Rob

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. Rhetorical question, but why do people who are rational and live within their means as far as their own household is concerned suddenly throw financial common sense out of the window when it comes to public expenditure. The clarion calls of "Tax the rich" will always appeal to the have nots and many of those on the left, but sequesting the assets of those who on the whole are the main generators of business wealth is not the right way to go about it. Until the left learns to back business and the creation of private wealth generated through exporting this country's products to foreigners, this country is on a hiding to nothing. Yes, that means acknowledging that profit must not be a dirty word. There is no such thing as a free lunch and so if you want benefits for the citizens of this country, then come up with a sustainable plan for them whereby funding is supplied by taxing the profits of ongoing trade surplusses with A, B & C. If this country is in the s**t, then s**t we need to export until the level is low enough to keep our heads above water. The banks may have lent irresponsibly to developers and whatever, but the biggest problems are going to be sovereign loans. Countries borrow on many multiples of the loans even to large multi-nationals. The only problem is that politicians spend most of their time and government income bribing their electorates to ensure a further ride on the gravy train. This is typically presented as "investment", but is rarely is applied to projects involving private enterprises exporting goods to others, rather it is a way of ensuring that your mates are looked after at the expense of the taxpayer. You can build roads, railways, runways and other infrastructure projects all you like, but none of these will generate income from exports. We need to make the pots and pans that are currently imported. Replace imports with home produced goods. Export the same if you can. When governments are forced to take steps to balance the books they introduce unpopular plans by removing the free lunch, get voted out, and the whole unhappy cycle starts all over again. We've seen it year-in, year-out in Europe. Maximum deficit levels which are broken year after year on the grounds that this year, last year and every year for the forseeable future is/was/will be an exceptional year meaning the rules can be broken ad-infinitum. Until the west gets a real bloody nose to awaken it from the cozy existence it has embraced for the last 60 years, the penny won't drop. If people want social benefits, then set up an industrial and fiscal structure that will deliver year on year rather than introducing things by popular demand without giving due thought to funding. You cannot have a balanced economy based on spending money you neither have, nor are willing to generate. Unless Johnny Foreigner buys the goods and services of this country, people had better scale back their visions of the ongoing free lunch. The biggest danger in the current setup are the politicans who would rarely put country before party re-election - not the banks. Rant over.

I'm not saying it is a proof, rather that if the field has been polished (by hand) in the past, you will get focussed reflections off it if the optics are aligned. The metal involved wouldn't matter as long as the field was smooth to begin with. Any polishing would enhance the reflections.

I think you'll find (joke grading apart) that the gold is not losing its colour. It's the effect of photo'ing through the slab, and if you look at the second pair of pictures taken from a greater distance, the gold shows its true colour. To be honest Peck, the 2nd pair of pictures, and i'm now talking about the OBV one, does'nt look as shite as it is close up, so it must be the EF stated on the coin. No seriously, i was joking there. I don't personally believe that it's the slab, why would the REV slabbed picture show some greying around 2 parts of the coin and not the complete coin? Why would'nt the same greying or discolouring not show on the OBV if it were just the slab? The greying will probably be reflection from the field, which given the obvious wear to the obverse suggests it has been cleaned in the past. If the field is concave rather than planar you can get focussing of the light at certain distances, just like a mirror. An undulating field will show the same effect in places. Here is an example of the effect done on a scanner and a photo of the same for comparison. The reverse is prooflike in the hand but as usual for machine made coins of this era is bowed giving the focussing effect. The obverse, which is convex, doesn't show the effect as the light is dispersed. The coin in the hand has wall to wall lustre.

American AU is our EF, but no way on gods green earth is that EF. Nonsense, of course it is. Any idiot can see it's Err Fine with the reverse probably Good Err Fine.

I think that's very true. Towards the end of 1981 I was working at Philip Morris in Richmond VA. First day in the lab and doing the introductions when one person expalined where to go in the locality. Shopping mall 3 blocks down, Macdonalds or Burger King there for a meal(sic), cinema complex next door, various bars this way and that and then the church is turn right at the lights. When I explained that I didn't use them it was like being the star attraction in a freak show. "Hey, there's this guy here doesn't go to church". "That's weird". It was most bizarre and like you I find the religious norm (in the parts so inclined) quite a turn-off in a place that is otherwise nice to visit - just couldn't live there. It's not all like that though.

The Rosette-Mascle issue is probably the commonest of the Henry VI types. Full round examples come up quite frequently and with patience in top grade too.

Well, first of all it shouldn't have two obverses. My first reaction was whether the dies used were the same for both sides which would suggest a cast which has been joined, but the die fill suggests not. I would certainly expect it to show some sort of join around the edge. What is the diameter? a sixpence should weigh 3.0g in theory and be about 25mm diameter. If less than this - say 19 or 20mm, then it will be two threepences joined. Hammered coins are actually quite thin, so you should be able to see a join unless it has been filed down.

