Rob

Tyrant II for comparison

No it's not. The Slaney coin was bought by Geoff Cope and is vastly superior to this one. This is the ex Norweb coin which Roddy had for a while before selling it in one of the NY sales. This is Bergne no.7 (NC 1855) which was described as: No. 7. Abraham Edmonds (bought by him casually), Thomas Dimsdale. Bought at his sale in 1824, for 110, by Thomas Thomas. do. 1844, for 48, by The late James Dodsley Cuff. (In a very good state ; but there is scratched on the field of the obverse, C. W., Oct. 12, 1799.") You can see traces of where the graffiti was subsequently polished out. However, in my view and that of others, it has also been plugged, which goes a long way to explaining how a dealer could pick it up so cheaply relative to other offerings around the end of the 18th century. If you look at II in the obverse legend, the facing uprights of the two characters are defective at the top giving a rounded profile to the vertical line. Compare that with the Slaney, Glenister or any other coin and these have perfectly formed Is. The Slaney coin wasn't known to Bergne, so doesn't appear on his list. CW may well be the initials of the jeweller or silversmith on the Strand that Edmonds acquired the coin from. Graffiti on a holed coin is not much more of an impediment to value, so this may be the coin that someone was touting around the 1740s but struggled to sell. Can't find the relevant document at the moment to give a name. Discuss.

Yes, as I have first hand experience. The Henry VII half angel is a Montagu plate coin. I was hoping it might slip under the radar when it came up a few years ago, as it is only in an AU slab. It was only me and him, but I gave up when it went multiples of book. A bit p'd off though as I thought beforehand there was a realistic chance of getting it. It's a pity he doesn't collect MS65s or better only.

Thoughts please chaps. Is not a cast as it rings clearly. The legend looks to be the correct size and font. The diameter of the design is correct for a penny Is made of copper or bronze. Weighs 9.38g and the flan is about 1.5mm thick, but obviously suffers from a little corrosion. The irregularity of the edge and diameter would tend to eliminate it being struck out of collar because the blank would be round when punched out from the rolled sheet. The die axis is correct

The wife and I had this discussion a couple of years ago when China started playing hardball in Hong Kong and decided if there was a forced mass exodus we would put someone up. The same would apply today, but currently have a problem in that 2 offspring are temporarily living here, so no free room at present. Personal privacy doesn't really come into it. They would want to move to a more stable environment asap where there was room to swing a cat in any case, so it wouldn't likely last more than a few months. When the shit really hits the fan, there's a moral obligation to do whatever you can to help.

I'm not convinced about that as there is too much excess metal beyond the teeth to account for just the rim.

and the reverse

Had a game of Ticket to Ride tonight with a twist. In the spirit of Russian isolation, the two long routes with Russian destinations were removed and to discourage you from doing shorter routes through or within the country, you had to pay a surcharge of 2 extra cards to use any one section within Russian borders or with a Russian terminus. Remarkably it worked ok, though western Europe was a tad congested with 4 players.

Maybe the office dealing with the import or the experience of the staff, or maybe the customs code was correct. The local one to here is near Derby by East Midlands airport, but Stanstead has an office too. It must be a function of staff turnover as well. With the vast majority of items chargeable at 20%, coins over 100 years old are something of an anomaly and not the first thing to be taught in training. Ironically, FEDEX got it wrong for the first time in 10 years on the last import, and UPS got the last one right - for the first time ever too.

5% import VAT plus processing charge? FEDEX in my experience get it right most of the time and UPS wrong most of the time. Most of my imports use Fedex by request for the aforementioned reason.

I changed Novichok to Eau de Polonium before I posted. Either way, the important thing is to eliminate him somehow.

It's been speculated on and with hindsight, bleedin' obvious for years. All dictators operate the same basic way. First thing is to grant themselves the position of leader in effective perpetuity. The fact he limited his period in office to 2036 is an irrelevance and totally arbitrary. Previously he had the inconvenience of two terms max. Copper misread my previous reply. We desperately need a bus to run him over, or his butler to give him some Eau de Polonium.

Why does the proverbial bus fail to turn up when you need it?

Depends on whether the seller wants the item to be insured. If you want £x of cover, then you need to declare this value on the customs label too.

Official cupro-nickel and silver crowns are both nominally 28.2g, so that doesn't mean much. Only something on a thinner flan or made in tin to the correct dimensions would be underweight. The missing elements are far more persuasive for it being a modern replica. Better still, search Chinese sites for more examples.

I'd say it was damage to the die in the absence of a different font 3. Is it any different to a filled numeral such as the internal angle of a 2 where it is clearly due to the loss of a tiny fragment

It's been mounted previously. Ironically, if the ring had been left on it might just have been worth $12.50 to someone, as it then had a purpose. Now it's just a piece of highly polished scrap of use to neither collectors nor jewellery afficionados.

Not usually, but maybe I guess. Normally it's for illustrative purposes in a catalogue or an article, and yes, you can see the wax in the pictures. For an example of this, Nicholas(?) posted a Chas.1 halfcrown with a superb provenance going back nearly 200 years where you can see the wax on the image in Hamilton-Smith's 1919 sale. I can't remember which thread, but it's probably Coin acquisition etc. However, museums also took a wax impression on occasion, if they wanted a record of the dies. e.g. My Edward the Elder penny is unique, so when Lockett bought it at the Vatican Hoard sale, the BM took an impression which left a tiny blob of wax.

Ah. Excellent acquisition. That's a box I still need to tick, so when you get fed up and sell things off again - yes please.

Rob (Predecimal Forum). It might help to send a few more people here.

Yes. I bought it as I needed an example of a cud in the collection and didn't have one. Ticks a box.

I've only this which serves as an example of a cud. Nothing special.

1824 bare head halfcrown obverse die struck in Barton's Metal. With flaws out from the centre in several directions, this die was unlikely to have lasted much longer

VF is too low - look at the shield detail. Having said that, the quality of the dies is crap as they look to be a bit long in the tooth. I'd go somewhere between the two grades.

It looks too small to be double struck, so Stuart's suggestion is more likely.