Rob

Attached is the Chester halfcrown with CHST below from the Spink catalogue. As you can see, coin was made on a rocker press showing elongation along one axis which is a feature of the coining method. However, in the case of this issue, the rocker press used was defective, appearing to slip on the obverse to the extent that the dimensions of the inner circle are 29mm top to bottom and 33.5mm left to right. The distortion is clearly on one side only as the I of HIR is about 1.5mm taller than the I of CHRISTO. As the dies will have been made from the same punches at the same time, the distortion on the left hand side is clearest with the letter R. If you use paint you can compress the left side to produce a roughly circular inner circle and sensible letters. All CHST obverses are missing the RHS of the legend, so the obverse die must be travelling through the press at a slower rate than the reverse die. So far so good, but Paint doesn't do overlays with transparency as far as I can make out. I'm trying to establish which die this was in its previous existence which is where the overlays come in. This can also be applied to the declaration issue where I have made far more progress and know both engraver and previous dies due to the greater amount of plain field present. The quantity of detail on the average obverse makes overlaying sheets of A4 a bit difficult, hence the request.

It looks far too mushy for my liking. Edge and thickness would be good as Coinery says.

Sorry folks, this has raised its head again with a twist. A slightly different problem. I have a die which I know is recut from another, which in itself is also a recut die as at least two stages of recutting are seen which tie in with two known dies known to be earlier. I need to be able to superimpose one, or possibly more than one on the other and make the top layers transparent in order to align the various features. The problem is exacerbated by one coin being struck on a faulty rocker press which slips in operation leading to a 10-15% distortion along one axis. So the basic requirements are a program that allows you to stretch or compress along one axis or both and to overlay images. I had a look at the Photoscape link and that is dead. I'm not sure if I have publisher, but presume not. Photoshop costs £389 which I'm not willing to pay, and in any case appears to be Adobe. Paintshop is Corel. I guess I need a microsoft program because that's what my computer uses for its operating software and I don't want any problems with compatibility. Looking for Microsoft image overlay program in google wasn't very helpful. Thanks.

Depends on what is there. I might be interested if they fill a lot of gaps. A list would be useful.

I'm not sure we really need the zoom facility on this one. However, it would 'make a nice addition to your collection'.

It isn't a case of putting down detailed die studies, just that the market for such a volume would be severely limited. Having said that, in this digital age you can produce single copies of a book or as many as you want for very little extra cost over that of materials and stting up costs. Anyone specialising in a narrow field can therefore publish their research quite cheaply with a short print run of 10 books to test the water and thus show the true demand for collecting to this depth. Any price guide would be hopelessly cumbersome if it included recut legends as you would need to illustrate each and every variety to avoid ambiguity. Essentially it would become a definitive guide of all the dies extant in their various states, less those that you didn't track down (of which there will be quite a few). I don't know, nor have I heard of anyone collecting to this level, so it would be a labour of love that is an order of magnitude more analytical than even the tooth pointings of Freeman and Davies etc. Anybody contemplating such a survey will need deep pockets, as even coins at melt in the quantities required will severely impact on the bank account. Even a short run such as George IV shillings would produce a significant tome when all the dies including punched varieties are included. Just think what the task would be like for all those hand punched dies, each and every one of which would be a discrete variety.

Yes and no. Research is always good fun, but have you considered the ramifications of listing all the potential double cut legend varieties in Spink or any other reference volume. Any, and potentially every letter on every coin could have been repunched at some point and in any combination with some recut several times. I suspect the only feasible option when carrying such a volume would be to attend the drive-thru coin fair. It's SO easy to get carried away with all these things, I know! And what's wrong with Spink's cataloging a 5/5 with top bit poking out, and 5/5 with back curve poking out beyond the other back curve, and, and...? These things have to be left to specialists undertaking a die study, and even then you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of active collectors. I remember on more than one occasion sitting through a sale of sovereigns collected by die number. The tedium is unbelievable.

Yes and no. Research is always good fun, but have you considered the ramifications of listing all the potential double cut legend varieties in Spink or any other reference volume. Any, and potentially every letter on every coin could have been repunched at some point and in any combination with some recut several times. I suspect the only feasible option when carrying such a volume would be to attend the drive-thru coin fair.

But omitted to mention the most obvious fault - the inverted bust on the obverse.

If the underlying digit has a longer more curved tail and the top is straight, it could be a 5/3 just as easily as a 5/5. The first would be interesting, the second not. Thanks Rob. Again, according to Michael, the consensus has been that it is 5/3 but he thinks it is 5/5! When you say 'interesting' if it is 5/3, what is the rarity do you know/think? You would need to see it in hand. If a 5/3 then I've not seen one. Spink or ESC wouldn't list a 5/5 because there's no point, as by extension any reasonably large mintage with have a good number of repaired and reworked dies, all of which would lead to a new variety. People get too tied up with a slightly misaligned set of punches when it is well known that to impress a character requires more than one blow. It's rather more surprising that so many dates and legends are entered without any visible double cutting, particularly so as you are trying to recut a hardened die. That situation frequently leads to a series of offset cuts on account of the greater effort and hence less accuracy, required to make an impression on the die.