What, on his own? The most telling statistic to explain why City won the title this year was because they weren't reliant on a main scorer. For every successful team there was always at least a couple of goalscorers in double figures apart from the main man and a healthy single figure contribution from many team members. Arsenal this year were van Persie and ? Liverpool, United and everybody else appear to be in the same boat - they have to stop relying on their main striker and the other outfield players make their required contribution.

I had a period when emails were apparently disappearing into thin air. It coincided with an intermittent connection to the internet which my son traced to our IP address changing at random times. We are with BT. Don't know if that helps, but a lot of things were going awol akin to the above symptoms.

Religion is the cancer in society, continuing to foster warfare and a host of other ills under a feeble veneer of legitimacy. When will we all wake up to reality? Most of us have which is why we tend to be tolerant and indifferent to religion on the whole. The big problem with all religions is they will never acknowledge that another one has a good idea. Everything is black and white, for us or against us. It is the root cause of immigrant minorities failing to integrate and often the fundamental reason behind racial tension. Although not the full story, when a religion forbids you to inter-marry without the outsider adopting the other's religion, you have just ensured another generation of resentment by outsiders and another course of brickwork added to the wall. There are people who bridge the divide, but they tend to be in the minority and are frequently helped by a degree of affluence. Well, quite. Except for Quakers. Oh, and Buddhists. And Menonites, the Ba'hai, Sikhs, many branches of Hinduism, Taoism, Unitarians, Jains, Sufis, ... um, shall I go on? Ok, point taken. Inappropriate use of the word 'all'. But there are still more than enough of those that are inflexible to drown out the non-aggressive religions. Those religions are still the main reason for a failure to integrate into the general population.

I concur. The only other obvious offender is resources, i.e you have something I want. But that is often a diversionary tactic to deflect the political situation at home or a catalyst to start an internal conflict coupled to political differences.

This weekend is Lockdales sale over 3 days. I can't speak about the bits I haven't looked at, but the English collection selling on Monday is going to find a distinct lack of interest unless there are a lot of very patient potential bidders. There are a large number of Charles I halfcrowns and shillings which are essentially listed in random order. Because both Lockdales and London Coins list things by denomination rather than chronologically (which p's me off no end) there is little continuity in the list. This sale has compounded the problem by listing ........under Parliament, followed by ........... under the King on the grounds that 'the' is later than 'Parliament' alphabetically. The mint marks appear to be random too, so that finding a particular issue is well nigh impossible. I've given up because there are easier catalogues to read and I'm only a couple of decades away from the end of my likely life span. Could be some bargains for those with patience, but bids have to be in by tomorrow and the quality on the whole is, well ....... Both LC and Lockdales list hammered things by ruler's name, so it is quite normal to find a Byzantine coin followed by a Charles II followed by a sceat. It's completely unworkable for those of limited attention span such as myself. Am I the only one who finds this frustrating?

Religion is the cancer in society, continuing to foster warfare and a host of other ills under a feeble veneer of legitimacy. When will we all wake up to reality? Most of us have which is why we tend to be tolerant and indifferent to religion on the whole. The big problem with all religions is they will never acknowledge that another one has a good idea. Everything is black and white, for us or against us. It is the root cause of immigrant minorities failing to integrate and often the fundamental reason behind racial tension. Although not the full story, when a religion forbids you to inter-marry without the outsider adopting the other's religion, you have just ensured another generation of resentment by outsiders and another course of brickwork added to the wall. There are people who bridge the divide, but they tend to be in the minority and are frequently helped by a degree of affluence.

I think we all agree you need some semblance of order, and yes, the separation of raw and slabbed coins to different sections of the catalogue is another gripe here too. Steve, you collect pennies which for whatever reason they have decided to list in date order - quite sensible. I bet that if you wanted to find a 1873 penny, you would look down the list until you came to those beginning 187 and finish once you had passed the date. The bone of contention in the hammered section and the collection is that once a coin becomes undated there is no attention paid to the order in which they are listed. Just as penny collectors would look for different dates, bust types or reverses, so would a hammered shilling collector for the individual bust or reverse types, initial marks or overmarks. Those busts come in a strict listed order as do the initial marks employed. It is simply chronology without the date. The catalogue only manages to sort the lots into the collection or other properties which isn't a very sensible search parameter. If they could sort it by pyx period dates that would help.

