Rob

This is going to end in tears. So much for the CSTO. It looks like it's a Kazakhstan short of a full half dozen whatever the official position. Watch the video posted by Karl Bildt. It's clearly the reason for the Kazakh tanks moving north, and they aren't going to support Russia. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1601900702862811136?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

Just picked this up in a lot. Quite a decent effort, but cast and the weight (2.25g)/excessive thickness a bit of a giveaway. Interestingly, it came with a hand-made paper ticket giving the description and on the other side, 'Windsor 15-8-56', so clearly this one has been around for quite a while. Whether bought in Windsor, or from someone called Windsor I'm not sure, but it's the sort of place that you would associate with souvenir shops stocking such items.

Prescient and well worth listening to. https://twitter.com/Nturfknbsn/status/1599865377164779521

The Lauer factory was flattened by the RAF and as far as I'm aware the records lost

Russians who want their snow cleared quickly this winter can just write "no to war" in it.

She was not amused on many occasions. The 12 jubilee head pattern halfcrowns dated 1884 bear testament to that. That bust took 3 years to be acceptable, only to be superseded 6 years later. I don't think she liked it from the beginning, as the 1888 and 1890 pattern crowns were the first incarnation of the eventually adopted veiled head bust.

Peck was definitely not mainstream literature for the masses. At the time the second edition was printed, you were looking at around a fiver for a book. The same price as Seaby's were asking for a gFine Elizabeth I milled 3d or an EF Chas.II 2d. Colin Cooke once said to me that many of his customers didn't have reference books, and a good number didn't even have a copy of Spink/Seaby. The reluctance to 'waste' money on useful books is an age old problem. If you rely on CMV or whatever, coverage of varieties is a bit varied, with some pennies and milled coinage listed, but Civil War coins and hammered coins are not. Charles I Oxford halfcrowns for example are listed as from £350 Fine and £975 VF. That's it, one line to cover all varieties for everything. 100 years ago, Morrieson listed 102 varieties of Oxford halfcrowns in his BNJ article and that number is now larger. The same applies for all hammered coinage. Before I refocused the collection in 2008 I had a list of over 2200 halfpenny varieties documented or observed and over 1500 shillings, but that is hardly mainstream interest level. At that level, any discussion rapidly leads to the eyes glazing over and the shutters coming down. I suppose these days it is the internet that has become the equal to the written word and made the information available to a wider audience as it is searchable.

Same applies. Still a recent phenomenon. A fraction of a mm difference in character size or spacing isn't an in your face thing that people who only want an example or two of a type are likely to notice. Variety collection is almost exclusively driven by literature, not from a desire to do the basic research. Nerds in every field have always been the exception to the masses, but until pen is put to paper, their research is shared only by a few interested people that bounce ideas off each other. They are the only people likely to have a big enough database of examples.

Supply and demand. He has one available and none of you need one. It's a niche product. 10 years ago there was virtually no mention or discussion of wide and narrow dates, and I would suggest that demand is determined by the number of specialists rather than the average collector. If the general references used by the masses don't include these as varieties, then people are not aware.

Doesn't look like it. 8/6 is quite obvious.

Although there are examples of clashed dies in all reigns for milled coinage, the numbers really seem to increase in the Victorian era (possibly due to a large increase in production). But somewhat intriguingly, they drop off significantly in the 1880s. In fact, I can't remember seeing more than the occasional piece from the last 120 years or more. I wonder if this is connected to the refurbishment of the mint in 1882? At that point, the old Soho equipment installed in 1815 was replaced. So 30 years down the line, perhaps the mechanism for introducing the blank became temperamental? It would be useful to know when Boulton stopped making coin presses, as this may have had implications for repairs and replacement parts. Quality example whatever.

thanks

The reverse has a flaw through the 1st N

The different place is noted in section 4 of Gouby's Specialist edition, the 3rd line of die pairs D+d. Whilst this isn't V over inverted A, I'd say the signature is over 50% off the base of the bust as opposed to less than 50% which I would classify as on the bust - hence the question. But I guess this could just be die wear/fill? Otherwise there doesn't look to be anything out the ordinary.

