Rob

The cut off date for vendors is the 7th Feb. They will be taking lots in at both Wakefield on the 31st and London the following week. It all depends on whether the sale is a collection or general items. Collections can be held for a year or more before coming to market. General sales include lots that the general public leave, and so filling the sale is in the lap of the gods.

Unifaces from the mint are usually made with properly prepared blank reverse dies. i.e there is a rim of sorts, even if no design. Trials from unfinished dies may also be made, but tend to be in lead or similar soft material as the die has not been hardened at this point. A perfectly flat surface on the blank side is much easier to obtain by rubbing down than replicating some vestige of a rim which you would expect as whether uniface or double sided it always has to be struck in a collar to prevent spreading, and so you would expect to see flow into the gap between collar and blank die (which would never be practical to use if a perfect fit without any tolerance).

If that 2015 coin gets slabbed without being rejected as ATed, then by logical extension it has to be genuine and so someone at the mint should get a grip on handling and quality control. Somehow, I don't think that's the problem. Surely a coin that is 13 months old at most, but potentially less than a month old should ring alarm bells when it is presented in such a condition? That really is a case of head in sand.

I actually have sympathy for them having been in the same position myself. Running a business with stock levels creates a problem one way or another. In my case, mark 1 website was basic with everything done manually - adding or removing items or invoicing required me to physically check the stock was there before I could risk sending out the payment request. Postage was calculated once the items were found and packed. If I forgot to remove something it would often be ordered at a later date only for me to pull my hair out looking for it. Its beauty lay in the complete flexibility permitted. To generate the payment link you only had to order something. Mark 2 is a completely different beast. Because the platform allows for integrated stock and invoicing, I now have to get the stock levels right as it will not accept orders where stock level =0. I also have to weigh each item to enable the system to calculate postage. Of necessity those rates have to be simplified. It makes the admin easier, but you lose flexibility. 4 years ago I was asked to get a group of catalogues (~200) together for someone. This I dutifully did and wrote them down on a list. I lost the list and am still finding catalogues that I thought I should have but which went at the time. At one point I had two 1926 shillings listed. These sold within 24 hours of each other, but manual me only removed one of them yet still thought I had done both. Needless to say more orders came in for the listed piece. It isn't as easy as you might think. It is like B&Q having 2 items in stock at location A. This doesn't consider the one left at checkout when the person decided they didn't want it, nor does it allow for the untidy customer who sticks it back in the shelf - somewhere.

Why would you get it slabbed? Unless you have a suspicion that it isn't genuine, authentication is not necessary, and in any case the TPGs don't get it right all of the time. If you really want it authenticated then send it to the Royal Mint. Slabbing may or may not improve its value. I suspect that with 2p pieces not often collected, the fact that it is in the original packing would help. Personally, I wouldn't break it out.

Brilliant! An unrecorded 100? bronze penny. Get in line chaps, first come, first served.

There's too much obsession with catalogue prices. Some are too high, other too low. Even as a hobby, it is not unreasonable to pay over the catalogue price for something you want because the prices seen vary so wildly that only one will ever be on the button and even that is not guaranteed. Ultimately it boils down to whether you are willing to pay what is asked. Whether you collect as a hobby or as an obsession, you always make the same decision based on how much you want something and whether it is affordable. Those who have done their homework will have a feel for prices, the remainder wander blindly, many convinced they are being ripped off at anything above the lowest prices in the reference catalogues. The stingiest working on the principle of fair (for which read lowest catalogue) price or more never knowingly (or willingly) paid.

Colour looks a bit off and the image is not taken with the camera perpendicular to the coin. Crop out the excess surrounding bits and then it will be possible to give a better assessment.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this. Why would anyone want to add to another person's feed other than for mischievous reasons? You aren't replying to a post and it isn't private. Odd.

That looks like it has been polished

PM sent

I've just had a conversation with secret santa that appears in my feed. This was not received as a message, but something else. In fact it doesn't appear in my messages at all even though it was intended as a private communication. How was it sent? Edited to say that it appears as a conversation when added to your feed. You can access a member via the online user list, then at the top of the activity is a box to add to someone's feed. This is not the same as a PM which should be accessed via the message button above this. I think this is why some things appear to be in the public domain and others not.

For what it's worth, here is my 1918I sovereign. There is no blob after the 8, the streamer looks to be slightly different and the depression running along the dragon's neck looks clearer on mine. The shaft on the left side of the ground is thicker on yours too.

I think both fall a bit short of the grades quoted, though not by too much. The reverse of the second is better than the obverse.