That's really interesting, Declan. Two points I note: some streets are partly green and partly orange ~ that must have been difficult. Also, the RUC station is in the green area ~ awkward. I had to go to Belfast on work related business back in 2003, and despite the Good Friday agreement and all the talk of peace, it was obvious that sectarianism was a total way of life on both sides of the divide. Very, very friendly, hospitable and outgoing people, nonetheless, with a great sense of humour, and quite a lot of humour about the sectarianism itself. At one hostelry I went in for a meal, I got talking to a guy who said to me in a quiet voice "SShhhy, I'm the only f***** protestant in this pub, and they don't know" Was a good two weeks, and I was almost sorry to leave. I haven't been there since the troubles have quietened down a lot, but still have memories of just about every visit there. I remember being on the phone to the girlfriend in the early 80s, as the wife was at the time, when she said 'What's that?' - as a large bang sounded, the windows rattled and the building rumbled, but that bang was probably half a mile away. Answer, 'It's a bomb' and then the conversation resumed. I always found it difficult to reconcile the congenital ill-feeling towards the other side. I found the same thing in Boston MA too having given a truthful answer to a question about Northern Ireland. The question was 'How would you stop the fighting in N. Ireland?. The answer was 'Well, you could stop financing it'. There wasn't a happy face the whole length of the bar so I finished my beer and left, and I never got that job in the Diplomatic Corps.

To get your foot in the door it helps if the application is written in English. The number of letters I've received over the years asking if I had any job vacancies, but where the letter approximated to a random selection of English(?) words, beggars belief. If applicants can't be bothered to write in English, it doesn't matter how good their maths is because I wouldn't bother replying. Customers, particularly foreign ones, will almost invariably use good English and so replying in tones akin to the French policeman in 'Allo 'Allo isn't very helpful to an employer. Therein lies the real legacy of the education system in this country over the past few decades whereby people are allowed to write without correction of spelling or grammar.

I think they have probably ordered them on the computer using an ascending or descending sort function because 'Charles I, silver halcrown (sic), Oxford Mint' comes before 'Charles I, silver halfcrown, Bristol Mint'. Some of the others I'm struggling to see why they are as listed. Whatever, it's a simple case of crap quality control and indifference to accuracy because there are a lot of mis-atttributions too.

OK, I can accept that everyone has their own personal preferences, but at least they usually list the denominations in date order. Any semblance of order has been thrown out the window here. Take shillings for example. It kicks off with a Group A, type 1, bust 2 mint mark cross calvary which is the second type issued as described, but the image is a group B, first bust - so the description is wrong. It dates to 1625-6. Next up is a group F, mm.(P) dates to 1643-4. Then a ® of the same issue dates to 1644-5, then back to a Group D, Tower under the King with a crown mark (1635-6), then forward to Star (1640), back to Tun (1636-8), forward to Star again, back to Rose (1631-2). Briot coinage and Exeter issues are incorporated somewhere in the middle of this mess. There is a first issue coin after 40 lots or so, but that's 20 lots after an example of the last mark issued during the reign which post-dates the first by over 20 years. They haven't kept coins with the same marks together either which is as good as ordering the list by drawing the lots out of a hat. But at least the second shilling from last (of over 100 in total) is from the second type issued, so at least we have a correlated use of the word 'second'. It's a complete and utter waste of time and the cataloguer should be shot forthwith.

That's why I said negotiate. The coins tend to be ones you remember quite easily at auction, so you know what his input costs are for any specific piece. You know what he is asking and somewhere in the middle it should be possible to have a meeting of minds. It's a much clearer position than the anonymous VF coin dated 1868 which could have come from anywhere and cost anything. That particular shilling was lot 1914 in Triton XV.

You should be able to knock him down to £130-140K.

69 or 70. Link I've only got his lists for the last 10 years plus a summer 1998. If anyone has any of the missing issues I would be interested in acquiring them. Thanks.

Interesting that their letter to you states "breakdown of machinery" while the actual Report states "fully occupied with gold and silver [issues]". I wonder where the modern Mint gets its information about "breakdown" from? I'd hazard a guess from the 1875 report. The text says that the 1876 coins were contracted out because the equipment was fully occupied striking silver and gold. The number of presses at the Tower mint would have to be investigated, but is likely to have been a minimum of half a dozen, so if a couple of them were unavailable, then sub-contracting the copper would be the logical option security-wise. Also, the Heaton mint was regularly striking coins on the same size blanks, so familiarity with the product wasn't an issue. There were a lot of halfcrowns and shillings coming off the press in 1874 onwards. How long this upsurge in demand lasted I don't know because I don't have the records, but thinking about it, the equipment probably broke down due to the excesses of the previous two years because there was no time for maintenance and a lot of coins produced.

What are the areas that are neither orange nor green - a rare example of humanity happily tolerating and living with others not the same as them?

The 'Patina' things are a pain in the ****, but at no point were they intended to deceive. There are probably 10000+ of various types out there all hidden away. A private venture that played the mint at their own game and they all sold.