Sylvester

It's alright i don't need one and if i did WHSmiths has one at my disposal to read on the shelf and put back when i've looked up the coin of interest. I might buy a 2005 on though but that's goinmg against my 7 year rule... i should wait till 2006/7 before buying another. 1985, 1993, 2000, 2007...

Best way to learn is by DIY. Get some decimal pennies out of circulation preferably ones dated 1971-1991 (cos they are bronze not plated) and clean a few of them, give them a really good polish. Then find a true shiny bronze coin that you may have and compare the two, there's nothing like it, you'll soon see. Look at the lustre between the two, flat lustre of the cleaned, shiny depth of the natural. It's kinda like those hair adverts...

Rumours are that some are... But of course there have also been cases of fake slabs, and if i recall correctly companies slabbing slabs, i joked that it would come to the latter on RCC and someone stated it had already happened.

No way is that silver, looks to have been chrome plated. Definately looks to be a 'silver' metal other than silver, it's not white enough for silver though. My bet is on chrome.

I've got a sovrin' to crack out sooner or later... i don't want to damage it though.

You and me both Jennings... slabs probably will come in over here eventually, one dealer is already selling all his coins slabbed. The way round it is that us anti-slabbers just don't give them custom and keep moving along to those that sell raw coins. Another way is if we all continually slate slabbed coins instill into the newbies that it's an evil practice and make them approach it as so. Slabbing will only take over completely if we resign to it.

Ah, i get it now ...but i cant really see any kind of greenish on my farthings... Not that you'd want to see green on your farthings anyhow...

It depends entirely upon the tone, the way the light is reflected off of them, also how wide you interpet the green colour spectrum (totally individual) would you shove and olive/mustard colour in yellow or in green? (Females would generally just invent a new term for it like oh for the sake of explanation; mauve). When we are saying green here we do not mean plain green that say a child's toy would be made out of, if you're looking for leaf green forget it. If we want to get all female about it we could call it a slightly lighter shade of darker olive grey with a hint of puce and a sprinkling of mauve. Which would be an interesting colour that i'd file under the blanket term of say brown. But for the purposes of simplification just call it 'green'

Because they'll spend more time making coins that makes them a profit than those that they are actually there to make.

I know what he means, hard to describe though. Like brass has a greenish colour to it.

Don't give them idea please. I think that would be a disaster. Firstly the Royal Mint should mint coins and should not make any extra profits from doing so, they should be able to fund buying in the raw materials, upkeeping the machinery, paying the staff and minting the next year's issues etc. Ideally they should not be a profit making organisation. Secondly i strongly disagree thatthey should make repros of any kind cos newbies get fooled by unscupulous sellers on Ebay who sell them as real, even worse it would be if it had got a certificate of authenticy with it (i.e it's a geniune certified Royal Mint repro). No i don't think they should mint them. It's bad enough we have to put up with all this bullion and commemorative trash they release every year... does anyone really need a silver version of a 1994 £1 coin?

I totally agree and alot of those are unnecessary too.

How many other people think that? I bet it's lots... so everyone saves them... they stay common and they don't go up in value very much... How many people save the decimal halfpennys on the other hand?

do we really need anymore 50p commemoratives?

Not with you. How could the oppositon benefit? (unless they get theirs printed here too!) That's what i meant... they might move to cheaper printers.

i second that notion.

That and the opposition might benefit!

Subsidery to me suggests they might mean the smaller denomination coins.

Plus i like touching coins. I do have one slabbed coin, i must admit i don't like the slab one bit at all.

They make very nice reproductions of Una and the Lion £5 coins too apparently. Personally i just can't do it, sure they can be attactive and a cheap alternative, but i can't bring myself to substitute a fake for a real piece, i'd rather wait an incredibly long time and possibly never get the real piece rather than get a repro. I don't disagree with repros, it's just it'd always be niggling away at the back of my mind that it's not real and i'd feel it would cheapen my collection. If that made sense?

£200 is alot of money for a piece of copper. (Alright Bronze) i certainly wouldn't pay it. I'm guessing that it's a rarer lettering variant from your average 1915 farthing, but that's all i can conclude. Still not worth like £190 odd quid more than a normal AU 1915.

No.

Totally agree. I don't think overthrowing Saddam was a good thing at all. Sure he was 'bad' but who defines bad? The US defines anything bad that does not agree with their concept of the world. From our perspective he sure didn't fit into the role model leader, but do you not think removing Saddam could potentially be a hell of alot more problematic that having left him in situ? Very naive to think you can move in overthrow one guy, inplace a totally new system in a matter of months and have no trouble. We've got another Ireland situ here now and we're the ones that's getting resentment for it by sticking our noses in where it's clearly not wanted, but if we pull out they'll retaliate on themselves and on us. This situation will not be resolved now for many many years and there'll be alot more deaths. Bush used the September 11th fiasco as an excuse to go in there and get his oil, he's got his oil and people have died because of it. As far as democracy is concerned Iraq is a country that still has a medieval/early modern outlook on life, religion is the centrestone, heretics must be punished. Tribal warfare amongst themselves. How easy will it be to instil democracy onto a country that does not want democracy? (Can you have a top down democracy enforced from a foreign elite?), Iran overthrew their monarchy did they go for democracy when they had the chance? No they went for a Theocracy under an Ayotallah. (sp?). You can't have a sucessful democracy if the people don't want one, if you have no experience of one why would you want one, afterall it just something strange jumped up foreign countries like the UK and US do, no? This is something Bush and Blair have clearly overlooked. Then again is democracy the best system anyhow and why? Who said so? There's far too many preconceptions here. Nice idea in theory but do we in this country even have a real democracy when all said and done, or just Blair doing as he pleases?

Well it was clear on that front that Tony Blair lives in a world where money is not a scare item and marching his own children to their cash machines the police would have no problem getting the right amount. March someone like me to mine and you'd be lucky, also no overdraft account neither, so what's in there is what i have, if it ain't enough for TB then what can the police do about it? Some politicians just don't think. Anyhow he should leave the no nonsense attidude towards social misdemeanours to the Conservative party where it belongs. It's about time Tony Blair stopped trying to be Thatcher. Did M Thatcher ever admit she was wrong? did she persue unpopular policies dispite what a significant majority of the population said? did she have an attitude of never giving up and going ruthlessly on even when it was flogging a dead donkey? Did she have unpragmatic ideals that she'd stick to no matter what even in the evidence that they don't work? Now think about Blair. A politician that has a preconcieved plan of how it should be and a stubborn refusal to make any ammendments or concessions and to believe what they say 100% even when all the evdence to the contrary is placed in front of them is a lousy politician who is very bad at their job.

Yeah it certainly lacks something!