Rob

The best reference is probably Nelson's, 'Obsidional Money of the Great Rebellion 1642-1649', published in about 1905, but reprinted in 1976. The ISBN for this is 0 903681 06 4. No they aren't unique.

Could be writing at their house in France. They can disappear for a few weeks at a time to work undisturbed.

I'll second what Richard is saying. I'm currently working on the Carey commission output and trying to assign different issues to specific places and times. For most of the coinage the picture is reasonably straightforward, but when you have some documentary evidence (now lost!) that says 'Rude the Coyner struck coins from 277 ounces of plate at Hereford in Oct/Nov 1644', how are you supposed to assign that to a specific issue? First of all, 277 ounces of plate would only make between 500 & 600 halfcrowns, which was the main denomination of provincial coins struck. A survival rate of well under 1% immediately tells you that there may be one or two examples extant or possibly none, but more would be very fortunate for the researcher. Some have a better survival rate - e.g. the provincial unites were probably presentation pieces and so kept by the recipient implying a much better percentage remaining intact, but the majority of dies used across the period are only known from a handful of coins to three figures in isolated cases. As for the value of unique pieces, it is as always determined by supply and demand. There will frequently be a premium of sorts to be paid for a rare/unique type within a series whether common or scarce, but nothing like the premium attached to a universally almost unobtainable series. My Shrewsbury D23 halfcrown has a known population of 1. The reverse die, which is the rare bit, is only known from another coin where the die is paired with a shilling obverse, but that is in a museum. The premium for this coin is about a third over that of a commoner, but still fairly rare D22 in the same grade. The price however is only 5% or so of some indisputably commoner Scarborough pieces. i.e it is the mint rarity that drives the market. At the stratospheric levels of Scarborough coinage, there will always be a handful of people willing to pay a premium to get their hands on an example and then it's a case of who blinks first. The question of soldiers' pay is an interesting one. The daily rate for a horse and man was 2/6d, for a foot soldier and gun 8d to 1/- ish. It varied throughout the period. Most Royalist forces were mounted, so halfcrowns are the commonest denomination. The local population was levied and the contribution distributed amongst the troops. Coin would be used first and any plate collected made into coin as required. Consequently there are no fixed ratios of denominations corresponding to the rates of pay.

:lol: I know, I know - we think of a size then double it Poppycock, ask any good fisherman, he'd tell you categorically that you are wrong there! I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

:lol: I know, I know - we think of a size then double it That'll be the lighthouse at Alexandria then. What a big boy, Mr P.

Would the extra price be anything to do with provenance, it's the coin featured in the Spink catalogue! I love it, and I guess if you wanted one, this would have to be the one! The Scarborough coinage must surely be an easy and worthwhile coin for the Chinese to get their hands on. Just wished I had 58k handy at the time for a safe bet such as this one! Not at all. How do you sell as genuine and to whom (your average ebay buyer aside), something that is known to only exist with one or two examples, the whereabouts of which are well documented. Things like that are virtually immune from Chinese interference. You also have the well documented provenance with illustrations going back 100 years. Again from the 1903 Murdoch sale catalogue, this coin.

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.