Sylvester

I dunno if i have a fave group as such but Iron Maiden comes close. I always had alot of respect for Madonna cos she's done many different things, hmm Michael Jackson. Well i have to hand it to him he does actually seem to be talented, even if i'm not keen on him personality wise. Thriller was always a pretty decent song, but my mother was Michael Jackson mad so i have listened to much of his stuff over the years. She also liked Simply Red, now that was taking it too far... arrrghhhhh save me. I like some of Eminem's stuff too, strange as that might seem. Did someone say eclectic?

ow Eternal Flame! I remember that the first time round. Mind you i preferred Manic Monday. And I like Queen too, my favourite is one of these three; 'Killer Queen', 'It's a Kind of Magic' or 'We are the Champions' Fave songs... hmm? Well... no particular order here... (notice any similarities?) 1) Europe - Final Countdown (1980 something, 1986?) 2) Alice Cooper- Poison (1988) 3) T'Pau - China in Your Hand (1987) 4) Testament - Electric Clown [1992] (but i like The Ballad too) [1989] 5) Madonna - Like a Prayer (i liked that as a kid) [1989] 6) Metallica - Frayed Ends of Sanity [1988?] 7) Depeche Mode - Everything Counts [1982 and 1989] (or Sacred) [1987] 8) Flock of Seagulls - Wishing i had a photograph of you [1983] 9) Adam and the Ants - Stand and Deliver [1983ish] 10) Deep Purple - Black Night [1968?] 11) Clash - Rock the Casbah [1980s] 12) Iron Maiden - The Prisoner [1983] (or Can i Play with Madness?) [1986ish?] 13) Transvision Vamp - Baby i don't care [bet it's 1988/9] 14) Duran Duran - Save Prayer [1986ish] There's so many others i like...

Well for the Early Milled stuff i was ideally looking at F or higher for the lower denominations, and the gold as cheap as i could get it, but if you miss the gold off you've only got 4 coins to get for all of the years... unless you want the copper too? (I have a feeling you might) For the later stuff it varied, for 1818, 1826, 1837 and 1844 ideally VF or as near to, if anything better came up then i would get it, obviously with the gold or crowns i'd drop to F. From 1887 onwards i got stricter, 1887 it was GVF (EF more than anything) or better, 1893 VF or better (EF preferable), 1902 VF or better, 1912 GVF or better, 1927 top grade (except for the crown), 1937 BU, 1953 BU, 1970 BU. Although i expected i would be able to get quite a few of those post 1887 ones in UNC or betterfor the most part, but i was allowing for gold coins and crowns remember. If you had no desire to get the gold or copper then i think a year set from all those years could be managable... (except the first three, 1679, 1688 and 1693). Dunno you could go through the price guide and see the following; Crown, Halfcrown, Shilling, Sixpence; 1697, 1711, 1723SSC, 1739 Roses, 1818, 1826 (cos it's cheaper than the earlier design!). Crown, Halfcrown, Shilling, Sixpence, Groat; 1837, 1844 Crown - 3d; 1887 & 1893 (Won't go further cos you said not 20th century), you could add the copper/bronze if you wished, so it'd be halfpenny & farthings added on to the pre-1826 stuff for the most part, and pennies-farthings for the rest. Buit bear in mind having different heads on the Victorian ones makes them look slightly odd as a set.

Oh i like Rudie can't fail too! (yep i have the same album too), i like Train in Vain too. Two too many too's in there...

Oh and if you really take to the idea, you can go back further like i intended to do... I did plan to get a short set of coins minted in these years, by that i mean smaller gold coins to silver coins... So Guinea - Sixpence for; 1679, 1688, 1693, 1697 or 1700, 1711, 1723, 1739. Sovereign - Sixpence for; 1818, 1826 Sovereign - Groat for; 1837, 1844 £5 - Threepence for; 1887, 1893, 1902 Sovereign - Threepence for; 1912, 1927 (just the silver), 1937, 1953 (obviously not the gold, and no threepence), 1970 (same as 1953). Now i purchased a 1697 sixpence and that was it, the sixpences got me and it was unplanned, so the year sets were dropped and i shifted into sixpences. Give it a try and you'll eventually take to one denomination or other... I went from a shilling collector, to a brass threepence collector, to a florin collector, to a shield reverse sovereign collector... and not one of them worked (well the sovereigns were coming along nicely... if i hadn't bought that sixpence this wouldn't have happened).

