Rob

A mintage of 10000 is not rare. 370 slabbed as Proof 70 might be absorbed by the US market, but you have to consider what collectors in this country are looking for. A slab selling on ebay for £1100 may or may not be indicative of the greater market - I don't know, but I've also seen flat 1797 cartwheel pennies finish at over £200 or the infamous no date 20p. At the height of the craze for these 'rare' coins there were 560 or more on ebay at the same time and still people were paying £300 for a coin that in reality is worth £30ish. That's the difference between the collector and the investor mentality. All those 'investors' who are willing to pay many multiples of bullion value for a mass produced commemorative issue will only make money if they can sell to someone for an even larger markup. You can exclude the collector from those willing to pay because they have seen what past issues have settled at once granny has bought a set or two and then sold at a loss. I wish you success in your investment venture. If you think the silver value is going to go through the roof, why are you telling me about it? You should be keeping mum and hoovering up all available supplies to take advantage of the certain rise in prices. It is all to do with people hyping up a price so that they can take a cut of the transaction. Nothing wrong in being a middle-man as that is the best way to make money - no stock, just a couple of contacts who you act for. However, the same thing happened in the 1970s and early 1980 when Bunker Hunt tried to manipulate the silver market. The price at its height was $50 an ounce, up from $10, or a bit above where it is now. It rapidly collapsed back to a little over $10 an ounce. So if you have a few spare billion lying around to manipulate the market I wish you well, but hope you won't be too p'd off when it collapses and takes your investment with it. Prices for any raw material will always fluctuate with occasional bubbles, but if someone is sussed trying to manipulate the market, it (the market) will know where to focus its efforts to destroy the imbalance. However, if you decide to hold indefinitely despite a falling price, you could at least end up with a few million ounces of physical silver to make more MS70 slabbed coins and recoup the losses that way. Patina Collection pieces anyone?

In the US there is a greater adherence to the grade given on the slab. It takes the thinking out of collecting/investment because a certain coin in a certain grade will cost so much without regard to the aesthetics of the item. Slabbing in itself costs money and this is recouped by the seller for more expensive pieces by upping the price. However, with the modern pieces and consistent conditions employed by the mints around the world, many of these pieces would grade or are already graded MS69 and will never be rare, so you have to consider the intrinsic metal value of a silver coin for instance. An MS70 strike has been deemed by the TPG to be a perfect strike, but it is only one person's opinion. Search slabs on this forum and you will find many threads where different opinions are voiced. Many collectors don't like them, but you will find that out if you read a bit. You might find you are at the bottom of a very steep learning curve.

Welcome to the forum. As you are obviously new to the hobby, what are your reasons for collecting, investment, themed or just a general interest? I see the list and notice that most are modern. Generally speaking these are best purchased in the after market and not direct from the various mints who have a rather large markup over resale value. Are you specifically looking at slabbed coins? If so, beware of the number dictating the price. In this country collectors do not attach much if any premium to a coin simply because it has been given a high grade by a TPG. Slabbed coins tend to be much more popular across the pond - this is a topic which comes up on a regular basis.

Should have bought the one in the last CNG sale. $23K hammer wasn't over the top for a Carlisle and that one was quite a decent example. As for Scarboroughs, most are in museums or places such as the ANA collection thanks to Norweb, so the rarity factor is magnified. I think on the whole though, 1 or 2 pieces is the norm for each denomination known. I saw it but his pockets are not that deep! I think he could go £8k-ish if anybody would like me to broker a deal. Looks like it will stay a gap in the collection then. I can't see one going for under £10-12K hammer. The problem is they tend to come in roughly the same condition because there was only a limited time they circulated, so I'm not sure badly worn examples exist. The only alternative would be a damaged example which would obviously be cheaper.

Only one for me in that case, the Alfred penny.

That would apply to anybody who has bought a single coin lot at a Spink auction, most being illustrated these days. So in answer to your question, probably half the regular posters.

