Rob

I think the die would have to be polished heavily and essentially have a full recut to change it that much. Not saying it can't be done, but it would require a good hand to put the detail back exactly where it was before.

No they aren't. There is a flaw on the shield at 9pm on the 1677 that isn't present on the 78, and the lines between the crowns and shields are better on the later coin. That's why I said they were struck from different dies earlier in the thread

You should also check the other obvious points of wear such as orb, lion's tail, fleur, paws etc. Coins are not necessarily worn in one place consistently. The one above looks dipped to me.

So nothing abnormal. The flaw just tracks across the surface, just that in this instance it crosses a feature.

Strikes were a bit iffy at the changeover from 0.925 to 0.500 silver. It was probably 1923 when they started producing sharp detail again on a regular basis. During WW1 they ran the minting presses using less force to prolong the life of the die, so from 1915 to 1922 it is fairly unusual to see a fully struck nose.

You can't stop the flow of copies, so just be grateful that it sticks out like a sore thumb as wrong. When they copy a genuine 1st issue 1823 hafcrown, that will be time to worry.

What's the problem? What do you expect from a 3" x 2" screen apart from bad eyesight?

All of them exhibit large differences. I suspect the pricing is largely down to the contributors' pet areas. Anything outside someone's comfort zone is a case of seeing which way the wind is blowing and applying an adjustment to the previous numbers. I would say that applies to all. As far as pricing goes, the changes at the top end are not that fanciful. People are paying big bucks for specific items.

OK, sorry. I was going on what I was told when looking at some other coins of his that went to the BM.

The most likely candidate would be J P Morgan. He went down with the Titanic and his children donated a large number of coins to the BM in 1915. Prior to that you would be looking at Murdoch, Montagu, Bergne, and a few others, but no time to look.

William Forster, Sotheby 28-30 May 1868, English, 390 lots. Webster was a dealer, so no collection.

This is a much revisited topic. I'm not sure why people are so dismissive of Spink's prices. Nobody has a monpoly on accurate numbers. Not all things are overpriced in Spink. The further back in time you go the better they resemble the market. Using ebay listings could be interesting. 50p washers for 100 quid on ebay - not an uncommon occurrence and something guaranteed to skew the data. A 50 pound item going off at 3 in the morning may well sell at 99p - again skewing the data. Auction houses have as much variation as eBay too, with the sale presentation and contents having far more influence than the reference volume prices.

How do guests manage to post without logging in with a username?

Why expect someone to pay vast sums of money for a numberplate when Halfords do them for £15.99?

yes, and genuine

I suspect his idea of a realistic offer will be at odds with the rest of humanity. £10m BIN is just silly.

It's obviously the same coin as it has the same surface marks, but the colour is an improvement. PS. Why does everyone have to be addressed as @ when they already have a username which is sufficient to find them? Damned fashionable trends. Indifferent emoticon required here.

If going down this route then tell them why. It might result in a few extra bids if there is a good cause. Prior to Whitton's sale in 1943 the catalogue reminded bidders that the funds were to pay for his medical treatment, therefore would they please consider bidding an increment higher than they would otherwise do.

I suspect that the G is either a defective punch, or a composite made from C and the downstroke. The profile of the top of your rev. G is very similar to the style of the C seen on the obverse of the last attachment. Alternatively, if the punch is badly worn then you might see a progressive thinning of the letter as this process develops.

Is 'no signature' a significant problem given we know the person concerned from their id and avatar? Surely a link to somewhere could be incorporated into a member's profile rather than cluttering up the post?

Or get them into LCA next time round. The cut off for submissions is 7th Feb. The money would appear by the end of March, which is likely to be a bigger number than that from ebay listings. Realism is the key here.

Maybe the mint didn't have a serviceable G punch in 1677? Any later sixpences with defective Gs on the obverse - suggesting the die was made in these this year? So far we have the odd letter only on dies dated 1677, so maybe it was a punch used in an emergency until they could make a new one? The upstroke of the G looks like a later addition, so G over ? cannot be ruled out. I just find it surprising that the letter could be made from two punches with such reproducibility of displacement of the second.

It is like every other unsubstantiated statistic, it is frequently in error. Bearing in mind the first edition was in 1949 and the previous was 1992, none of the rarity figures could be substantiated using a search of the net to inflate the sample size. You are therefore left with gut feeling as the final arbiter. Probably of more use would be the English Milled Coinage 1662-1972 written by Cope and Rayner in the 1970s which does at least give rarity numbers vs. grade. FYI the 1746 LIMA halfcrown is given S(carce) and R(are) for EF & UNC

Can you find a good G from 1677 onwards? It would help to know when the dies were derived from a master and not just punched into the working die. Was this method employed from 1662 onwards, or introduced later? Gut feeling is later based on the uneven legends seen in the recoinage of 1695-8.

I feared that might not give too much info because the obverses can be used year on year, whilst the reverses need to be worked on if they are to be used with the following year's date. What do 1676 and 1679 reverses look like, and do all reverses for these two years show the same feature?