does it matter if he's doing Victorian or not? He hasn't been collecting very long, my advice is don't specialise too soon, play the field a bit, buy a bit of what you like regardless of what it is... Just make sure that... a) it's worth the money it's in good condition If so what's to stop you selling it later when you have figured out what you like and don't like from first hand experience? It took me 12 years to actually specialise in anything... I had tried before but they had all failed because i was not ready to specialise into doing a date set of any denomination... it just didn't entertain me as much as buying coins i liked the look of regardless of what they were. When i finally did decide to specialise i traded all my other aquisitions in for my date set. So as far as i'm concerned go for the one you feel you want most regardless of whether it fits in with your current aim or not. You need experience, and you can only get it by playing the numismatic field. If you did fancy putting some kind of set together to give a bit of cohesion to the collection, like i did (but you can't figure out what denomination) why don't you try a year set? I had a near complete 1887 set, and a third of a 1912 set (Titanic year). Perhaps you might like to try getting a year set for every monarch since George III? (Copper-Silver) These are the best years, either because they are the cheapest, or because that's the only year a full set was minted (beaeing in mind i was just getting silver coins when i worked this one out); 1818, 1826, 1834, 1844, 1887, 1893, 1902, 1911 or 1912, 1936, 1937 and 1953. That way you can get one of each denomination and coins from all the modern monarchs and if you take your time at the end of it you'll have a set of coins that you can trade in for any date/denom sets you might take a fancy to in the future.

Well i can't really answer that as such... I'm fall into several groups. So i like classical music, i like rock music, dance music and pop music. I really don't rate rap music or RnB hip hop (but the odd song occasionally catches my ear). Having been brought up with 60s music i like alot of that, dunno but i really took a liking to the Scott Mackenzie song, 'San Fransisco', as well as Deep Purple's 'Black Night', oh and Moody Blue's 'Forever Autumn' Early 90s dance music interests me, i was indifferent to it at the time but it's grown on me since. I really cannot be doing with the stuff in the charts now though. (Well i say that now, but in 10 years time i'll probably take a liking to some of it). In all honesty though i never left the 80s... as it has both the classic style rock music that i like, straight forward singing and guitars (Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper style) with no rapping and of course it was the decade of Synthpop (Depeche Mode, OMD), show me a synthesiser and i'm there! So i guess it comes as no surprise that one of my fave all time songs has to be Europe's - 'The Final Countdown'... (Synthrock!). Followed by the Clash's 'London Calling' and 'Rock the Casbah'. I think i've got some 40s music somewhere... probably around with that Vivaldi, Megadeth, T'Pau and Clash stuff i've misplaced. So all in all i'll listen to pretty much anything, except that song entitled "who let the dogs out", i really really hate that with a passion... i can't think of any other song that comes close, oh except Elvis. Hmm i was never keen on Elvis, some of his songs i can cope with, but most of it well... Put it this way i though the Pet Shop Boys did wonders with, "You Were Always on My Mind". This is where the Elvis fans boo... Oh and what was Daphne and Celeste all about? They ruined Alice Cooper's song, "School's Out". The people that threw the ketchup bottles at them were a good judge!

I voted for the oldest, cos they look nicer.

Hi, i'm Sylvester, and i just collect...

yes, but that is what i am trying to do atm, but there isnt really much to buy at the moment...do you know of any other 'Major' coin sites such as predecimal.com or colincooke.com? read your PM... (If you haven't already) I know one coin dealer i've dealt with for many many years his prices are reasonable and he specialises in high grade coins of the late milled period. It's very rare he sells much below EF. (Only the rarer stuff) and even that is usually BU.

I knew what JMD meant... I know i've reserved the same terminology for one pleb that bangs on the train windows as it pulls into the station.

By mainstream i'm excluding tin, lead, iron, aluminium, platinum, palladium, niobium, zinc, titanium, nordic gold and what ever else you can think of!

it's 16 where we are...

hmm copper?

