Rob

Do it systematically, i.e. start at the beginning, otherwise you will be revisiting old territory. Sod here can guarantee it will be Zambia or Zimbabwe

Shares the same address as Lukazs in the post above. Entirely coincidental of course.

A date would help. The picture is too small. 83, 86 or 88? All you have to do is plough through Krause until you find a suitable match. It's a bit tedious, that's all.

It's alright for some people. Liiving in East Anglia you must be spoilt for choice for both venue, and also what you find. All you will find with a metal detector around here is industrial detritus from the past 250 years.

I'd like the top one please.

This is a pleasant change I'm still looking for a decent AGR, SOLIDV and a bronze with the nearly complete mint signature CAMVL/ODVNO. I do have a winged victory unit.

You can still ask to return it. If you don't then nothing will happen.

It is unlikely to increase its value because it is not an error as indicated by Nick, but that doesn't mean you won't be able to find someone on eBay with more money than sense who will be willing to pay over the odds.

Ask for your money back. Any dealer worth their salt will offer a no-quibble returns. You can say 7 days, but if it is fundamentally mis-described then that period goes out the window. If a coin is a forgery, then you have to unpick the traded history of the coin until eventually someone is left holding it.

It is a medal. Quite legitimate, but I don't have a copy of MI to give you a reference

Passed down coins that allegedly came from Grandad, that he found with a metal detector when looking down the back of the sofa, that revealed a wonderful valuable rarity that you wouldn't find in a field even if you spent a lifetime detecting, that just happen to be sold in a market that specialises in dodgy items, that is guaranteed to raise a fraction of the value of a genuine piece, that raises many times the value of the copy on offer, that has probably been worked on to disguise the fact it is a copy, that is offered by a seller with no interest in or past sales of coins, that relies on a person with enough optimism to hope they will pick up something genuine at bargain basement prices................ the latter never happens. This is standard ebay fayre. Still, at least the seller is happy getting rid of things that would otherwise be impossible to sell. And he has been smart in putting them together as a bulk lot to save repeating the exercise. You would have been better off buying a genuine coin from a dealer that would have some resale value in the future. Virtually nobody will want an example of a museum copy.

Same here. Treat yourself to a pint.

Just a glance says there are dodgy ones. Multiple William I bonnet types, St. Peter Sword types, Caesar's elephant, eight Edward I groats at 5 or 6K a pop! Yeh, right. The penny size thing having a cross with pellets in the angles has two with identical offset strikes. I'd hazard a guess and say they are mostly copies as a minimum quantity, with possibly all once you have them in hand. £30 - you've been done, but with about £100K retail for that pile if genuine, you will know that anyway. One genuine example will be ok, but don't hold out too much hope.

The early eighties saw a 30% drop in prices which basically unwound some of the large increases of the 70s that was due to the inflation seen in that decade. Prices then slowly increased from the reset baseline. The curve steepened around the millennium or soon after, then steepened again following the financial meltdown in 2007/8. QE has ensured that the supply of money is effectively unrestricted, with a lot of that finding its way into alternative investments for the collector, or easy credit for the spendthrift consumer. Should be a ready supply of used upper end motors in the not too distant future for anyone looking to pick and choose a restoration/old car collection hobby.

I reckon the WRL signifies Worth Remarkably Little. Mind you, given it's a Henry VIII, that mark could be contemporary

Pictures are too dark to be much use, but it looks like IOAN CASI and the date is 1661 in which case it is probably Johann Casimir of Thorn in Poland. I can't match anything, but there again I can't see much in the picture. Whether it is real or not I can't say. Size?

It appears he is a collector who loves his coins. That's good. I can supply him a huge number of coins up to extra fine. Saves throwing them in the scrap pile. Thinking out loud, I wonder how big a part the references only giving a price down to fine influences the uneducated masses' grading. As this is usually the lowest grade indicated, it is a not unreasonable assumption on their part to assume this is where the grading scale starts. Just a thought.

Thanks Mike.

Details with the catalogue, but yes, same account. £15 all in.

Thanks Mike, I'll get it in the post this pm.

VF/VF+ depends on which bit you are looking at. Hair is quite reasonable, but it looks like wear on the eyebrow. Left side of the shield is better than the right. Nobody is going to argue the toss over a + sign - unless you are the seller

I'd give it VF - obvious flat bits to both sides, so I can't go higher.

That's the rub. You can't be all things to all men. Sit in the middle and you p' off both ends of the spectrum. There might be a workaround if you could tag the basic item (as a search option) and then fill the varieties as fully as possible. Specialists are never happy because they are always on the lookout for unrecorded material. The merely recorded therefore becomes run of the mill. Miss out what to them is a glaring variety and the work will always be suspect.

Spink and Krause is only a small part of the reference problem. For a general collector this is probably all they need, but by deliberately listing all Freeman varieties you have forced the need to incorporate the other references too, so to be useful these must be searchable and sorted by names. Very few specialists use Spink and Krause other than as a tool to remind them of the current going rate for the common variety. They have their own database of pieces that have come to market and prices realised. So you have two distinct camps. The danger from your perspective is to be too complicated for the generalist, and incomplete for the specialist. As we all know, any reference is outdated the moment it goes to print. The Fiji example shows you can't have a one size fits all template. Each country to its own. A monarch may or may not be appropriate. What to do with double obverses and reverses? If a Taylor restrike was struck between 1862 and 1885, yet has the effigy of George III, what do you call it? The date is certainly wrong. George V pieces dated 1936 were mostly struck after his death and therefore technically Edward VIII. Again? You will clearly have to shadow a previously adopted format/list, but suspect you will end up with a compromise. You will also have to proof read the information. All that is written is not true. The Weyl pattern article was researched and written because the coin I had purchased was roughly x3 too heavy for aluminium as described. Yes, the aluminium ones existed, but subsequently it became apparent that a whole raft of other ones were out there. The P2114 (F839) Moore pattern penny described by Peck as struck in antimony, is not. Freeman's Coin News article show that he analysed the coin and found it to be two parts tin to one part lead, though failed to change the book text for whatever reason, which means that even now it is listed as antimony. I analysed my own P2114 and can confirm the tin/lead content, though the ratio looks to be considerably higher than 2:1 given the very weak lead peak at 2.3keV (the other lead peaks are over 10keV and left off the graph), but as this wasn't run against a standard I cannot give a definitive figure. In fact, it is difficult to know how Peck was sure this coin was struck in antimony as analyses for tin and antimony tend to give remarkably similar results with the same patterns seen, separated by only 100eV. The odd coin purporting to be in Cu-Ni should not be magnetic .These are not the only examples. Lead-Antimony comparison P2114.docx

Has anyone got an 1835 1/3 farthing in perfect condition because this is only EF? It looks distinctly like there is an underlying 4 as evidenced by the upturned serif on the topright of the 5, the vertical dropping down from this point and the angle of the 4 joining the end of the 5's tail to the nearest angle. There is a small pointed bit protruding from the loop of the 5 at 3 o'clock although you have to look from the side to see this.