Rob

Bet you they try to keep the hoard intact. It's bound to be considered treasure, so it may be that there will be no new material available. If they can keep 52000 Romans together, despite the condition, then the likelihood of them dispersing this lot is remote. William I PAXS pennies from the Beaworth hoard which changed the type overnight from rarest to commonest. Probably accounts for 95% of all known coins and as such the hoard list is a good proxy for absolute rarity of all dies. The Northumbrian Viking hoard at Cuerdale was later still in 1840. There will almost certainly be other examples

I don't mind banter, it's just that people brought up in the internet age have a different working mindset to those who had no option but to read books. On more than one occasion the reply to my question on this forum has been to use Google. It doesn't come as second nature. My kids read some books, and I'm sure others read them too, yourself included. I don't believe you can do without them. With a book on the shelf the information is always to hand whereas with the internet the search for information comes down to rankings. i.e. you may or may not find the article of interest 6 months down the line. It may have been removed, it may have been superseded, it is not permanent. I very much doubt there is a book on emoticons. I find the internet as big a minefield as eBay hence my reluctance to use it extensively. Many things that have been peer reviewed are subscription based which limits the amount of useful content. For every decent article, you then have the free for all that is Wikipedia, which for all its help has much content akin to a Swiss cheese. A couple of years ago I looked up three coin related definitions and found that two of them were way off, in fact one was the complete opposite of reality. Only the blissfully ignorant can afford to rely on Wikipedia, yet it is quoted on many occasions. Yesterday I happened to look at the definition of halfcrown to see what was written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_crown_%28British_coin%29 This also scores highly on the inaccuracy front. In a little over 4 lines of description there are 4 clear mistakes. The box of 'facts' on the right hand side is full of omissions/mistakes too. Why bother getting people to write these things if there is nobody to check it and put it right. This is how misinformation is spread, and the complete freedom to publish anything and everything without any checks is why I have a problem with the internet culture. We all get things wrong, and as individuals on this forum we have the ability to rectify mistakes, but in the wider world this is rarely going to happen because nobody is beholden to anyone - see the thread on contacting eBay sellers to try and correct them for example. It's their listing, so they are right and everyone else is wrong. End of.

You're as bad as my kids. If in doubt, their first recourse is to Google too. You are also using a completely new language Having followed your advice I now know what it is, however, I can only conclude the internet is full of garbage. Why so many images of complete banality?

facepalm?? And if we get this, an index to help the fossils please.

If they are washers then you should only expect prices around melt unless obviously worth something as a rarity and only a handful of dealers would want it. Trust me when I say the world is full of coins in this condition, which by extension means they are difficult to shift as a collectable. I am offered kilos of this type of material every month. Much goes in the pot.

When I've listed 1913 varieties (including all 4) in the past nobody gave a damn with no bids even starting at a quid. Now, assuming they aren't in decent grade I just throw them into bulk lots or the pot for melting.

Any foreign shipments get hammered now since they set the insurance limit at £250. Take out separate cover?

This is on a par with the Indian gentleman, who incidently is still sending his daily email.

If it had been Zimbabwean dollars it would have made sense (and a bargain to boot), but I'm struggling to think of what nationality pound they are referring to.

Has it been cleaned? The light bouncing off the detail looks a bit reflective for my liking. If it has been cleaned then it could well have left a residue that has picked up the fingerprint.

Graham Dyer wrote a number of articles in the BNJ during the 1980s and 90s.

Not so easy to mix and match styles as I understand. I agree a list is adequate, but the tail mustn't wag the dog. Returns from coins far outweigh those from catalogues simply on volume. Catalogues are offered pretty much as an at cost service given the amount of work required for something that sells for a quid or two in many cases. I'll never get rich selling catalogues, so I have no inclination to illustrate them all. The reason they had an auction house banner was that it looked better than a blank page. If you click on the logo it will give the same description as I had previously with contents, number of lots, plates etc.

Thanks. I'm glad someone's looked at it. It went live last Tues/Wed. Blame it all on nos. 1 & 4 as they did the donkey work. It is still a complete mystery to me. Need to reimage most of it and ensure that I only add things with a decent pic. We are still waiting for a ring light for the camera. And I'm going to try to have a permanent setup for pictures. A lot of the cheap stuff won't get listed as there's only so much patience in today's buyer and given the rapidity with which you get people clicking on and off sites it may not be productive to have a lot of cheap items without images. If you find any problems, please let me know.