Not to my knowledge. You just have to go on your own research/experience. The vast majority that turn up are Newark, with probably half of the ones you see having been holed for suspension. Scarborough is the rarest hence the seemingly high price. Carlisle is second hardest to acquire and if anybody has a spare I have a customer waiting Should have bought the one in the last CNG sale. $23K hammer wasn't over the top for a Carlisle and that one was quite a decent example. As for Scarboroughs, most are in museums or places such as the ANA collection thanks to Norweb, so the rarity factor is magnified. I think on the whole though, 1 or 2 pieces is the norm for each denomination known.

Not 58, but 30-40 is about right in today's market.

You've already posted a miserable face at the thought of it, so sell the rest and keep the Maundy. You won't regret it later. People always regret selling the good pieces but rarely the crap. Forgo a trip to the cinema or a packet of ciggies or whatever you spend your money on.

Does it offer the option to always allow specific people too? The latter is more important than being able to block emails. Getting annoyed with incessant spam is one thing. Not receiving something you needed because of the provider is a level up in inconvenience. It surely can't be beyond the bounds of reasonable programming to have the facility for me to tell the email filter to always allow messages from abcd@123.com for example.

Interesting story. I've wondered whether my 1966 brass penny was produced in the same way, though security for anyone working at the mint would surely be extremely tight. At the end of the predecimal era, the mint was relocating from Tower Hill to Llantrisant. It appears that most of the oddballs from this period were mint workers having a bit of fun. Very few coins produced in the mid-60s were of high value. You had the odd sovereign run, but the bulk was low value Cu-Ni and bronze. Nobody would be likely to pinch a lot of these and so a few unoffical strikes would easily get out. Though officaldom would probably have appreciated somebody relieving the mint of the odd million Churchill crown or two.

Thanks for the contributions gents. Do any of these allow ME or is there some way to bypass the system to decide what is legit, rather than having some anonymous algorithm decide? If it doesn't, I'm probably no better off because the wife et al will probably still be considered junk. I suspect there are two levels of filtering at present. The first is BT who allow so many through, and of the survivors, Outlook culls some more. The ability to see a complete list including what they have blocked before forwarding the acceptable ones on to me would be even better, but I'm probably asking too much there even though it could potentially solve the problem.

Thanks Declan, My internet provider is BT, who presumably decide what is and what is not allowed through. Should I be looking to change from BT? Personally I think I should be able to decide what is allowed through and not be dictated to by a 3rd party. e.g. Why should emails from the wife be considered spam or is the filter system a misogynist? You also have the problem of losing your email addresses if you change. Private ones aren't a serious problem, but business ones are. Oddly enough, the coin business website address seems to get loads of spam but the BT addresses don't, suggesting BT are filtering out a lot of incoming emails before I even get to see them. As the coins emails are on a separate hosting site, maybe Outlook isn't the problem and my provider BT is what I should be looking to change. It's the unpredictability of the blocking that p's me off most.

Depends on the viewpoint.

There are fingerprints on the reverse though, which will count against it.

If you are collecting 20th century, get yourself some modern proof or specimen sets. One 1970 and one later for decimal issues. A 1950 or 51 set will sort you out for George VI. The same could be said for earlier sets, but the cost might be a bit prohibitive. These will set your benchmark for what things should look like if in perfect condition. Then it is just a case of working out how much wear you have on a coin.

I recognise that you can never have completely balanced income and expenditure, but the key is to manage a deficit responsibly. I think the main difference between a household debt and a national one is that the former usually has a plan to pay it off in full within a specific time frame whereas the latter expects it to be rolled over ad infinitum. There is certainly never a willingness to incur and then rectify an imbalance within the lifetime of a single period of government. This inevitably results in ever increasing debt because paying it down requires sacrifices to be made on a national level - not a vote winner. The path usually employed is to buy time and votes by increasing the debt, which is used by politicians as often as they can get away with. When times are good and the economy doing well, the national debts should be paid off in full or paid down as much as possible. To spend the extra income received in the good times on further or expanded government sponsored projects is irresponsible as it sows the seeds of cutbacks when times get hard - precisely when the public doesn't want to know about cutbacks. A good analogy would be that of mineral extraction. When prices rise, you mine the less productive seams. When they fall, you extract the easily accessible ores with lower costs. It results in a business model which although it reduces potential profits when prices are high, also ensures that a viable business is maintained when they fall and crucially doesn't require cashflow to be fully on or completely shut off. That is effectively saving for a rainy day and as a model sustainable.

