Kipster

His other items are equally as bad...

Thanks Pete, Will have a better look when office is back to normal

Can I just check if this looks like an 1853/2 please? Ta.

Noone will ever convince me that the crypto world wasn't created by Putin to destabilise financial institutions in the West. A quote attributed to Mayer Rothschild: "Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws". There is a worldwide spiderweb of criminality at the highest levels in Russia, linking the literal godfather of Russian organised crime, Semion Mogilevic, to Putin and his emissaries. Cyber crime is his meat and veg, and he plays the very, very long game...

Very nice indeed.

I hope it went to the shill and not a genuine bidder. Big red flags all over the place with this seller looking at his response.

Yep, on the desktop, but fine on mobile.

Has anyone been watching the St James auction this morning? Some big numbers being reached. A 1954 VIP proof farthing graded PR66 just hammered for £2,000.

I've just had the St James Argentum catalogue through, and noticed that their buyers premium is now 24% + VAT, same as Noonans. Not sure if this has just happened or if they've had it a while, but I certainly didn't pay that when I last bought from them. It's only 5% odd extra, but it's all getting a bit expensive now. They know they're shooting fish in a barrel, but how long before the fish get canny?

Hi Pete, will PM you. 👍

That's about where I would have gone up to if I wasn't spread too thinly on other things. Did you per chance nab any of the proof farthings in the LCA this weekend?

Just PM'd you Pete. Cheers.

And that one is an absolute stunner. Ir was CGS graded and I believe it was regraded by NGC as MS64. Looked far better to me.

Guy Fonquernie and Richard Regnier both run it. Guy has some unbelievable pieces in his collection and is a penny collecting man. Richard does the silver side of things. They haven't updated any stock on their website for at least a year, so probably concentrating on auctions now.

The drawing looks more like Mary, Queen of Scots to me.

If it went to you, hats off.

Very nicely done. I was bidding on that as well and you pipped me to it. 👍

Picked up this penny at auction recently. An F139. The variety hadn't been noted on the slab so I think it slid under the radar. Not the most beautiful coin in the world with a couple of issues, but far, far superior to my current example, and picked up for a very reasonable figure (I think).

An interesting link for anyone into ancient English coins and history. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/new-king-esunertos-hampshire-coin-b2432256.html

There have been some unusually high prices hammered by coins in a few auctions recently. Some which had absolutely no right to get anywhere near the figures reached. Call me cynical, but it all seems rather suspicious to me. Perhaps someone's doing some laundry...who knows...

Morning all, Just wondered if you could possibly confirm the die pairing on this 1861 halfpenny for me please? I'm sure I haven't asked before, so please forgive me if it's a duplicate. I'm using the great halfpennyvariety site to work it out, and I think this is 7 + G (missing rocks?) variety. Be grateful if someone could confirm for me please. Thanks.

This is a perpetual problem with several of the auction houses. Over-brightness on the images wipes out a lot of black spotting, particularly on the full lustre/colour coins. I picked up my third choice yesterday, but was really after the 1739 O over R sixpence, so if anyone picked that up and is looking to sell it on, I'd be interested, within reason. I wanted to bid more and would have, but I have my eye elsewhere and wanted to keep the powder dry. I was surprised that all those lovely Halfcrowns didn't find a new home.

I have a general query with regards to being able to identify a proof strike. The reason I ask this is because someone has listed a proof farthing for auction on the eBay, and I wanted to see if it was legit or not. Ebay isn't somewhere I would usually buy from, nor would I buy this particular coin as I don't like it, but with the obvious exception of the quality of strike, are there any other features of proof strikes that identify them such as different number of denticles etc?

Taking images that give you a true representation of what a coin looks like completely eludes me. But then the old Sony camera is due for punting out on ebay anyway, so maybe a cheap DSLR is needed. I looked at a few proofs when I went to Noonans a few weeks ago, but the images actually made the coins look far nicer than they were in hand.

This is interesting. That's pretty much how I would expect for a proof to look, however, this is currently for sale at Baldwins: https://www.baldwin.co.uk/product/victoria-bronze-proof-halfpenny-1868/ If it wasn't listed as a proof, I wouldn't have necessarily given this a second glance...