can involve deduction, reduction, recognition, inference, intuition, or maybe all at once. To show the limitations of AI, there's one that can in a photo recognise not only dogs from any other animal, but tell you what breed they are. HOWEVER, researchers changed a few pixels in the photo, which to human eyes were not detected, but the AI was fooled into 'identifying' the dog as something completely different, e.g. a hippo or even a sea creature.

I guess Chat GPT would autocorrect 'marleybob' to 'Bob Marley' (Same old 1933 penny though...)

yes - they once thought he suffered from porphyria, but the latest thinking is that he was a manic depressive (or do we have to say bipolar now?)

1915 is by far the scarcer?

After some pretty awful torture to make them confess they were then hanged

Gone now.

Interesting that the author annotates the top of each page with the monarch's name - yet for the whole of the Commonwealth (several pages) the pages are annotated as "Chas II". He also refers to the execution of Charles I as "the king's murder".

nice proof

Yours is superb. As to the other, can you post a link rather than a picture, which is too small to see useful details?

I'm really intelligent so f*ck off.

sent message

Sorry, I have to agree with @ozjohn and @SilverAge3 - there's wear to the obverse and it just doesn't look like a proof at all.

There are also lots of farthings in this series which have been gilded to pass off as half sovs. I have two - one dull and clumsy, the other lustrous and very attractive.

Very obtuse - he mentions the "1927 obverse" not reverse!

The 1895 YH farthings suffer the same poor/worn die problem.

That obverse looks absolutely terrible for a proof.