I find it interesting that after the foundation of the euro, Germany's national debt regularly broke the set limits. Whereas Spain's government carefully followed the requirements and had the smallest debts until the 2008 crisis. What caused the problem was personal debt as Spaniards borrowed money to ride the crest of a property boom ... which of course didn't last. So really the banks were responsible, in that they responded to public demand and provided cheap and poorly guaranteed loans. But of course the people themselves have to bear some responsibility for borrowing well beyond their means, so fuelling the banks problems. The whole thing was compounded by a similar thing happening in the US which knocked confidence in financial institutions. And there's the problem. Polticians and the government no longer (if ever they did) have the power to control the national economy because it's largely influenced by factors outside national control. Financial sentiment, international debt and increased gearing of financial institutions mean that when things go well they can do very well. But when the US (or China, or a Eurozone member) catches a cold ... well, we all sneeze. The point about Germany is that after the Eurozone was created, it took steps to reposition itself as an efficient producer and to overhaul the government finances. That is the time when it was considered the sick man of Europe. They re-evaluated the benefits system because they found that people were able to claim on several different benefits for the same thing. Industry invested to become a very efficient producer. Germany had an overhang of debt from reunification, which was funded for years via the additional solidarity tax on various transactions. But crucially the population maintained its traditional habit of living within its means. If you couldn't afford something, you didn't buy it. Credit card use was much lower than than in other western countries and cash/cheque was king. What you bought was expected to last for years and not disintegrate after a few days use. German industry produced goods that lived up to this expectation and the indigenous population bought said goods. The general ethos of the country requires any supply or purchase of goods or services to be of a certain quality - that is something that both sides of the equation adhere to as a rule. Shoppers also believes in procuring supplies from your local 'meister' of whatever, as they are clearly capable of delivering. As a consequence, it has a healthy balance of payments, a good solid industrial base, local suppliers of most goods and services required for everyday living and a population working for the common good. The latter has always been a strength of the German people, though with unforseen consequences when a nutter gets to be in charge as history has shown. Social differences are not as divergent as in this country. There is a greater pressure to 'conform to a certain standard' than you find in this country, but as with all systems, no single form has all the answers. Spain by contrast has a southern European lifestyle which is more laid back along the lines of Greece and Italy. There is far less community pressure comparable to that seen in Germany. Spain's boom was based on building houses for people to live in either as migrants from cooler climes or as holiday homes. Those people do not produce income for the state from goods and services supplied. Again we have a case of infrastructure spending without the corresponding industrial base to finance those plans. Spain may have had one of the lowest debt ratios of any European country, but if you have no effective income, you will never be able to service that debt. Spain did not have a solid industrial base on which to build. Many of the 'banana republics' of this world have debt to GDP ratios of only 10%, but nobody would dare risk lending money because repayment would be only a remote possibility. All the evidence points to developed countries putting the cart before the horse. Everyone want the benefits systems in place to be maintained, but very few people consider how the same systems can be sustainably funded which is a pre-requisite just to maintain the status quo. The question that needs to be asked is how can we run the country to produce excess income that can be disbursed to the population in the form of desired benefits that are otherwise unaffordable.

A few people might get excited about a missing crossbar, but at the time this was added later as the V shape was used for both letters. Maybe it's worth a small premium, but not a huge amount. Spink price the various legend errors at about double the basic version, but a dire coin will always be thus. The grade on these early varieties is crucial as the bar is frequently very weak and you need the lack of wear/corrosion to be certain it is the variety claimed more often than not. High grade (EF) William and Mary or William III should always be acquired if the opportunity arises. It's b****y rare, the latter particularly so.