Silver wins hands down, with gold a very very close second... nothing else comes close, i'd be hard pushed choosing between the rest.

Well i agree here, although i would just want to say that i see no reason why religion cannot help play a role on an individual level for a person, if a person uses religion as a medium say like Buddishm to become at peace with ones self then it is a very good thing for the individual. So perhaps the spiritual is needed for some people, like in situations where someone dies it's often the case than faith in an afterlife of some sort can ease the pain or grieving process. Again it's all on an individual level. I think the key thing with religion is that it is an individual thing not a community thing and thus should not be forced on people. Enforcing beliefs on others is where the root of evil starts. One thing i have always disagreed with on principle is baptism, a prime example of enforcement of a religion upon an individual without them being able to resist it.

Hmm it still lacks something to be a real coin... *cough silver* cough... Call me a precious metal fanatic but no metal is as good as silver for anything. (Except perhaps reacting, resisting and melting, but coin wise that's not really important and in many cases hopefully avoidable)

Newcastle they're just giving the place away... and i bet they are having trouble! Some areas are very rough there. Not a place i'd like to live i can tell you that for nothing!

Are you the one who's further south? If so then nothing surprises me down there, it's much more expensive, but the wages are better... So it probably levels out in reality. But the bright sparks are the ones that are just about comfortably off in the South East and then they move north... you can buy a very big house up in the north for the prices a small one bedroom flat goes for in the SE. And if you move to Bradford you can buy a mansion with much less, or a WHOLE row of houses for less than £120,000. I've seen houses advertised for sale in Bradford go for about £25,000 in some areas. Some areas in Sheffield aren't far behind in the 30 thou area if you are on the run down East side (David Blunkett's local constituency) with the ethnic mino... majorities live.

Actually i believe that GMPTE area fares are about the same, i travelled from Marple (well Romiley, but the fare is the same) to Manchester regular, it was about £2.10 for a GM Rail Ranger (or is it a GM Day Rover now?) It'll have gone up to about £2.60 or so now, but for unlimited travel on all trains in the GM area and on the Metrolink in the Central Zone it's not bad value there.

West Yorkshire fares are cheap. Well the train fares are the bus fares are not so. South Yorkshire Fares are far more expensive. I do believe it's about £1.50 just to go from Sheffield to Meadowhall, that's a 5 minute journey of one stop.

i knew what you meant

I dunno how i stand on this... possibly maybe. I'm a bit apathetical to this. As a polytheist i find it quite easy to accept all religions without exception. (Although i might disagree with the odd one theologically i realise that no-one knows which religion is the one true one, if there is such a thing as a true one (it may be a case of true ones)... so i tolerate all to different degrees) What i don't agree with though is your usual everyday comp or whatever forcing the children into singing hymns and prayers when they are not a religious school. My high school didn't do it, but the juniors made us do this and i wasn't best pleased about it at the time and i'm even less pleased about it now. So what if i don't want to be Christian? Do i not get a choice? (From a philosophical view of course). About the ingraining thing... although i never went to church ever (and have never sat through a church service, except one wedding back in february), how comes my school despite being a regular school doing a pretty C of E type thing, making us read the Bible and what not in lessons and say prayers and understand what it means. I think you'd all agree that's pretty Protestant ingraining going on there. Then why do i theologically now agree with the Catholics? Having studied what both believe in further education i've go against all the ingraining that went on and i still on a purely philosophic view agree with the opposite of what i'd been taught. (I could explain a few of those philosophical arguments if you care to hear them, i soon come out rather pro-Jewish... erm that might take some explaining ) Strange eh?

What riveting stuff about the recent history of bus fares in the Sheffield area! I can feel a new book on the horizon, 'Bus fares and their History', by Sylvester. (Sorry mate, but that was the most trainspotting paragraph on this whole forum!)

Well i haven't got a clue what i want to do yet... I did want to be a teacher but since i've come to the conclusion i really don't like children very much, that and train drivers get paid more... i really can't see myself doing that for a living, hardly any job fulfilment there. So what i'm gonna do now is beyond me at this present moment in time.