Rob

No catalogues were sent to UK customers, as I understand. It was ncessary to phone up a couple hours before the sale and with 2 hours to go to kick-off, hatch a plan to receive some hi-res images. Full credit to the guy who resolved it by getting the English lots into a pdf, but we weren't able to see them in any useful form until 20 minutes before the sale started. Given the second lot had an estimate of $25-30K and wasn't the only pricey item, you would have thought that they would go to the expense of a decent image.

The 1869 was quite a sharp strike, but I didn't like the quality of image which showed something that I wouldn't have been surprised to find had been cleaned. It was probably just the image processing, but I found it off-putting. I think they were 3250 and 2500(?) hammer. Talking of images, what did people use. The saleroom only had the obverses and the on-line catalogue on Spink's site was crap. In the end they supplied a hi res pdf file an hour before the sale started, but it was touch and go. It also made eliminating potential lots pretty simple. Another gripe is that Spink didn't give out advance notice of the sale to those that receive normal notifications. During the past few day there have been adverts in emails from Spink for share and bond certificates, or a wine evening celebrating China on the 17th - but nothing about coin auctions which I may just have been interested in. I only found out from GC yesterday who stumbled across it by accident on the saleroom. How did everyone else find out? Somebody needs to be shot for an appalling exhibition of coprorate negligence.

I was able to get on all day. In the end I made a post to check if the forum was down, but as you can see was able to do this. What stops working? Access point = login name and password?

I stopped at 2200 on the 1c pattern (1088). It wouldn't have helped that the coin is slabbed as ex-Norweb, when it is not, as this will have increased the appeal to US buyers. The coin is as the provenance in Norweb, but is not that of the Norweb coin.

I'm bored. P1258 Taylor restrike.

You could always buy it and then claim a refund on the grounds it was mis-described. It wasn't struck in 1806, that much is clear. Anyway, 1806 + 207 is 2013, so the maths is still faulty.

Is this another of those 'must have' apple features?

No idea, but suspect not given it is normally a London die and not an Australian one. We are talking about the conversion of unused dies dated 187, with the last digit to be entered as required. The problem was the end of the decade requiring a change in the third digit. Even if the same situation existed in another mint, you are reliant on the workmanship being sufficiently poor to see the remains of the previous number. Your best bet is to get a reasonable number of 1880 S & M sovereigns and put them under an EM. That would expose the filled underlying third digit

No idea. I don't follow them as they aren't rare. Many things arrive at odd numbers following a tranatlantic journey, so it could be. Defective 1 and 0 are characteristics of the Peck type, so means nothing. Minor field imperfections are found on many patterns and proofs, some post mint, some as originally struck.

Herein lies a large part of the problems associated with the TPGs. All of them live in an isolated world where they are the only TPG. Consequently, pop1 is a frequently encountered term meaning they have only slabbed one coin. So what? Others almost certainly will have done so given that it is a P1325, which Peck only rated scarce, and I know of several collectors of Soho material who wouldn't be seen dead putting their coins into plastic, myself included. POP1, finest known is therefore complete and utter b*****ks in the overall scheme of things and should be treated only as marketing hype, which it is. Ignore the plastic and ask yourself if it is a good example of the type in comparison to the others available and is the price fair? NB. I'll give you a clue. It isn't unique. In fact, the point that they have only slabbed one example shows how limited their experience is with many foreign coins. Another bonus is that the seller doesn't ship to the UK. Phew. That saves us Brits wasting our hard earned cash on an overpriced piece of plastic. Doubles all round.

The seller has pointed this out. Maybe they can't read or just don't care. I suspect they will accumulate a large amount of dross over time.

I do a mixture. I will happily accept a cheque, and today paid for the table at the Midland with one. They work fine for many businesses as some business accounts do free cheques where others charge. Have 2 or 3 accounts and your bank charges can be seriously reduced, even as a business.

Yes, but the short run of marks is not 25-32 inclusive as this would include intervening marks not used during James 1's reign - 26 pierced mullet (Ed. VI), 27 eglantine (Eliz.I), 28 sun (Ed. IV), 29 mullet (Henry V), 30 pansy (Ed. IV), 31 heraldic cinquefoil (Henry VII). Rather it refers to the numbers given to the various marks in the Seaby list which is shown on p.645 in the 2013 edition, or p.659 in the current volume. 25 - 32 means 25 (mullet) followed by 71 (tower) followed by 45 (trefoil) followed by 32 (cinquefoil) which are the marks covering the chronological period 1611-1615. They are the marks used for each of the pyx trials in this period.

If you look at say the J1 spur ryals on p.264, you will see that the mms are 33, 79, 74, 25-32, 132. i.e. rose, scallop, then missing out grapes, crown, missing out key & bell, then mullet to cinquefoil which includes tower and trefoil, and finally book having missed out tun in between. So two marks will be separated by a comma, whilst a run of 3 or more consecutive marks are hyphenated.