If the underlying digit has a longer more curved tail and the top is straight, it could be a 5/3 just as easily as a 5/5. The first would be interesting, the second not.

It's worth a few pence scrap. I'll take it for that less the processing fee to separate out the two metal types.

We need a bigger picture. Try using photobucket to upload large pictures, and make sure you crop to the size of the coin as being able to determine the quality of the work surface will not assist with the object in question. The abbreviation to HI instead of HIB occurs all through the hammered coinage and would be quite acceptable. The W&M halfcrowns have legends reading both FR and FRA within the same issue, so although HI is unusual, it is not necessarily a wrong-un. Weight is important, as is the ability to scrutinise detail. Also, what is the edge like? Pics of this might help too.

The early milled (pre-Soho), which normally has an inverted die axis, is interesting if 90 degrees or 45 degrees out (or possibly 22.5). I haven't made my mind up whether the bit that located the die in the press had 4, 8 or even possibly 16 sides yet, though the latter is unlikely. Small, but sufficient numbers turn up with about a 45 degree error to ask the question. A York transposed arms shilling confirms the multiple of 4 theory, being 90 degrees out.

It isn't a lily, it's an amaryllis. However, if the cat's name is Lily, then the flower isn't a felix either and still an amaryllis.

I've noticed that all of these thing tend to come from 143040 wherever that is.

C'mon Rob, my missus is much betterer than your's! http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2012/1/30/1327938751037/les-dawson-ada-007.jpg I always felt attracted to Lesley Dawson.

Thrupney bits now. There's inflation for you in more senses than one.

Good grief, what a dog. My wife is much nicer. Here she is in all her finery. http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?start=53&num=10&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=934&addh=36&tbm=isch&tbnid=N5752Vv4_ixqkM:&imgrefurl=http://www.jackleblond.com/can-spam-everything-an-email-marketer-needs-to-know/&docid=16jdxo0jnWcbKM&imgurl=http://www.jackleblond.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/monty_python_spam2.jpg&w=360&h=254&ei=rcScUOCIN4iA0AXF2YHgCw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=476&sig=101038903173429132628&page=2&tbnh=134&tbnw=220&ndsp=60&ved=1t:429,r:56,s:53,i:80&tx=108&ty=83

with eBay search in such a pickle it's an excellent time to be shopping! Bargains a-plenty. Not such a good time to be trying to flog stuff though... That makes so much sense! I've noticed a 50% tail-off for 2 weeks now, it's broke a consistent set of selling stats that have held up for nearly 2 years! Ebay topped 80,000 British worldwide last weekend. A wide search is far from easy at those numbers. It can only end in tears with sellers going away. And buyers who can't be a***d. It's 2 or 3 years since I spent much time looking. Every purchase now is something that I initially find within a few pages.

AFAIK Rob, that you can do by putting in a " - " So a search for " Crowns -Churchill " will leave out any listing with the word "Churchill" in it. Add " -Wedding -Diana " to your search terms and you'll avoid even more offerings ... Thanks. That seems to work more or less as a search of crowns -churchill only gave one listing of a bulk lot of 10. Very useful. -sh*te would be even better.

Correction: I've just run into the character limit that I was assured doesn't exist! It's 300 characters. The other thing that has been annoying me for a while is the change to a 10,000 search limit. Yesterday for instance I started in Coins British at about 5.00pm and only got back to about 9.30pm Friday evening so I missing about 4 hours of new listings. Does that 10000 limit include all ebay items or just coins? As the current total in the coins section is about 60000 British, there surely can't have been 10000 listings in just over 4 hours. Something doesn't add up there. Isn't the 300 character limit overkill as titles are limited to 80(?) letters if I remember right, so you can't use any more in any case? It would be better if the search results offered you the option to remove churchill crowns from a list of crown search results for example. You can exclude them by era unless someone has listed them in the wrong section, but then you can't legislate for all events.

You will miss the neckless £2 Every cloud has a silver lining.

I don't think it will affect me much. I only ever check the hammered or the reigns for a specific denomination or year. I haven't got the patience to plough through pages of Olympic 50p pieces to find the occasional rare Darwin £2.

What are the wildcards you can or could use and where do you find them? I thought you had to type in what you were looking for - say 1723 sixpence, or went down the category tree and searched within the denomination or era. Will this render specific descriptions impossible to use. Say the wildcard was 'all', then 'all new' or 'all unc' wouldn't be allowed. Sorry, confused. Saved searches?