Sylvester

Here's a list of sovereigns to pull out and sell separately if you find any of them. I'll start with the 1887 Jubilee head ones and work my way through. I expect you'll find alot of 1910-1915 coins of the London mint and countless 1925s. Not all C mint ones are rare but alot of them are. The ones to watch out for are these; 1887-S 1888-S 1899-P 1909-C 1910-C 1911-C 1913-C ** (This is a biggie) 1914-C * 1916 No mintmark (London) 1916-C *** (£6000 or more in VF) 1917-C 1918-C 1918-I (Not rare but only India issue) 1919-C 1919-M 1920-M ** 1920-S **** (If you find one of these your dealer was careless!) 1921-M *** 1921-S ** 1922-M ** 1922-S ** 1923-S ** 1923-SA * 1924 (Any) 1925-P 1926-P 1926-S *** 1927-P 1928-M * 1928-P 1929-M ** 1930-M * 1931-M * 1937 (Proof only issue always sell as a collector's piece, these are a bit like Hen's teeth, sovereign date and type collectors want them and 1937 set collector's want them.) Any half sovereigns you find with mintmarks just list them on here and i'll look them up.

I was radaring staright in on the shield reverse sovereigns there. Someone's beat me to it though. Definately pull the shield reverse ones out and sell those as collectors coins. But as a former collector of shield reverse sovereigns perhaps i'm biased? Also if you've got any Victorian half sovereigns amongst the bunch it might be prudent to sell those separately as well. Especially ones issued before the old head of 1895. Also any half sovereigns with mintmarks should be examined also, cos some date/mintmark combinations are sought after. Other coins to look out for and sell separately are any Canada mint ones from the Ottawa mint, the mintmark on these should be found on the reverse just above the date (one the ground below St Geo's horse). I think in this case it would be 'C'. 1918 'I' mint soveriegns are always good ones to pull as well, not because they are rare exactly but because some collectors collect sovereigns by mint and India only minted them in 1918, so it's a key date of sorts. I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Interest in State Quarters? Me... shoot me first! Commemoratives on a mass scale and i don't like commems. Money making rackets again. Although i don't mind Decimal British coins so long as they are the stuff that is intended for circulation. Like bronze pennies and normal design £2 coins.

Slabs are one of the stupidest ideas besides their foreign policy that the Americans have exported in years. I've argued with many over slabbing but even the US ones luke warm on the idea still defend it due to... "it stops you getting ripped off". There's only one thing in this world that stops you getting ripped off and that knowing what you're doing. Educated numismatists that know their fields will very rarely lose out, unless it's a really, really good fake of course that fools dealers. But of course many seem to think that slabbing companies are infallible as if even they couldn't be fooled from time to time! Slabbing just makes the 'investment' side of coins open to a wider more uneducated audience. Which to me is pointless and best avoided. It's better to have fewer quality members, than a swarm of those only interested in making a quick buck out of it, they afterall don't love coins.

Bit of a difference between the two, farthings being about the size of a modern penny and are bronze. Britannia is sat on the back (reverse) of the coin. Shillings are silver and exactly the same size as an old large 5p piece and if it's from Edward VII's reign it should have lion on a crown on the reverse.

Oh and by the way it wasn't me that said it was UNC, it's not UNC no hammered coin in my opinion is truely UNC. I'd grade it GVF/AEF.

From what i've seen in pictures it looks alright to me. Alright meaning genuine. With regards to doctoring/cleaning and such i'm not too bothered about that with coins of this period. It's just nice to find one intact! (Obviously broken and repaired coins don't feature too highly on my list of desirable coins). An Edmund penny is what i really want now though.

Ohhh ohhh ohhh!! Ah ha... Yes certainly, if i could, i would! http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayIS...&category=52622 Eadred! I need him for my Anglo-Saxon monarchs set. Which is only one of three sets i'm now working on!

See what i mean, it highlights the design! So much bolder.

As you may well have come to expect you can never get a straight forward simple answer out of me, and here is no exception; Well it depends. With regards to milled coinage the words absolutely not spring to mind. Spotty, speckled, rainbow or anything that is vibrant will generally get passed over by me, as does anything pink, red or green. Generally because i find these tones distracting from the coin's design, when it comes to silver i like coins that are greyscale or white. Older coins some shade of grey, newer coins white. Another reason is because colourful tones make me think the coin has been poorly stored and or doctored which is just as bad as a coin that has been cleaned or dipped in my eyes. Although if the toning is even and subtle and particularly of darker colours such as blue (because i like dark colours and i like blue) which do more to give the design that wow factor rather than, the "where's my sunglasses" factor then it's alright in my book. So i short, pink/red/green/yellow = NO, Blue = YES! As for hammered for some reason i really like colourful toned hammered coins, it is basically because hammered coins often lack the sharp contrast between design and the flat field of modern coins. Particularly groats which are somewhat cluttered in design (i like clutter) but a rainbow toned groat, well the colours help bring out the design rather than masking it. I kinda really dig coloured hammered coins, i still like greyscale hammered though! Unfortunately i can't find a picture of one at the minute to show!

I disagree! With the wealth of reference material available, it is very difficult to produce a convincing forgery - hence the collectors of counterfeits! You could argue it the other way around. It's harder to produce a forgery of a hammered coin because firstly you have to make it look 800 years old or whatever, so it's going to need toning for a start. Secondly modern materials available might make the coin look too good, too well struck or too well centred for a certain issue and thus it'll scream forgery to those in the know. Minting say a forgery of a late victorian bronze penny making use of a modern coining press, (especially if original dies are somehow acquired, and there still are some out there of various issues as they occasionally turn up on ebay) and minting full lustre bronze, who's going to know?

