Rob

I've got a nice tidy bound copy of Cuff (Sotheby 8/6/1854) with prices and names if anyone is interested. This was one of the major collections of the 19th century and the most important offering following the Thomas Thomas sale a decade earlier.

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.

Any references in the footnotes of Peck would be worth revisiting, as would any documentation regarding the sacking of James Roettier in 1696/7 and the appointment of Coker and Bull. One of the footnotes for W3 in Peck by Farquhar "Concerning some Roettiers Dies" NC, 1917, p.126 might help. I have Snelling and Ruding, the latter of which looks particularly helpful with contemporary leads, or at least articles written soon after the event.

I just find the rationale for including things a bit odd. For example, page 4 has a 1652 altered to a 1660 and the mark changed to an anchor by persons unknown. Does it need its own entry when the first line reads there are many forgeries of this series? This really only merits a footnote, or alternatively there should be a list of the known copies, including the modern stuff. Another is new ref 50, described as a prooflike appearance of 49. Is it a proof or not? Any coin whether it is hammered or milled struck from a fresh die can be prooflike, so unless it is struck from a specially prepared flan and dies, surely this is normal? Given the reuse of diestock, it is probably better to do a lot more research before listing traces of stops in the wrong place as errors? There are too many variables with hammered coins to say what is a mistake and what is coincidental giving the appearance of an error. In the case of milled, a coin struck without a collar when it should have been is surely just a mint error of a normal coin? I know this all boils down to individual preference, but the key is consistency. In the case of the latter, there will be examples struck on a spread flan of a majority of ESC numbers, so the inclusion of a few types is misleading.

Look good to me. A Pointed Helmet of Hereford (not the commonest) and a Sovereign Eagles of Winchester (I think - needs a clean). Presumably found close together? The two types followed each other chronologically and look kosher, so I don't thiink there is any reason to be suspicious.

BM usually means British Museum. Maurice Bull (or any other individual) would usually be referenced as Bull (other).

Happy birthday

And somewhat ironically, probably one of the few errors that isn't necessarily a mint error. Spellings mistakes, incorporated material, blocked dies, double striking etc, are all things that can be attributed to an individual's handiwork or are the result of normal mint activity, but a flan that just falls apart is somewhat difficult to assign blame. If the ingots from which the blanks are produced was made elsewhere, it means that someone else was to blame.

A little overgraded, but not by too much. There is some wear to the obverse on the laurel, but there isn't a lot of wear to the reverse, just the dig in the field which hits you in the eye. Good VF is probably more appropriate.

This is a rather extreme case of rotated double strike reading GVLIELMELM TERTIVTIVS and BRBRITANIA•16981698

It's the last couple of years when they effectively stopped selling to the trade that the prices have rocketed.

It ticks the example of a 'double struck coin' box. The minting techniques and errors section is full of oddballs like this, e.g. my avatar. The gold coloured one is in Barton's Metal. As it was only used on a couple of occasions, again it was a case of grabbing it when the opportunity arose.

You haven't. It's just the two things appeared a**e about face for normality. People will pick up on anything around here. Foot in mouth is a common disease around here.

Lamination has been a problen as long as plate has been rolled. Pockets of air can get trapped leading to effects such as this brass 3d. The coin was held together at the periphery only, with the dark areas showing where the trapped air has oxidised the inner surface.

An interesting double strike and the only example I have seen of Briot's milled coinage.

OK, a starter for 10. The 1824 bare head halfcrown obverse die must have been close to disintegration when this was struck. The flaws radiate from the centre in all directions and are noticeably worse than on other 1824s I have seen.

No problem, we all do it. You're the 'go to' bloke Rob. Can you tell me: how rare is the R over O obverse? Never seen one, though Nick found one in a DNW search in 1995. There is a thread somewhere because I asked the question a while ago. It would be interesting to see what this actually is in hand because I have a 1773 with OR over O - i.e. the underlying O was cut too far clockwise and then corrected.

Oops, so he did. That's what happens when you speed read. I saw the 1734 and 3 over 1, so made the words after 1734 'over' given there was one described as 1734/3/I in Nicholson.

It isn't a 4 over 3. They are actually quite rare, more so than say the 1732/1. I can still count the number I have seen on one hand.

Truth is Vicky, there's a lot we don't know. Last week I was shown an 1887 6d with the second reverse that had the last digit a full tick to the right of all the others seen. That had to be put in by hand too as it was slightly misaligned. I think it is a case of take everything you read with a pinch of salt unless you are happy in your own mind it is true.