1st bust variety £525, £1750, £7500 Guinea head £1500, £4500, - Don't worry, I won't be challenging for that one. Thanks Rob, why not? Oh I expect you have a best known EF stashed away! Because there is better available, though EF silver elephant below is virtually unobtainable.

Sorry Rob, I used up all my energy and time responding to Colin's points about disability benefits. I've nothing left for the banking situation. I'll read it all tomorrow and see if I have a sensible response to make. Not to worry, we'll all agree to disagree in the end.

1st bust variety £525, £1750, £7500 Guinea head £1500, £4500, - Don't worry, I won't be challenging for that one.

I think there is a danger here of using one fault to explain the other and vice-versa. The banking crisis effectively came to a head with the sub-prime situation in the US. That was a case of people being sold loans they couldn't afford as a result of greed by the financial salesforces concerned taking their commission payments as fast and frequently as they could. Government could have interfered in the process but didn't. To a lesser extent the same thing happened in this country as a result of the more aggressive lenders such as Northern Rock and the Halifax offering ever increasing multiples of income to stoke the overheating property market. The main offenders at this time were the former mutuals who in all probability did not have sufficient expertise to adjust to a market enforced contraction having been constrained from excessive lending by the rules of mutuality in the early 1990s. As fully listed companies they were free to tap the markets more or less as and when they wanted. The problems arose when access to funds dried up. The initial cash injections by the government into RBS & Lloyds were only a fraction of the overspend by government in recent history, though the subsequent QE measures have inflated those figures enormously with the corresponding increase in debt per head of population. Whether the banking crisis had occurred or not, the government would eventually have been brought to heel by its creditors because we all know that if you own the debt, you don't control the future. The Labour government's insistence on spending the nation's wealth beyond the tax take on its pet projects was entirely due to GBs desire to portray himself as Father Christmas. The government had been spending beyond its income levels for years, never once trying to balance its books. The suggestion that cutting back on public expenditure is due to the banking crisis is only loosely connected at best insofar as banks were no longer in a position to purchase government bonds. If the UK's expenditure was considered reasonable, those bonds could and would have been bought by creditor nations and their banks as not all countries were in the same mess, but whether they chose to do so would be based on a rational assessment of whether a government could reasonably be expected to pay back the debt. Not only did Labour not have a plan in place to balance the books, there is no evidence there was any intention to do so. Only TB's resignation allowing GB to become party leader stopped the deluge because Alastair Darling was somewhat more financially astute, but by that time unable to do anything about it. When you are in a hole it is best to stop digging. So I believe the two matters are related more in timing and general market sentiment than as a direct cause and effect. The financial services industry has always and will always be greedy, telling half truths and rarely if ever presenting the full facts. Against this is the responsibility of the individual to not stretch themselves to a point where they cannot make repayments. People have had benign economic conditions for too long with no memeory of having to juggle affordability. When I took out my first mortgage in the early 1980s, I was paying 5 or 6% on it. Those repayments soon hit double figures, so I promptly paid it off. GB said New Labour was the end of boom and bust - yeah, right, just like all the other times. Anecdote - Even after all the recent market turmoil and supposed lack of available funding, the financial service sector never fails to shoot itself in the foot. Last year we bought a buy to let. Initially we were going to take out a 60% LTV mortgage and offset interest payments against tax. At the meeting to arrange the loan, all we were asked is whether the vendor was going to live in the house following purchase. We said no, he said ok. We paid our application fee and waited for the paperwork to come through. When it arrived, one clause stated that not only was the vendor not allowed to live there, but neither was any family member. This was inconvenient as potentially the house could have ben used by one of our children. When I raised the point with the mortgage arranger he just said don't mention it. Great. Why enter into a binding agreement if under false pretences. Do I not bother making repayments on the gounds I thought the lender was having a laugh when we were told we would have to repay the loan at so much per month? We swallowed the application fee loss and the Co-op got their money. The financial adviser through whom the application was made didn't get his commission as we promptly paid cash in full and didn't take out the loan. When will they learn? Nothing changes, greed rules, but it is still incumbent on the individual to act responsibly rather than adopt a perpetual nanny state approach.