Haven't got a clue about the 3d, but the ESC provenance section has been well and truly cocked up. By the time you get to the bit you are asking about the ESC ref is 3 adrift from the reference given in the main body. The first coin missed in the provenance section (thus creating a mismatch of 1 in the ESC number) is 2840 - florin, 1858 proof not traced. There is an offset of 1 until 1880 when no provenance is given for ESC2898 (854A) which appears in the main text. So a displacement of 2 going forward. This increases to 3 when the provenance includes an 1884/2 florin which doesn't appear in the main body. They have then missed out a chunk of the 1848 patterns. Then I lost the will to live........................................ Anyway, it stays at 3 out for the remainder of the reign. The error is corrected at the beginning of Ed. VII when 3 numbers are missed in the provenance section after the 1901 Maundy set and both parts start with the new ESC 3560. A mess.

Yes I do and no it doesn't mention a RRITANNIA 3d. MS9557 in the March 2011 SNC is an 1885 Maundy Set. It is illustrated, but I would be reluctant to say it was RR given the small picture size. Where is the ESC reference to it being a RRITANNIA? I have a full set for the year here spare if you are looking for them.

From what perspective? Varieties? Mint operations? Mint records? Prices?

I've left neutral in the past. Someone sent me a 'high grade' piece which had the contrast sufficiently reduced to remove the scratches. I left neutral pointing out that it was hopelessly overgraded, but to his credit he did at least give a refund. He just left me a negative with no explanation. What is wrong with people? If you are intent on selling s***e, don't call it what it isn't. You can't polish a turd. If it is crap, say so. And if someone isn't happy, put yourself in their position.

A constant problem for half the time. Then at others I'm told to get it if I can afford it. You have to tread a very thing line on the Brownie point thing.

I don't have any figures for die axis, but suspect this is normal. They weren't RM products, so you would not expect quality control to be such an issue. FWIW my penny is inverted, my halfpenny upright. Is your silver one definitely silver? i.e. have you tested it? The insert is normally white metal (mostly tin), so presume you are misleading yourself. You need a copy of Peck.

To add to the above, a figure of 5-9 implies the dot was put on the die as made. If it is the result of wear, then it would appear with time and the number seen would be lower than this per 1000. The number of dies that had to be used suggests you should see a lot more coins with dots if applied deliberately, after all, why place a dot on one or two dies only out of hundreds. I still think it is the result of wear and tear and not an indicator.

Only seeing a handful is probably about right. If we take the mintage figures given in CCGB as accurate for 1855, then 5.27 million coins struck in that year all with the correct date and a postulated 30-50000 coins struck per die gives a figure of 105-175 dies used with that date. Assume that you get a consistent number of coins from each die pair and the reasonable assumption that the spot is not going to occur in the same place on two dies, this suggests that you should be seeing 5-9 coins per thousand with the feature. OK, a few assumptions here, but a fair back of the fag packet assessment in my view. You could just as easily get one spot as multiple examples.

Or for a more extreme case, the obverse.

There are a few of the "Dots" that do not appear in the legends. Here is a 1855 Penny, with a "dot" on Victoria's forehead! …. and here's one on George III's neck. He really should put a bit of ointment on that……. That's quite clearly a rust spot. If you get a spot of corrosion, it will eat into the surface of the die and when the die is used rust will flake off. This will leave a pit which could be either regular or irregular. e.g. this halfcrown. You can't eliminate rust spots as the cause. It may just be that all of these dies have just a single one.

Sorry, should have also said that you would get only half the number of strikes per ton from YH copper dies, so a single die pair could strike a ton of copper pennies if it made 50000 or so. The other point about them being a deliberate mark is that the randomness of position would suggest otherwise. That they are found near the legend could simply be a reflection of the stresses on the die or flan when they are cut. Metal that hasn't been properly mixed will laminate in all probability. Inclusions cold easily fall from the die. The one thing it is not likely to be IMO is rust, as the mint was working flat out and so there would be very little time for a die to get rusty from lack of use. Rusty dies do exist for this period, but they are few and far between and the rust tends to cover the whole surface. A single dot is more likely to be a piece of metal separated, possibly enhanced by an inclusion in the flan. and if they really wanted to differentiate between dies, then all they had to do was put in the last digit or two with various spacings.

Excellent news. Have one for me too.