Rob

The waters are further muddied by the orders and proclamations of 1838. An order dated June 8th directed the coinage of a £5 piece, sovereign and half, all of the same type with royal arms surrounded by a wreath,save the half on space considerations. Ruding, where I have taken this from then goes on to say that the £5 piece should have DECUS ET TUTAMEN on the edge, whilst the double-sovereign and half-sovereign will be grained. No mention in the last sentence of a full sovereign which possibly is a mistake, but also see below. July 5th. Proclamation for the £5 down to the farthing together with the Maundy issue made. July 18th. Proclamation dictates that the double-sovereign, sovereign and half-sovereign shall be received and pass as current money, with the respective weights listed. So we have a double-sovereign mentioned in orders and proclaimed, but none exist for this reign as currency pieces. There are two uniface reverse £2 coins in the RM museum; one undated, but intended for 1838 as per the proclamation and listed as Hocking 1969, and one dated 1841 with a trident and two dolphins (Hocking 1968). These are W&R288 & 289 respectively.

We appear to have quite a few points to debate here. I thought the UNA & the Lion is proof only and wasn't issued as a currency piece, or was it?. Surely not given the numbers seen together with the early auction references which often mention 10 struck etc of the variety listed. Why include a 1/4 farthing but not the three halfpence given both were initially struck for colonial use? And similarly, why do you have a 15 coin set normally, with a farthing as the smallest denomination when we know there are 1839 half farthing bronzed proofs? Were these issued much later? That there is no reference for an 1839 1/4 does not exclude a limited number of them existing if required for sets because we don't know everything. eg. Colin Cooke had a proof 1847 farthing which is even more difficult to explain than the 1839 1/4 and not listed anywhere. If the RM didn't issue sets until 1843, they were certainly churning out proofs before this given the examples in the Bolland sale in 1841. He died in 1840.

So was the 1839 1/4 farthing in the 17 coin set a currency piece only and described as such?

Not really. That doesn't work for me. Neither alt and prtscn together or alt then prtscn seem to do anything. Going to the pictures folder where all the jpags are kept doesn't result in an image of the screen appearing either when I do a ctl-V. Never mind, I'll just stick with writing it out manually. Pressing PrtScn on its own doesn't seem to do anything either. Peter, you are right. Maybe the computer/operator is too old - or broken. Pressing PRTSC just appears to hold the image Rob. Like doing Copy, nothing else happens until you are in a document or whatever and tell it to Paste. I need an open image based window - I use Paint as it came with the computer, but I guess anything you can draw in as, although you can do it in say, Word, I have no idea how you'd save that as an image file! - then with that visible press Ctrl+V. The whole screen then appears as the Paint image. I still have to save that (usually to my desktop) to use it. That help? I think so, thanks. It copied and saved it onto a word page which is an improvement on my pictures which didn't save previously. And doing a manual save I could now get it into the pictures folder, so I may have an image but it thinks it is a word document.

If you still have the link, that would be useful. Was it a modern Spink box or could it possibly have been made prior to 1875? As mentioned earlier, that is the earliest reference I have to a 17 coin set. In 1839 the fractional farthings were not current in this country, only being proclaimed in 1842 or 1843(?). However, once they were legally able to circulate, it is possible that the mint would have added examples to the set in order to provide an example of each of the circulating denominations. The box is definitely contemporary (I would guess mid to late 19thC) with the gold braid edge tooling and blue velvet roundels for all coins, no ribbon lifters - a single push button but with no swing hooks (as also used on the "standard" spade shaped case) - the coins were unfortunately mixed in quality but I did not see them in the hand relying on my agents description. Thanks. It certainly looks 19th century. The fact that they were differing in grade is not necessarily surprising. Within a few years of 1839 the auction catalogues are describing some of the £5 coins as impaired e.g Thomas Thomas 1034, Soth 23/2/1844 - and there are other references noted as such. However, if the fractionals were notably different from the rest, then surely that would have to imply the set wasn't original? IMHO the use of a Spink labelled box would imply not as issued by the mint unless there are other boxes so labelled and preferably with 15 coins inside. Unfortunately that still wouldn't clarify whether the 17 hole boxes were made for the mint as a one-off or commissioned privately. If as issued this would potentially help clarifying the order in which the dies were used. Fortunately the early catalogues go to great lengths describing the £5 pieces, which helps. Finding complete matched sets in original boxes would help too as it is unlikely many would have been reconstituted if matched.

If you still have the link, that would be useful. Was it a modern Spink box or could it possibly have been made prior to 1875? As mentioned earlier, that is the earliest reference I have to a 17 coin set. In 1839 the fractional farthings were not current in this country, only being proclaimed in 1842 or 1843(?). However, once they were legally able to circulate, it is possible that the mint would have added examples to the set in order to provide an example of each of the circulating denominations.

clean here.

Not really. That doesn't work for me. Neither alt and prtscn together or alt then prtscn seem to do anything. Going to the pictures folder where all the jpags are kept doesn't result in an image of the screen appearing either when I do a ctl-V. Never mind, I'll just stick with writing it out manually. Pressing PrtScn on its own doesn't seem to do anything either. Peter, you are right. Maybe the computer/operator is too old - or broken.

