Rob

I would have my doubts about the Testoon. My main concerns are the stops, which seem too bulky and the obverse has what appears to be a crack. The fact it is not fully formed and effectively filled in makes me suspicious. FWIW, I've only got a grotty pellet in annulet testoon, but the stops are much clearer, and even if worn down would not have the same size footprint. Not looked at the P&M yet. Do that later.

Happy birthday for yesterday.

I guess the best thing would be to contact Coincraft. Joe Bispham is your man, but I don't have any contact details for him. They must have listed it on someone's recommendation, almost certainly Joe's given he wrote the BNJ article in 1985 and much has come to light in the past 30 years.

Ah. See what you mean. Joe's article has obverse 5 with the EDWARD legend, so that ties in, although the bust looks larger on your coin, but I can't see anything for a Durham House reverse with TIMOR. Is the reverse mark definitely a bow? If not it could be a muled mark after the dies had transferred to the Tower/Southwark, wherever they went. Looking at what you can see of the shield garnishing, it looks more like a non Durham House style. Guarantee they will have been used somewhere given the financial constraints of the time.

S2472 with bust as 2466, Edward VI etc on the obverse and INIMICOS rev.

Post mint damage. The options are either done in a vice, or two coins coming together in the coining press leaving the imprint of one on the other

It might be a mistrike. Can't tell whether it is PM or not from the image.

Don't think so. It looks like the colon after Britt points to between teeth and the G of GRA isn't sloping.

Not to be confused with die polishing lines which are raised on the coin (incuse on the die). They are alright.

It happens all the time. I had an order, one of which I had sold and not removed. I told the buyer and he pointed out that I still had something listed he bought 6 months before. Problem was I had 2 similar things which both sold inside a day and after removing one, I thought in my mind that I had removed both. If you don't have a fully automated shop with stock control you are always going to fall foul of this at some point.

Don't think so, but it's difficult to tell. The lighthouse top looks to be the wrong shape and the 'C' has a straight back which would also be wrong. http://www.londoncoins.co.uk/?page=Pastresults&auc=128&searchlot=1456&searchtype=2 Here's a clear example.

Even a scanner is likely to be better than a mobile phone image unless you can hold it steady enough

New dies it is. Not helped by the dotted e!

There are so many varieites that you need to make sure you are comparing the right things. Best recommendation is to do a lot of reading, anywhere and everywhere.

Could be Lion and Lis. That is usually found on Class 13, 14 & 15 though at Durham. A picture of the coin would help.

And I would happily take out such a policy, subject to a solvency test to make sure you can pay out.

I think it almost a given that at least one more 1954 will come to light. If they made a couple hundred, then I can't believe only one got out.

Both look dipped

An incuse die crack is usually called a scratch, unless there was a piece of metal stuck to the die which also left an impression.

The question of not paying over the odds is rather nebulous. On that basis you should never have bought your second coin because the market probably moved perceptibly up in the interim and the books hadn't caught up. Far better to accept that you will overpay for some, but pick up others cheaply, both alongside the coins that cost the 'right amount'. This also requires a defined 'correct price'. If I were you I would buy something if it was within say 20-25% of my mental ballpark figure. You will never get it right 100% of the time, nor will you consistently pay too much. Bargains were to be had at DNW today for example. All collections are a mixture of over and underpaids.

Get stuck in at DNW right now. Bob Lyall's collection is going through as I write.

I think this assumption is the only way you can rationally explain most letter overmarks. It doesn't make sense for a die to be sent from say Exeter to York (in the case of the y over E 1696 2/6d). A far more plausible explanation is that the dies were ready for despatch from the Tower mint when an urgent request came through from a provincial mint for more dies and they recut one sitting on the shelf to fill the order. Transfer of dies between provincial mints only makes sense once operations were being wound down at the end of the recoinage given the scale of the operation and hence demand for dies. The provincial mints closed starting with Norwich and York in April 1698, Chester in June, Exeter in July and finally Bristol in September 1698. The only likely overcut mint letters are therefore like to be B over E for coins dated 1698 being geographically close and which would be conveniently dropped off when the dies were returned to the Tower. The others are quite remote from each other, so as there are no 1698 coins with the overmark, it is quite possible that transfers between provincial mints never took place at all. Even if you assumed that provincial 1698 coins were struck using 1697 dies, the rarity of 1697 overmarks suggests that most were made in 1696 at the height of the recoinage, thus reinforcing the theory that the recutting took place at the Tower.

I'm no metallurgist, but I suspect either die degradation or metal flow rather than a font change I don't think so. On the halfcrowns you get two obverses and two reverses. The obverses are different pointings to bead/spaces, but the reverses have different sized letters associated with the change in style, suggesting a slight change of font.

You see straight and indented bases on the lettering of veiled head silver too, so that suggests a slight change to the font used, or a change of manufacturer/engraver around this time.

When you have that many signed in I think it might be spyware piggy backing on a genuine viewer, as once there was 80-odd viewing, but remarkably only viewing a handful of topics. i.e. whatever the genuine person was looking at then the hanger on was doing the same, or more likely a few hangers on per viewer.