Rob

No replies to date. Anyone?

I must remember to get myself a Pontefract. I keep putting it off because they come around regularly. Nice coins.

Err. That's a dinner plate and your desk is ginormous

That should ensure your ongoing poverty. How much have you set aside for the H7 testoon, countermarked base silver, E1 crown, Chas.1 £1 and £1/2 and the later Tudor farthings? Good groat there Matteo.

Lighting is a pair of flexible LED lamps with a piece of translucent plastic padding to diffuse the light. The kids have set it up so the control is done from a program called digcamcontrol, with the pictures exported to a program called lightbox. Not sure it is the best thing because sometimes the photo doesn't load. It says can't find a path. Then others it comes up with error 81 whatever that means (can't find the manual), at which point it appears to be trying to video(?) something. The original camera I was using also works intermittently, so it's really a case of trying time and again until I eventually get an image I can process. Sometimes it decides to use the flash and other times not, so I tried increasing the light to fool it into thinking it didn't need to flash - not convinced that is working either. Whatever, I can't get the colours to look good, though it seemed to lose the red tinge when I put the coin on a white background. The Saxon penny I posted used a 2x2 envelope, so even there the colours are out. You can always see the join, so colours are never consistent, which is why I thought black would be good, except black is never black. Very occasionally things work, but I don't know why, which is the frustrating part. Hopefully one of them wil reappear and explain how to use this camera. Hope springs eternal.

I wish I could get images as good as these. I've not managed a single accurate image in the past month - and it's seriously p'ing me off. 500+ coins and I haven't been able to upload a single one with a presentable picture. Even the last acquisition of the week images are the wrong colour. Believe it or not, this is a mellowed version of Non's 3d in terms of colour. At least the black came out black for a change instead of the light grey/brown it usually does. Grrr. Yet another wasted evening. http://

Idly looking at a few images today, it appears that the mint signature is actually C over E. I've only had it 12 years and obviously got carried away with the unrecorded no reverse stops .................. Mental note: must look more carefully. I'm not aware of any other C over E dies, but given the previously documented E over N, E over Y, y over E, B over E and E over B for various types it would be surprising if more overcut signatures did not come to light.

Only listed as a variety for 1697 and 3rd bust. Spink 3499 1st bust.

Much better on a farthing than a penny The canvas is far smaller, and by extension, the quality of work higher. Should be more, not less happy.

1601-2 would have either 1 or 2 as the initial mark. Martlet is second issue, almost exclusively with bust 3C, which this coin is. Legends can be full or abbreviated forms of ANG, FRA & HIB. Spink, like other basic references, can only give a rough guide for the generic type. To tie a coin down more specifically you need the relevant specialist tome. In this case you need a copy of Brown, Comber and Wilkinson, published by Galata. It is likely Paul has them in stock. Your coin is MR-4Hv/MR-b4 or b5 depending on whether the shield is complete or broken respectively in the third quarter where it is weak.

None of the coins in the two sales mentioned were in Stewartby, so he may have had first choice, or bought them privately from Lucas' widow.

Hint. NC 1992.

There is however a spanner to throw into the works. The William II type 1 from Worcester in the Stewartby sale had a speck of wax on it, meaning that it had been illustrated somewhere. If passed down through the family you would not expect to see this, unless there was an outside chance that someone like the BM had taken a cast in the first half of the 20th century as they did when there was a coin for which they did not have a die duplicate.

A Commander Lucas who sold parcels to Spink in the 1970s. Some of them were sold in Spink 1, 11/10/1978 and others at Glens in 1976, but others must have been sold without coming to auction. These were all(?) from the Shillington Hoard (1871) He was likely related to a family of that name known to be living in a manor house close to the Shillington find, and they had been passed down in the preceding 100 years.

HMRC and trying to deal with problems. I have plenty of work. Dysfunctional admin should not be my problem - but it is.

Yes it is as described. I thought Jerry had covered that in his initial post.

Best reference without question is The Hammered Silver Coins Producced at the Tower Mint during the reign of Elizabeth I by Brown, Comber & Wilkinson. You can get copies from Galata (they published it). There are other articles dotted around in the BNJ.

