Rob

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.

Posted on twitter by someone calling themselves Darth Putin, with the caption met to discuss attack on Crimean bridge.

He was at Birmingham at the weekend and Huddersfield a fortnight earlier, so yes he is.

He hasn't stopped since the 24th Feb. Maybe the bridge strike was a reprisal for the 11 killed in the missile strikes on Zaporizhzhia the day before............or maybe today was just another day demonstrating Russian SOP. The most effective solution remains shipping body bags back to Moscow and St. Petersburg - in industrial quantities. It's the only thing that is going to make the general populace revolt. Hopefully they will deploy the recent conscripts in time for winter, as the system won't provide them with essentials.

Methinks you should have attended

That's only good if it is the full story. 105% might leave them with 15% of the buyers premium, but in the case of Heritage at least you have to get the coins slabbed. Offset that against the 105% and it will reduce. If the slabbing is arranged by Heritage, then I wouldn't be surprised if palms are greased somewhere along the lines. It might turn out to be no better than a sale where the consignor is given or negotiates zero commission, which happens on occasion with the right material.

Is the toning greenish? Someone bought me a box of mainly G5 silver that was was packed in lamb's wool and hadn't been looked at for many years. The result was a beautifully toned selection of coins, all of which had a green tone - presumably from the oils in the wool. Green is not a particularly common colour IMO, so wonder if the same applies.

Latest Heritage sale has a 65 with an opening price of $1K. Silly prices, but if someone is prepared to spend that, it isn't up to the vendor to dampen the market. At the end of the day, it might feel like a night out at the Comedy Store, but does provide a substantial amount of free entertainment - the price of which can't go any lower.

The writing at the top of the envelope says specimens known to us

Hello stranger. CDC is Colin Cooke's initials.

Another popular reference is British Commonwealth Coins by Remick, James, Dowle & Finn if you can find one. 3rd edition was published in 1971. I don't think you will find anything to cover the modern stuff apart from Krause due to the diarrhoeic output of modern commemoratives. You are unlikely to find cheap useful reference books as the specialist volumes are usually out of print and were never produced in great numbers anyway. A few pounds if really fortunate, but frequently tens of pounds or even hundreds.

Enforced dieting due to rationing is a good bet. O/w I was going to say the onset of wholesale indulgence in fast food in the 70s and 80s following an explosion of outlets, as it coincided with a large uptick in general affluence leading to more car use, i.e. less exercise by the general public. An increasingly academic curriculum in schools resulted in less physical activity across all age ranges, and by the end of the 80s, computers and games were becoming mainstream which compounded the inactivity.

This Commonwealth halfpenny has quite a distinctive profile which might lend itself to 3 equal cuts with a curved profile, plus a bit extra, except there is no spur at 12 o'clock on the English side. The mm.1 has 2 short and 2 longer sections with a bigger discrepancy than those above.

Verdigris - environmental damage, no grade assigned

They already do - it comes up R or B and lands on an arbitrary number. Pf. Who would have thought it?

The copper Wiener was a case of this. Slabbed 66 despite a rim nick and a couple spots. My copper example is as struck and vastly superior to that.

The Weyl pattern, lot 249

Not guilty

Bought one lot for stock, but nothing for the collection. I wanted one of 3 Wiener shillings, but I'm not paying £7-15K for one. £3K maybe for a nice one. Equally, not paying £3K for the pattern decimal penny.

Could that possibly be 5/4? My eyes were immediately drawn to the vertical line above the 5 loop and not the spur off the end of the 5 top

I concur

The desire to stay and protect your home is a strong feeling. Additionally it represents in many cases virtually the bulk of the family's assets. If you leave your home, it then costs money to live somewhere else, so you need considerable wealth to draw on given that you are also likely to have lost your main source of income. A case in point is the person I am hosting. She lived in village just outside Kherson a few hundred metres from the end of the airport. This was hit on the opening day because it was a military base and fell to the Russians within a week, but most people stayed and lived in their cellars, keeping quiet so they weren't heard by passing Russian patrols and surfacing only when necessary. Most people assumed they should be relatively safe once the war had passed through, though best not to tempt fate. They lived like that until news of the massacres in Bucha got out at the end of March, at which point they decided they didn't want to hang around and be part of a repeat episode, so looked for somewhere to go - which is where we came into the equation. With no income, displaced and now looking for work in the capital, her husband had to keep the liquid funds for basics, while wife and daughter borrowed the money from a friend for the bus to Romania and two airfares on to the UK. It was only £400 for the pair, but that is an average monthly salary over there, and if you haven't got it to hand, non-functioning basic services makes raising funds 10 times harder. Moving isn't an option for many. Half the people in this country have no savings, so what would they do in similar circumstances? Probably stay put in many cases.

Here you go. Both different dies. My reverse is over ermine as well.