Rob

But they are only responding to the desire of the collector to find ever more esoteric varieties. It's a chicken and egg situation, but mostly chicken. Stop paying grossly inflated sums for minescule differences and this situation will go away. By all means include them as part of a detailed study, but as long as the herd mentality pushes up prices to silly (IMO) levels, then people will appear to satisfy the demand, or increase the price of existing stock to reflect the demand. That's business. The prices asked are determined by collector demand at auction, not dealers closely examining every coin and pushing the slightest difference as a variety - they don't have the time whereas collectors will talk, as on this forum when a new discovery suddenly turns into half a dozen known.

How did you count the edge milling? Used sellotape to ensure it didn't move and then marked off every 10 Sellotape on a coin??? Well, it will never be worth more than bullion. It only touches the high points of the milling to provide friction and it was necessary to prove the point. Just looking at it and pronouncing a verdict to a seller is not good enough without providing some evidence. They just think you are trying to pull a fast one. I suppose I could have used a marker on the milling to count off every 10.

Take a punt and say it is a case of copy and paste from the Roland Harris description, the populations having since been extended along with the highest recorded number. This happens a lot. Even going back half a century you find lots with exactly the same description in catalogues even 10 years on. e.g. a bulk lot was bought in the Parsons sale in 1954, and a lot with exactly the same eclectic description was sold when the purchaser in Parsons sold up in the early 1960s. Another glaring example was a Pontefract shilling in a Bonhams sale 10 years which didn't go with an estimate of 1300. As it was clearly a £2-3000 coin, the question was why? It had been plugged, It was then sold in the following sale, described as plugged but not illustrated. The link was possible with the copy and paste identical faulty references used. It then reappeared on eBay as being ex the first Bonhams sale where there was no mention of it being plugged. I advised the top and underbidders whereupon they withdrew.their bids.

How did you count the edge milling? Used sellotape to ensure it didn't move and then marked off every 10

I thought that Lincon and Winchester were quite difficult to find in general ... I considered Durham and Bury St. Edmund more common .... Depends on which issue you are talking about. Not all mints struck all of the time. Durham is quite common in later years where the local bishop was granted powers to strike coins, but quite scarce in the Norman period. Bury St. Edmunds comes and goes throughout a 300 year period. Winchester was the old capital of Wessex and a major centre. A few kings were crowned there, and unsurprisingly a good number of coins struck too. Lincoln is for the most part common, but there are still periods when the output reduced in size, leading to scarce issues and corresponding moneyers. Even London has its rarities This is the big drawback with the standard general references. There are many instances where the general description doesn't reflect the populations of the various issues concerned. Take Cissbury for example. In a collecting sense it is a single issue mint. 39(?) coins known, all bar one of which is a Last Small Cross with a dozen or so in private hands. The price given in Spink for a VF example from the mint is £3K, which reasonably accurately reflects the prices of recent transactions.There is a single Cnut Quatrefoil known which is in the BM, so what price a Quatrefoil should another one appear? Guarantee it will be more than £3K.

Has the reverse die initially been inserted into the press 90 degrees out and then repositioned? i.e. is there any other legend that is displaced by the same angle or is it just this letter and therefore likely to be an engraving error?

That's because it is currently touring the UK and being held hostage by a supporter of Matilda.

I quite like the mint toned pieces with their nice, consistent mid-chocolate tone. I even allowed myself an example.

Yes, I've got a couple of Beirut Victorian gold pieces, 1887 £2 & £5. The most obvious indicator being the off centre die axis, though a deficit of 4 milling lines on the £5 also helps together with missing finer detail. The gold purity is rumoured to be 0.89-0.895, but I haven't had this checked.

There is no 'complete' volume of mints and moneyers. what you have to do is buy the relevant specialist volumes for a particular issue or series and make your own list if you want a full one. It is however, still going to be out of date, though incrementally a little better than the one you made a decade ago, and the one ten years before that. Half of all Saxon/Norman (and for the most part the Plantagenet) coins come from the five main mints of London, York, Lincoln, Winchester and Canterbury. However, there are still rarities withing these mints as a result of fire/plague etc or mint closure and relocation on account of invasion.

The first quarter of the shield has notable differences in the shapes of the angle voids to the St. George's cross. It all looks a bit bulky and clunky to me.

Have a good one.

and the reverse. Look at the loop of the P and the amount of internal space is minimal on yours.

Looks iffy to me. Compared with mine the letters are far too thick even allowing for the high points worn nearly flat.

If you want detailed info then you have to accumulate a large number of papers/books, each covering a short period in time. Books tend to be written about a reign or a type, so a suitable example of one publication for the period you are interested in would be D F Allen's book on the Tealby coinage published in 1951. Won't come cheap though. If you look through the intro sections in Spink it lists the useful references for that particular period. The lists aren't exhaustive, but are a good start.

Could the 8 be over a misplaced 1? i.e. started the date too far to the right. I would have thought it was a bit late for such things as I think the mint were only adding the last two digits by hand at this point, but it looks a bit regular for a flaw and it is difficult to see how an 8 punch could give this appearance.

You have punched letters or numbers into the die. This produces an inherent weakness at the junction with untouched metal because you have effectively disrupted the stable lattice structure. This will allow accelerated flaw development or chemical attack along the stress lines. You often see thin line flaws along the bases or tops of punched in characters.

It looks like the 8 might have been punched to high originally, and then re-punched lower, to make it in alignment with the other characters..... Go with that

They are from different dies, so any coincidental agreement between the flaws is just that. The unclear one might be a 6 too given the trace of top loop, but I'm not totally convinced given the lack of LHS for a 6. The initial reaction was an underlying 7, but the angle is very badly aligned if this is the case. Again, not convincing.

This must inevitably play its part. Collectors like lists to tick off. It doesn't make much difference what the source is as long as there is some goal to aim for.

You don't have to collect the varieties. For every nerd there are far more people who just want an example of each date.

The Frome hoard of 52000 Roman was kept intact, though I suspect there will be displays carved out of the total holding. The recent Buckingham find too. Sometimes they are kept in one place, sometimes they are shared around. The only consistent thing is that they are/will be kept away from the public and collectors. A lot of museums don't have anyone to look after the coins, they just fester in a shoebox or three. Blackburn museum is a good case. The Hart bequest in 1945 gave them some really choice and/or rare coins including Montagu's Petition Crown, but the collection languishes. In fact there isn't even a sylloge of it to put down on paper what is present in the collection. The idea that they are kept for the nation is a little disingenuous as there isn't sufficient spare manpower within the various museums to provide an overseer if a member of the public wants to have a look. There isn't even sufficient numbers to answer emails. When I wrote the article on the Weyl patterns, only the BM responded to an enquiry regarding any examples in their possession. Don't expect any answers unless you use Freedon of Information.

Hm. That's quite interesting. It is very open to abuse if anyone can edit the articles though. Might try later if it will let me.

I'm not putting you down for being youthful. No.1 kid is 29, no.4 is 22. ie. the older kid is older than you (?). Both are frighteningly conversant with all things internet, as I get the feeling you are too True. I can't disagree with that. It is just that every time I look at Wiki by chance, I see so many glaring errors that it is misinformation. The average person has considerable faith in what is written in Wikipedia, so it should at least attempt to be right. It would help if the author was contactable, so at least in true eBay style you could plead with him/her to correct it - even if to no avail. Major errors in 3 out of less than 10 coin related pages viewed is not good. .

I think that happens more often than you realise. 'Sell a similar item' requires quite a few changes usually. It is also a good template for something completely different as you then don't have to keep typing in the same general blurb ad nauseum. Changes can be forgotten and the error missed.