Never knew that, thanks Stuart! You're not the first person to say that, so obviously there is a minor issue with interpreting the information laid out. As Stuart described it is as it is. How do you interpret the mms employed?

Bust 5A. S2563. This mark and bust are illustrated in Spink 2013 (p.256)

Seems too light, even for a worn piece. A 1% weight loss would still be over 7.9g and would be quite obviously worn. 0.16g down is a lot of gold to lose. If in doubt, ignore. You can always buy one that isn't suspect elsewhere. Given the grade as described, it isn't rare enough to be a must have piece at any price.

Presumably your nephew. Never heard of Oly Mers and they didn't come up on google either. Famous in their own lunchtime? Someone you need to tell us about? Male or female given the androgenous name? Greek? His initial is P. He was briefly the lead singer of The Molecules, who nearly had a smash record release on the Paint label. Ah. I was wondering if it was someone with a plastic fetish, who dropped the P on the grounds of gender.

Presumably your nephew. Never heard of Oly Mers and they didn't come up on google either. Famous in their own lunchtime? Someone you need to tell us about? Male or female given the androgenous name? Greek?

Never met (or sought for that matter) any celebrity. No claims to fame here.

The thing is that although it is tempting to say that they are just filler, on some dies the dots have to be squeezed in where a single stop would be adequate. This must be done for a reason. It could be date related, decorative or it could be an individual, but the overwhelming case is for the latter.

I have thought about this quite a lot. Using the evidence from the marks employed in the Cary commission area, it appears that there were an initial 5 engravers employed. As they all had their personal mark, which accompanied coins using the same punches on the whole it is possible to build up a picture of their movement (which had to be associated with troop concentrations as paying these was their sole purpose). A reasonable assumption is that existing working practices were continued wherever possible as it would not require a new set of rules, hence my belief that the various stop arrangements reflected the work of different individuals. Within the Cary commission area, one engraver used the 3 pellets mark. I think he came from York towards the end of 1643 but before the fall of the city. The idea that an identifying mark can be assigned to an individual based on the above can be extended to Oxford where it is possible to identify dies cut by a couple of individuals who subsequently moved to the Cary area and continued to cut dies using the same punches. I can therefore assign certain stops to certain individuals and believe these to be their personal privy marks. As the set of rules of the provincial mints would likely mirror that existing at the Tower prior to Parkhurst moving to Oxford, I confidently believe that the decorative stop marks used on some of the Tower coinage was similarly used to identify the engravers.

How about an alternative theory? Maybe the person who made them was a perfectionist and that what we are looking at is the output of a particular person. It may be the main engraver or the main under-engraver working in conjuction with a specific team of co-workers. They may well be special presentation pieces, but as a rule of thumb, rightly or wrongly I typically see better quality pieces with arrangements of pellets than without. I see that both the Hunterian and your piece have a 4 pellet stop before the i.m. which has to mean something. You get the introduction of multi-pellet contraction stops during Plume (June 1630 - June 1631). Prior to that everything appears to be either single pellets, stop/apostrophe, or no stops. The two periods prior to Plume were Heart and before that Anchor. During this time there was little silver coming into the mint and consequently very little leaving it. Output of silver at the mint increased 15-fold during Plume to a level not previously seen during the reign, which must have meant that there were more workers employed than previously. 4 pellets, 5 pellets (or whatever) coincided with the introduction of the oval shield which replaced the square topped one. There is also a profusion of pellets in the fields on some reverse dies. Multi-pellets stops are then seen all the way through to Anchor (alongside single stops etc). I also note that the latest 'Fine Work' shilling noted by sharp is the F5/1. Brooker 529 is not from the same dies, but is the only anchor shilling in Brooker apart from 522 that has more than single pellet stops. 522 has a 4 pellet arrangement, 529 has 2 pellet stops by the i.m. Whilst the 4 pellets mark disappears from shilling dies in Anchor, it first appears in Plume and Rose on the crown dies and then after a change to a 'tadpole' like set of stop punches, re-emerges in Crown (obv) and subsequently Tun and Anchor. The crown reverses however are all marked with 4 pellets from Tun right through to the end of the reign. I think the 4 pellets is an individual's mark. I've long thought that there ought to be some way of identifying the person responsible for individual dies because you see this in the provincial civil war pieces and here we are only a few years before with the anchor mark. I would assume that an existing state of affairs would carry over into the civil war arena simply because that is what people were accustomed to. It's a case of keys fitting locks. People would be on autopilot as that was the way they usually worked.

The legend would suggest yes as it is well cut but the rest no because it is too weak. If you are going to have a presentation piece or a specimen strike, it seems unlikely to me that the centres would be so weak relatively.

F1/1 & F5/1 fine work shillings are mentioned, the former i.m. Tun, the latter i.m. Anchor with flukes right.