How did you do that? I wanted to copy the pop-up to save typing, but haven't a clue how to do it. Why are computers so difficult?

I got Exploit Blackhole Exploit Kit (type 2704) on 3 links with AVG Free and Firefox. Assume that makes sense to you.

Now that the catalogue is up on-line, am I the only one who thinks that the coins are nothing to write home about? Sure there are Henry VII sovereigns which are desirable in any condition as a collectable item, but the rest of the gold is of dubious quality. Certainly no must bid items with the majority worn and/or scratched.

Is it possible that the seller had simply bunged the fractionals into the box to make the set 'complete'? I guess you'd have to see whether there are recesses specially made for them, or whether they just 'float free'. Quite possible that they were added later, or alternatively were in a custom built box. But in the context of these sets, nothing can be taken for granted given the length of time over which they were produced.

At least one of them went through London Coins, so the grading will be interesting

I've just found a reference in an 1875 catalogue to a 17 coin boxed set of Victoria proofs. Usually these are 15 coins for the 1839 - £5 to farthing and the Maundy Set, so the note that it was 17 coins implies either a misprint or a set with the half and quarter farthing notwithstanding the description says Penny to Farthing in copper. The sale reference is J E M Rishton 183, Sotheby 13-14th July 1875. It would have to be a 39 set because a £5 is included. I have always assumed that the 1839 sets didn't contain the fractionals because they were for colonial use, but if the 17 coins noted was correct, this would suggest that later sets may contain the fractional proofs as these were made to order, and there would be dies available for the two 39 fractionals. It should be noted that the 1853 sets (16 coins) had denominations down to the half farthing as these were proclaimed current for Britain. Has anyone ever seen a boxed 17 coin set? Ta.

Nor me.

The email address of the seller says it all. willwriting.biz would suggest a lawyer or solicitor. Take a reasonable £9.99 selling price and add on your minimum hourly rate of £140.

Usually the coin is milled out inside the rim and the second obverse dropped into place. Without a picture though, we still don't know if the obverses are from currency coins though as you haven't said. You will ahve to either reduce the image size to under 150kB or alternatively use a hosting site such as Photobucket. If the size is under 150kB, it is likely that you have selected the file, but not attached it. It will tell you when it has been uploaded.

No picture has appeared, so ... If the dies used are official ones it will be somebody playing about with a lathe, milling out one reverse and reducing the thickness of the second by removing the reverse before neatly fitting one inside the other. This is the normal way to produce double headed coins. If cleaned, the only way the grade is going is down because grade is a measure of physical abrasion to the surfaces of the coin. Cleaning removes metal and doesn't deposit it, which would be required to show apparently less wear than before.

Somebody needs to disable the C, H, U and N keys on his keyboard. A special license to only allow restricted use of the X key wouldn't go amiss either. Some of those prices are multiples of what they should be, or in the case of the 1963 penny, 1000x. This is worse than our friend in Dundee.

Depends on the quantity, quality (fineness) and where you are. If in a town or city with a few jewellers/scrap bullion dealers then you might get a decent price close to bullion but would have to shop around for the best deal. If you have to post it then that will reduce the amount people are willing to pay. If you are near a coin fair it would be possible to sell it to a dealer there. Next one coming up is at the Motorcycle Museum a week this coming Sunday, just off the M42 (A45 jcn). Most dealers will take scrap silver and gold if it isn't necessary to travel far. It all depends on what you have.

I've often wondered about when the bank manager is on holiday. He must have a b****y good collection from all eras.

The penny is back on ebay so not all is lost. Thanks, but it wasn't for my benefit - I don't want one.

I see my penny on ebay thread has disappeared. Was that the reason for the screwed up posts? I can now see Chris's testing thread that was previously impossible because there was a conflict deciding which one I was trying to read. Could it be that things have settled down now?

Just a die flaw. It looks like the edge of the incuse detail on the die has come adrift and left a larger depression.

Yes, I bought the Durham House groat. Still waiting for it to arrive though. It isn't the best one available assuming that Carlyon-Britton 198 (1921) is still doing the rounds, but I don't know where that is. As they go quite acceptable with just about every example showing weakness somewhere and quite collectable for the reverse legend variety which only occurs on this groat and its rather rare companion halfgroat. The BM has a superb example. here . One word of warning, the reference numbers and the attributions are all hopelessly screwed up in this section at least and probably elsewhere. Many Edward VI groats are in fact facing bust Edward IVs, and the museumm accession numbers are all to cock too. The coin given as 1896,0609.208 for example should be ex Montagu 827, but is in fact Huth 324 as it is plated in the 1927 catalogue. This was acquired by Clarke-Thornhill and passed to the BM in his bequest. The reference number for the coin illustrated should therefore be 1935,0401.1758. The former Montagu coin is under the reference 1935,0401.1759, which is allegedly one of those from Clarke Thornhill. The coin actually gifted by C-T is that listed as BM214, which entered the collection prior to the systematic cataloguing used from about 1830. All the others of this type appear to be wrong too. Another good waste of public funds.