There is only one mint - Tower. The bell dates it to 1582-3

If it is a filled J then it shouldn't be a variety IMO as this arises from die blocking due to normal operation. If it is a properly formed letter I then it would be a variety and is not recorded.

rarity attributions which are in the mind of the seller (usually).

Now that the new version has made its appearance, what do people think of it? For those that haven't seen it yet the format has been changed. It is now sorted by reign rather than denomination and much better illustrated than the last edition. It has also been completely renumbered which means that most people will buy it if they want to be able to reference auction lots. A lot of patterns have been included that weren't in previous editions, but as is probably to be expected, it is a bit of a curate's egg. For all the patterns that have been listed, including off metal strikes, there are a large number that haven't. There is no breakdown to the levels seen in say Davies or Groom, yet it is still deemed worthwhile including a re-entered N for the 1653 halfcrown or an unbarred H in HONI for the 1817 shilling for example. Only the previously noted legend errors where the wrong letter was corrected are listed, and it appears that very few previously unlisted error corrections have been added. A useful addition is the inclusion of recorded die numbers by date for the Victorian silver. A weight of 1.35kg and a thickness of one and three quarter inches makes it a bit heavy/bulky to cart around a coin fair, so assuming it is going to stay at home it might have been preferable to include all the various varieties referenced in multiple volumes which are still missing. I think that although a revision of ESC was long overdue, for the variety collector the other detailed references are just as necessary as they were before.

The only relevant ones are R7 (1 or 2), R6 (3 or 4), R5 (5-10), R4 (11-20), numbers that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Once you get more common than that it is increasingly a case of guesstimation, with some a fair way off the mark. In any case, the original ESC never assigned numbers for R3 and commoner. A bit of research around your chosen field and you will likely have a better feel for rarity than suggested by ESC. Milled coinage of England by Cope and Rayner published in 1972 attempted to assign a rarity for a given grade - far more useful. Although not perfect, it was considerably better than ESC, though more limited in scope.

It is WWP, a fact noted by Davies on p.31. The angle imaged showing the first W, the second one is on the next side of the buckle clockwise, and the P is on the opposite side. The reverse was done by Pistrucci, not Wyon, a fact reinforced by the rather obvious signature.

Important name on the ticket seems to add a point, and also a large collection consigned for auction. Grades are inconsistent because you are using the same tool whether it's a TPG or not, i.e. a fallible human. If you want automated grades, use a robot.

I have a theory on this and it may well be wrong. I think it may be an apprentices test piece. Made oversize as they learn the process of manufacture. Other types of apprentices do similar things but in reverse, furniture makers make half size models to test them. However as a coin is small to begin with it would make sense for the apprentice to make it larger when learning. The double stamping would not have stretched it, if it had Britannia would be double struck with one figure smaller than the other whearas the reverse is clearly rotated by a few degrees. There is more rotation the further away from the centre hence less error at the point where the trident touches the leg. Also both sides would have been effected if double stamping had made it bigger. it is possibly thinner because they somehow used a standard size blank which would have had to have made slightly larger before being stamped. just a theory imo I have a theory on this and it may well be wrong. I think it may be an apprentices test piece. Made oversize as they learn the process of manufacture. Other types of apprentices do similar things but in reverse, furniture makers make half size models to test them. However as a coin is small to begin with it would make sense for the apprentice to make it larger when learning. The double stamping would not have stretched it, if it had Britannia would be double struck with one figure smaller than the other whearas the reverse is clearly rotated by a few degrees. There is more rotation the further away from the centre hence less error at the point where the trident touches the leg. Also both sides would have been effected if double stamping had made it bigger. it is possibly thinner because they somehow used a standard size blank which would have had to have made slightly larger before being stamped. just a theory imo Pete it was listed as 1861 5+G (R18) and no one seemed interested at 99p Presumably, everybody who needed one already had one, or more likely couldn't live with it they bought it. I have no idea on the numbers available, but presume a few are known, guaranteed to be in better grade. I've fallen for that one myself in the past - buying something because it seemed too cheap Not sure what's happening with these replies which seem to be in quadruplicate as I write, but IanB might be onto something. When the designs are first made, it is done on something the size of a dinner plate after which it is reduced. There is nothing to stop a piece of intermediate size being made. Keeping an open mind, it might be kosher.