Rob

Round here we have a rhyming word for spade, it's called.............. spade.

Is it for sale?

It seems to share quite a lot of the same characteristics as the fakes that were discussed last time. With this sort of suspicion associated with them, I would only consider buying one from a top auction house or reputable dealer. Or a verifiable provenance which pre-dates the appearance of these copies. There were few copies around prior to 2003 2004ish, and those there were tended to be quite recognisable, and crucially, documented.

True, the overhang from the Bole collection is going to influence the market for a while yet.

Don't be tempted. Things could get horribly expensive when it comes to siege issues. A decent Newark will set you back a couple grand, a Pontefract at least double that, a Carlisle at least seven or eight times and if you are seriously thinking about a Scarborough you might find you have a lot of friends.

Does anybody have a low tide halfpenny with the fingers well struck up? Never seen a good one, that's all. Mine also has no wear, loads of lustre but no fingers.

Collect both. You aren't going to be able to complete either denomination. Unless you win the lottery it will be a financial non-starter and you wouldn't be able to fill all the holes even if you had the money available due to the number of unique items, something that applies to all denominations.

Did we really have 30-40% deflation in the early 80s?

The marks vary in style depending on the size of the punch, though are reasonably consistent for a given size. Bear in mind that they were all individually engraved in the first place, so there is no mass produced consistency. Mint marks are usually referred to using the old Seaby references, so get yourself a copy of Spink's coins of England where there is a page dedicated to them. An old one would do just as well as the list hasn't changed for years, though some were added later. The numbering system will be incomprehensible as some of the marks are not in chronological order.

Most coin fairs cost a pound or two to get in. Exceptions are the big London ones on the first morning when they know big spenders will be in trying to get the most desirable pieces. York is free, Harrogate is a couple quid. Wakefield is this weekend at the Cedar Court hotel just off junction 39 of the M1, opens at 9:30. There are regulars who come from further away than you. Ditto for Birmingham at the National Motorcycle Museum which opens at 10. Both wind down by 2-2:30.

Yes it is.

Without wishing to proscribe how we should all collect, if you intend collecting back in time then doing so from the beginning alongside modern coins is not such a bad idea. It is easy to say I'll get the modern ones and finish them off before going backwards, but even in this area there are relatively expensive pieces to acquire. Go back a couple hundred years and identically graded pieces sell for an order or orders of magnitude more. We all suffer funding constraints, so if you are in for the long haul buy yourself a mixture of cheaper and more expensive pieces. If you get all the cheap things immediately (and there are a lot of them) you are likely to find that you have already spent a considerable sum making the acquisition of the next group a daunting task when you discover it will cost multiples of the first stage. Unless you intend restricting yourself to a finite and relatively narrow band, this problem will raise it's head earlier than you think. Very few people are fortunate or affluent enough in that order to even get close to completing an all encompassing denomination collection, short run oddballs such as quarter farthings excepted.

A VIP proof is one of a limited run struck for the chosen few. A regular proof is struck for the masses e.g. 1937, 1950, 1951 etc. They may be frosted or not depending on the issue and fill in the gaps between the common set dates.

sale 56

Laminating flan

I need an optician. Norweb did have a 1935 proof penny and halfpenny - as part of a full year set (Part 3, 19/11/1986 lot 1131, bought by Spink on commission for £1200). Doh. More importantly, your penny was from that set so you have a provenance confirmed by the fingermark and spot on the reverse. My halfpenny is from a different set though.

There wasn't one in the Adams and Parry collections either. Thinking out loud, I'm wondering if there are a few long sets tied up in private hands given the special crown issued that year in conjunction with George V's Silver Jubilee.

Err yes that as well... I think that the sexual trend in the younger generation ( so I am told !) is for there not to be much or any hair around the bits!! That requires a genetic mutation. Blame it on E numbers.

1935 proof halfpennies are equally evasive. I notice that Peck listed both penny and halfpenny at Baldwin's, though there wasn't an example when they cleaned out the basement 5 or 6 years ago. I bought my halfpenny in London Coins March 2006 sale, but there wasn't a penny to complement it. Interestingly graded in that sale as nFDC as in reality it's brilliant and virtually as struck. It's also noteworthy that Norweb had neither denomination of this date, because she had most other years.

I think the size of bedroom is irrelevant. The bedroom is where all the naughty people go.

It's a sixpence, but unless you can read the date or identify the mark that's it. On the assumption the last datal figure is a 6, the mark for 1566 would be either a lion or a portcullis, 1576 an eglantine (5 petal flower), 1586 is a scallop and 1596 a key. Disregard the last one as the obverse is clearly not a key, as rubbed as it is. I'd say it is probably a portcullis from what I can see.

The variations seen in flan weight would be too great to determine the composition. A few years back we had a thread on farthing weights and the variation was 2.69g to 2.93g if I remember rightly. Certainly 2.6 something and 2.9 something. Leaving aside the 10% variation in flan weights, the densities of brass and bronze would be roughly the same anyway because zinc and tin have roughly the same densities. You would need to carry out an XRF analysis. A visual assessment of the material based on colour would be more informative than a weight.

I've added my hand shilling reverse for comparison. Hand tends to be quite a large mark relative to others.

My initial response would be yes based on the small lumps seen on the left side of the tun, but this would require the underlying mark to be unusually small. My hand marked shilling has the mark fully half the width of the shield top bar in the second quadrant. Yours would be barely a third of the width, so unless it is a punch from a smaller denomination I would say no. I don't have a shilling of either mark from this reverse die.

A bit late. Happy birthday, or if it's closer, for the next one.