Losing the will to live here. For 1860, J & JA are given as sign on cape and JB as sign on cape away from edge. It's obviously not very important as it isn't illustrated, but please could someone give me a clue what the difference looks like given all are supposedly the same obverse D. Next question - what is special about the four repairs to Jd, Je, Jh and Jk which caused Gouby to list them? These are just a few examples amongst many of legend repairs, so what sets them apart? e.g. this thing here has repairs to CIDBRITRF&D, with the first T of BRITT partially filled, and the number of F10s produced dictates there will be many examples of repairs, to the extent that it's questionable whether they are worth recording as varieties for the general collector unless doing an in-depth die study. Ta.

More like a children's book of anatomy required, with a particularly large section on asses and elbows.

Smiles all round chez Rob today Even bigger than the one when news of Stremousov's 'car accident' came through 2 days ago. Hopefully get an update in the not too distant future regarding the status of her home (or what's left of it). A potentially big problem is that Chornobaivka was a main base for Russians and according to its own wiki page about the war was that Ukraine hit it on 39 occasions before they abandoned it a fortnight ago, so praying there weren't too many stray rounds. Hopefully there will also be a resumption in communication once Kherson is safe(r) so she will be able to check up on Mum too. She lives just off the other end of the airport.

10 days old, but another gem from Darth Putin Day 250 of my 3 day war. My army advances backwards and I'm losing all my warships in a land war to a country that doesn't have a navy while my air force fires at Europe's largest country and misses it, hitting one next door. I remain a master strategist.

Putin wanted to know if Zelensky was still alive... Zelensky himself decided to send Putin a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game. Putin opened the letter which appeared to contain a single line of a coded message. 370HSSV-0773H Putin was baffled, so he emailed it to Lukashenko, and his aides had no idea either, so they sent it to the KGB. No one could solve it at the KGB, so it went to the CIA, then to NSA. With no clue as to the meaning. The FBI finally asked the Australian Military for help. Within a few seconds they called back with this message: “Tell that Neanderthal Putin he’s holding the message upside down." .

Just went to the post office to send out an order and used stamps as close to the value as I could get. Special delivery is £6.85, so I used 7x1st and paid the extra 20p. This has added at least 1/2 a minute to the processing time because the guy has to count them, get the calculator and then work out how much more is due. Total waste of time. Given I have hundreds of stamps here, at least I can use them up in fairly short order as it's also 10x2nd for a special delivery and only 5p short. But it still takes the guy behind the counter the same time to process it, meaning I am going to waste approximately 13 minutes of his and my time in the coming days.

Has anybody got a spare copy of the hardback version available? Please PM if so. Ta.

It'll probably be Murdoch 213 which was given as ex Capt. Parr, Marshall, Addington and Montagu. It's not the Duveen coin (P1111), ex Wertheimer and Farouk that's listed by Peck, as that was VF and a bit worn from the images. Picture of the reverse would have helped, but there's only 3 types likely based on Peck - KP14, KP15 & R56

There is a trade-off here. Saves heating the room.

Just spent the week walking in the Lakes. To put things into context, the owner of the B&B we stayed said he is going to shut up shop shortly for the winter and not reopen until March so that he doesn't have to heat the house. His heating bill is increasing 4-fold to £22K on a turnover of 60K, so it may be cost effective for them to move into rented accommodation for the winter months. In contrast, my supplier has just realised that we spend less than average on energy and reduced the monthly payments. We have always turned off the lights when not required, done full washing loads, used the clothes line rather than the dryer wherever possible, only heated the rooms we use, turned off things rather than leaving on standby etc. Judging by the claims of some people, I suspect there hasn't been a lot of attention to consumption in the past.

Not as bad as the programmes that spend the first minute or two after every advert break summarising what happened 10 minutes previously. Useful content of an hour long programme? 25-30 minutes, if you're lucky.