I moved to hammered to try and avoid the variety scenario. Allow me to explain, i am by nature a date collector, one of each date for the set, (i avoided copper/bronze because of the varities, too many), i need one of everything for me to feel content that my set is complete. In the end there were just too many varities of William III sixpences that i tried to ignore but could thus i grew disheartened because i knew i'd never get a full set because as soon as i'd got anywhere near some twit would find more varities for me to have to buy. Plus i've no patience, i wanted the full set like yesterday. That and i really don't want 40 odd 1697 sixpences! Thus i moved wholesale into hammered, no dates to worry about (so i can finally become a type collector, which is cheaper and easier) and every coin is a totally different anyhow, so the set's finished whenever i decide it's finished and it doesn't matter if they find a new minor type anyhow. I really don't like varieties much, that's why i like decimal coinage so much. Short sweet sets, one of each date and finished.

I usually try and ignore varieties where possible, too much miniscule detail and since i still don't have a loupe/magnifier i usually don't bother looking. I notice copper/bronze coin collectors tend to buy more into this variety business than most other denomination collectors, but i'm guessing this is simply because generally copper/bronze is a cheaper field than say halfcrowns with less demand and therefore you get the chance to study more of them and notice these things.

You'd think 'professionals' would have noticed that one surely? I mean they spend ages looking at the coin through magnifiers to distinguish the grade and then go and get the year wrong!

With regards to this slabbing debate, Wybrit pointed out that many British collectors sell off coins to purchase others, this is true and i've sold off more coins over the past few years than anyone here, i sold about 20 sixpences last month alone. This is purely so i can buy coins more interesting to me, when buying the new coins i pay no attention to what it might sell for later, i sell my coins stright to dealers anyway which means i lose out on every sale, it also doesn't help if you pay over book price for coins anyhow really, does it? Investment is no interest of mine. Money comes, money goes, one thing's for sure you can't take it with you. So find ways to help it give you more enjoyment. Interesting how on this forum i'm much more in tune with common opinion than i am on CU forums where i'm yet again the odd one out seemingly to most members swimming in the face of all common sense.

Touche Geordie! Oh yeah i've sold many coins but usually at a loss, am i bothered, well no not really. I don't expect to sell my mini disc player for a profit so why should a coin be any different? Yet i enjoy owning and spending time with both. I think this is also the reason why i moved to hammered, more subjective, more unique, more history. Milled coins whilst still unique individuals tend to be more like an army than say a village. Confused? Well soldiers all dress the same even if they are individuals and thus give a sense of uniformity. Whilst in your average village similar people come in all shapes and sizes. Well to me these days milled coins seem much of a blah... yawn. But the odd one still catches my eye from time to time.

Sugared up sh... uusssh. Ah yes.

I was always of the opinion Geoff (at least so everyone keeps telling me) we live in a multi-cultural society. So therefore why don't we embrace these differences rather than trying to stamp a bland non-cultural identity (or a non-English cultural identity) on everyone, why don't we just accept people are different? People who are deaf are deaf, no point trying to dress it up in cotton wool, because that to me signifies that society sees being deaf as a negative thing... "sussh don't call them deaf because they might take offence", this signifies that the people that come out with these remarks are thinking the following; 1) "well i wouldn't like to be identified as deaf"... which leads to the conclusion that they view it as being inferior. To me this is twaddle, deaf, blind, hearing, black, Asian, white who cares? As long as you're not a chav...

I hate Political Correctness and i frequently go out of my way to break it. It's a form of mind control. Thus as far as i'm concerned it's still a fireman, police woman, postman, dinner lady, tea lady, chairman and of course taxman. Refuse Receptical Collection Assistant Engineer... grrrrr, binman or dustman to me. And there's not much point arguing with me, cos the English Language teacher tried that and the whole group of us turned on him and refused to co-operate, as none of us liked political correctness. But it was Barnsley and you know what people are like round theer.

I'll confess i haven't looked, i was going to wait for the picture. It makes life alot easier, cos you can often tell straight away.

Don't get me started on slabbing...

I still do not like that word. It's as bad as babe or chick. Couldn't lass or bird suffice? The weirdest two ages by far are 17 and 19. At 17 you can do everything a 16 year old can do but you can drive as well, but you still can't vote, legally drink in a public house or buy alcohol legally, or even buy an 18 video. Not that, that ever stopped any of us. 19 is strange because it's an age in limbo... you're over 18 so you're an adult in the eyes of the law, but at the same time you're still a teenager and alot of people don't automatically view you as adult till 20 or 21. Cos you're still afterall a rebellious (or not) teenager. It's kinda like you're 3/4ths adult, but not quite. At least that how i always felt when i was 19, which wasn't that long ago.

Don't Edward IV ones have mintmarks?

Is there any way you could post a picture of the coin on here, if so it would be a great help.

Brought up by a family of ardent Labour supporters i suppose my views no matter how much i try and change them are coloured. I just don't like big corporate businesses. Having said that i'm not that keen on Nationalisation either, cos that depends entirely on the government, where the government is commited great, where it's not there's trouble. I like slightly restricted free trade...