Strange contact details. cmci.org.uk suggests a government or semi-official body doesn't it? Why this as the contact details when the vendor's name is Three Counties Coins Ltd. Surely an email address closer to the company name would be expected. 518 Hamilton House is a large tower block split into offices, so suggests a permanent presence. Limited company suggests respectability. CMCI searches bring up Culture, Media & Creative Industries, but there is no 'org' with this name. Further digging has come up with the following: Three Counties Coins Ltd was founded on 03 Sep 2013 and has its registered office in Herts. The organisation's status is listed as "Proposal to Strike Off" and it currently has one director. The company's first director was Mrs Vicky Ilsley. Three Counties Coins Ltd does not have any subsidiaries. The first set of accounts must be made up within 18 months of incorporation and filed within 9 months. They are 6 months overdue (for which reason is likely to be the proposal to strike off). The name Ilsley is one that older members will remember as Dolphin Coins, which may give a clue as the email address is dolphin@cmci.org.uk, though the person listed as heading the company is John Lardner when there was a change in director in July 2014. There was also a change of address from Burnley to Hemel, which may have been related to incorporation as a search for this company also gives Whalley Swarbrick Ltd in Preston (they are auditors). In July they also filed a SAIL address with Companies House, so the director records are held off the registered address, which incidentally doesn't match the one given on eBay. I will not be looking to buy from this vendor.

I think the only reason for rejection should be questionable authenticity or tooled/graffiti as these are not the real deal, and physically modified respectively. People collect coins in all conditions. If the TPGs would grade them for wear (which is the real meaning of the number), then any attribution of cleaning etc could be added to the number

Surely this is just die wear/fill? There are many examples of weakness in varying degrees for this reason.

I always find the rejection of less than mint state coins for surface marks a little odd. Why is wear acceptable but not contact marks, as this is surely just another result arising from circulation? This is frequently contradicted by TPGs grading coins with bagmarks. Just as these are part of the normal minting process, so are contact marks from circulation part of normal useage.

Oh dear, that looks like a nasty surprise in the making.

It appears you want everything for nothing. All you have to do is phone the various auction houses up and ask what their commission rates are for selling. Some will charge more than others, whilst if a coin is valuable enough it might be sold at zero commission. Depending on how much you want for it (reserve price) may determine the commission level. If you already know the prices that these have gone for at a particular grade, then presumably you have a figure in mind. If you want to sell through a middle-man whether it be a dealer or auction then you must expect to receive less than the buyer will pay. In the case of auction results, the buyer will pay his premium, whilst the vendor will receive hammer less any selling commission. Everybody has to make a living, a fact which eludes many would be sellers. Heresay about commission levels is as useful as a chocolate teapot. A quoted number is far more useful. Or you can take pot luck on eBay.

Since last night the forum has consistently had at least 150 viewers, with over 300 at one point and currently standing at about 200. Presumably data mining, spammers checking for weakness or what? I guess that if the former it is not necessarily malicious, but serves to remind posters to keep their wits about them. If they are searching for links to spam, I will happily supply that of the Indian idiot who is still persisting 9 months on with his daily email. His current contact details are Chintan Tank cebra_99299@ymail.com and the price is still £2m.

I was in Yeovil today to see a roof repaired on a property I own. (Mini tornado picked it up on New Year's Eve and didn't put it back where it found it) Yeovil is clearly the centre of the universe.

Yes, I'm aware that it is thought to represent the total tonnage at that point, but there ought to be a reason for the second identical figure. It's difficult to see a reason for saying the same thing twice.

I suppose they could in part, in theory, As the output of H & W was only 32 & 74 tons respectively for 1860 and H's only totalled 41 tons including 1861 coins, this implies the only possible Heaton coin is the penny with 40/40. Watts could have possibly numbered things, but as Dyer points out, this would fail based on a total tonnage of 1720 up to 1863. It is therefore reasonable to assume that all the numbered coins are from the RM. Thinking out loud, the repeated use of the same number at the beginning might relate to production milestones such as an internal job requiring 40 tons as opposed to the full commission, or testing dies/blanks? It is also possible that the inconsistency seen for 1860-1 compared to latter figures was a mistake by someone at the mint! It is not easy to see why there would be 2 identical numbers unless for the above reason. Anyway, it's all speculation in the absence of evidence.

Graham Dyer discounted the output from Watt and Heatons as they only struck up to 1863. Only by considering the RM output in isolation do the figures work. If the numbers are inscribed on a coin taken at random by any one of several people on different days, then it wold be entirely down to chance where in the field the numbers are placed. It wasn't expensive compared to what penny collectors are willing to spend. I wish I hadn't stopped bidding on the two Adams pieces in 2003. Parry did ok there.