Oh that it was so simple. The current cutback on public spending is b****r all to do with the banks, but a rebalancing of the state's expenditure. When Brown was Chancellor, he presided over a state spending plan that raised 44% less in tax than he spent over a five year period. This he called prudence. Heaven knows what he would have done had he decided to be imprudent in his eyes, but I suggest the lights would already have gone out. Any Chancellor has to balance the books over the period of a parliament or at least have a plan to do so if the policies are to have any credibility. Failure to do so without a rigged voting system ensuring 5 more years in advance means the government of the day can spend as much as it likes giving lots of freebies to the voter without being held to account and having to rectify the s**t it leaves for the next election victor. Politicians being self-congratulatory animals only want public endorsement of their policies. Playing Father Christmas is the easiest way to win the appoval of Mr Average UK who is on the whole pretty thick when it comes to the wider picture. Rant over. Sorry rob, but your rant is either naivety, or partisan political. What you call "rebalancing of the state's expenditure" is nothing but Conservative Party economics. You can see this quite clearly in Osborne and Cameron's list of targets, none of which include banks (despite Osborne's publically heralded "slap on the wrist"). But despite the Daily Mail's stereotyping of a sizeable minority of the British population as "workshy scroungers" (based on demonstrably false statistics) it's the poor wot gets the blame and are hit hardest. Twas ever thus. I really do recommend that you read Sebastian Faulks' "Week In December", all the while bearing in mind that he is no leftie. It will then be clear that what individual governments are pallid nothings in comparison to the economic power wielded by the world's banking system. All politicians do is scratch the surface in order to appease the readers of one particular tabloid newspaper or another. They actually make little or no difference. All Osborne's measures, that have heaped misery upon misery on those who can least afford it - have they had any real impact on the deficit? No. Could real measures taken against the banks, at which they would cough and sneeze for a week or two, have a much greater impact on the deficit? Yes. But no politician would dare, because if the banks withdrew their credit on which all governments rely whatever political shade they are - we would be "bankrupt" overnight. "Follow the money". It isn't partisan political because I would never pay any party to be told what to think. Like most people I take the Woolworth approach to politics of 'pick and mix'. Some things I would advocate are left and some right of centre, but I do have a belief that charity begins at home. Some things are sensibly organised on a national basis and essentially constitute a public service. There is no reason to have competition in the water service industry for example - that's a utility. This country needs people to get off their backsides and set up businesses that export to other countries, - waiting for Papa State to provide is not the solution as government jobs rarely improve the trading account of the UK or any other country. Successive governments, both left and right, have failed to support UK exporters with the result that manufacturing has become moribund. Due to the expansion of the public sector under the last government, the UK economy became increasingly unbalanced because the jobs created did not directly address the problem of the trade deficit, and in fact exacerbated the situation because the people concerned all went out and bought their consumer items, virtually all of which were imported. When the state sponsored percentage of employment is on a par with private enterprise, this is unsustainable because ultimately the former jobs represent a cost to the country. Sure we all want healthcare and education etc, but these things have to be paid for from receipts. If money doesn't enter the country, funding is reliant on people's savings. The pot only being so big means this is unsustainable in the long term. That is why we need more entrepreneurs in the UK. There wil never be a grandiose body responsible for solving all the problems of the country, rather it has to come from small businesses collectively. Part of the problem here is the EU which by 'generously distributing aid to poorer regions' also ties the grants to conditions regarding business use. A recent example locally being Liverpool, which has to pay back grants received in order for ships to start and finish their voyages in the city. The crux here is that it is all right to disburse funds because an area is suffering from an economic downturn, but if anyone is imaginative enough to try an economic revival, then the receiving body is penalised. The logic is crass. The funds were supplied to aleviate an economic problem, but any potential solution must not include an economically beneficial one. That is a common theme running through state provision. There is no incentive for recipients to change the status quo if they can survive on handouts. That extends to social benefits paid for from the public purse and is why a free lunch must always be questioned. (And incidently is why I believe the tax free band should not be raised, but rather fall to zero, as it's existence also creates a resistance to earn more on the grounds that nobody likes to pay any tax. If you can survive on tax free handouts, many will do just that). The best solution for this or any other country is the creation of private enterprises because they are driven by making money. There is no other reason for somebody to be in business. State organisations on the other hand have no incentive to be efficient. The time honoured promotion based on time served still appears to work very well. An employment position's importance is to a large extent determined by how many people you are responsible for. There is no incentive in the state sector to reduce headcount because public opinion always views a public service as something worth expanding. Thererin lies the dilemma. There is no connection made between public services and their cost in the eyes of many, but as you are aware, they do cost a lot of money to every taxpayer. The big problem private enterprise has is that many on the left have tended towards state employment and disdainfully view private business as corrupt, greedy, or almost feudal in its behaviour. For some reason it is ok to pay out benefits to people but not ok to spend money setting up businesses which in the fullness of time would hopefully repay the money and more. Until government recognises that benefits are unsustainable in the long term as they currently stand and that the best way of funding them is by taxing earned profits, this country will remain in a big hole. The money needs to come from overseas in the form of a trade surplus, otherwise you are merely robbing Peter to pay Paul whilst at the same time reducing the investment pot of the inhabitants of this country. As far as the banks are concerned, I think that Northern Rock should have been allowed to go to the wall. Victor Blank should have been shot for agreeing to merge with HBOS without conducting due diligence and in the process screwing his own bank which hitherto had been quite well run. The money that has been injected into the banks in the form of QE has not been inflationary to date as it has merely been hoarded to bolster reserves under Basel III. If and when the time comes that history is forgotten and they decide there is too much capital held by the banks, I would seriously advise you to buy index linked protection before it happens. The banks are unquestionably too big because they show time after time that there is too little control over operations in diverse sections of those businesses, but that is not the same issue as blaming the cutbacks in the public sector for the banks' past excesses. The amount of money made by banks is not excessive either in my view. Estimated combined profits this year are forecast at £35bn for Barclays, Lloyds, RBS, HSBC and Standard Chartered, but roughly £20bn of that is accounted for by the last two who do most of their business overseas in Asia. Do you want to penalise them for making money abroad. The two sick men, RBS and Lloyds will probably make less than £8bn combined, which is not a huge amount when put into perspective against the total value of transactions. Reducing the UK element of the profits to say half that total would represent profits of about 1% of UK GDP, not a large amount given many of the transactions will past through their books. Not many businesses could survive on a such a low profit relative to turnover. The solution for this or any other country is to have a positive trade balance and let someone else finance your spending on the little luxuries in life. Knowing that we can't all be in the black the best we can hope for is a worldwide collective oscillation around parity, but this country has long run a structural deficit. The deficit is money that goes to our foreign suppliers and is lost to this country for good. If you have indigenous industries, at least the money is recycled and imports reduced. In the 80s the typical yearly deficit was in single figure billions, today we do that in a month, every month. The people in this country have to come to their senses and recognise that no foreign country is going to give them their free lunch, it has to be earned. That is not naivety, just a recognition that the solution lies in our own hands in the form of import substitution, exports and a tad less reliance on the nebulous free lunch.

Been using Debbie's grading scale...Very F**ked to Extremely F**ked! 5mithyg clearly has choice crap. However, one cannot fault his description that it would stand out very well in the purchaser's collection. Maybe he's a reincarnation of the guy in Cornwall who used to have this sort of material by the bucketload. Can't remember his id though (cdsteve(?) or something like that.