Rob

Applicants can pick five universities to apply to. I think each of her choices has a good reputation and offers positives. Oxford has the advantage of being known worldwide, handy as she's doing languages and wants to travel. Plus accomodation is cheap(er)! Personally, I liked Nottingham as they seem to have thought more about how to arrange the year abroad and charge less for it. But in the end it has to be somewhere she feels comfortable, I guess and the few days spent at interview will give her a chance to find out a bit more from current students. My daughter finished at Nottingham last year and I know a few others who also went there - all spoke enthusiastically of their time there, but all were into medicine or sciences. I don't know any of her former schoolfriends who did languages, so wouldn't like to offer an opinion, but as long as they are red brick universities she'll be ok.

Yes. I'm mostly proud of the fact that she has confidence in her abilities. She has offers from other universities so I'm sure will end up somewhere decent, but one from Oxford would be nice! Depends on what she wants to do. If Oxford or wherever offers the best course or is run by the person with the best reputation in her chosen field, then that is where she should aim for.

That's good. She has passed the first test by actually applying. Strange as it may seem, historically some of the courses aren't oversubscribed to the extent that similar courses at other universities are because fewer potential students apply thinking they will be rejected on ability or whatever. OK, it might be the difference between 5 or 6 times oversubscribed compared to 9 or 10, but the minds of some students and presumably their peers and teachers constitute a bit of a problem in this area. It mostly boils down to self belief.

Well it has 2 bids which I assumed was from a couple of his mates, but one is from a big gun so perhaps it would stand a closer look. Given the unillustrated side is the one that usually has the bad faults, it might be worth a punt to see how bad things can really get.

Part of the problem here is that Spink can never be more than a general guide. It states quite clearly that the indicated price is for the commoonest type. If you get a rarity though, the price may exceed that listed many fold. If you are into anything even vaguely esoteric, the only solution is to do your homework. So true regarding Spink base pricing, a prime example of this that I know of is Spink 2766, the 1a3 type Charles I half crown is found with the cross calvary mint mark on (for what I have seen) 95% of the coins (about 20% lightweights) available, so while still a scarce coin the 'book' price is a good guide for this coin, but the negro head mark also listed under 2766 is known on only 3 coins held in private hands whilst the castle on only 2 known privately, compare this to the same mark on the type 1b (with plume- S.2767) it becomes very clear how rare these coins are but only recognized with further study. So while the Spink guide is well regarded it's worth remembering it is just that 'a guide' The same principle applies to most Spink numbers where it covers a range of marks because one mark is invariably more or less common than the next. You and Tom will probably remember the E2/3 I picked up about 5 years ago with the tun mark, over crown on the obverse. We are still on 5 straight tuns and 2 over crowns in total despite much catalogue searching and racking of brains. Compared with the number of bells and crowns available with the plume over shield reverse, a single figure number is peanuts.

Part of the problem here is that Spink can never be more than a general guide. It states quite clearly that the indicated price is for the commoonest type. If you get a rarity though, the price may exceed that listed many fold. If you are into anything even vaguely esoteric, the only solution is to do your homework. I quite like patterns and proofs, I also collected halfpenies and shillings as preferred denominations. Spink list those items found in the sets together with a handful of other items, but the entries are patchy and the lists inconsistent. Supposedly they don't include patterns, but then list the 1807 prof 1/2d, which is of course a pattern as it was never produced at Soho. To take this point further, they list prices in FDC, but in the case of the 1807 silver and gold proof 1/2ds, neither of these coins (both of which appear to be unique) are FDC. They are both better than EF, but not mint state, so why not quote the prices paid for the real thing? It is both a mess and a minefield out there, and the only safe way is to be self-sufficient.

People seem to forget that book prices may or may not be relevant. Just because Spink says it should be a certain price, doesn't mean it is correct. Any given price can be over or under reality - you simply have to do your homework to find out what is an appropriate amount to bid. Some salerooms realise higher prices than others, but that may reflect the confidence that bidders have in the cataloguing, or alternatively, some auction houses build up a reputation in a particular field. The location of the sale will also be determined by the contents. You only ever get general foreign sales in this country, but if you want to collect the coinage of Baden-Wurttemburg for exampe, you would go to Germany for a sale. This means that higher or lower prices may be realised for what is nominally the same thing depending on the location. I don't see why you wouldn't put in an absentee bid because you will either win it or lose it. If you know what prices are in general, then whether you win will depend on the demand in the room on the day. If you don't win it doesn't cause a major problem because you can always try for the next one. If you don't get a rare and desirable piece because your bid was too miserly, then tough. If you know something is worth more than book and you want it, then bid it up because you may rest assured someone else will. If you are confident in the cataloguer, then the rest is up to you.

And I would agree with him, don't get too focused on the price books, if you are telling me that compared to auction houses on a specific coin, similar grade coins are selling for less on ebay, then buy them on ebay if you want one, and sell them through the auction house if you have one to sell I think it is too easy to assume that you are comparing similar items. But if you are comparing similar items the above guidance would make perfect sense It's just that on eBay you always have that nagging doubt that what you are bidding on isn't all it's claimed to be. Sure you can always try returning items, but it's hassle you can do without, so you don't bid strongly unless you are certain of what is on offer. By definition that means a common coin can always be bought elsewhere when you see one and are happy with the price/grade as seen in the hand. A real rarity will be recognised as a particular example with a likely provenance of sorts and so if two people are armed with the same info you have a real competition, otherwise it's caveat emptor. If you have done your homework, you will be aware of the selling prices for this coin or other examples, but if in doubt you will nearly always err on the side of caution - that's just common sense.

This is by far the best policy in any case. Baldwins, DNW and St. James' all have viewing before the sale on the day, so if you want to see specific lots in the hand, then turn up at 8 o'clock and check the ones of interest. Spink don't have viewing on the day, so must be viewed beforehand. Most provincial auctions have pre-sale viewing, though the sheer quantity of dross in the bulk lots makes it a full day's job to sort through in any case. Thankfully, a bulk lot in the major rooms is typically limited to a handful of coins in Fine to VF with a few defects i.e. creased, chipped, worn or just plain ugly. Seeing the coins gives you the advantage of only bidding on what you want. If you see a coin that would disappoint you should it be won, then don't bid. This certainly reduces unwanted purchases.

And I would agree with him, don't get too focused on the price books, if you are telling me that compared to auction houses on a specific coin, similar grade coins are selling for less on ebay, then buy them on ebay if you want one, and sell them through the auction house if you have one to sell I think it is too easy to assume that you are comparing similar items. Rarely do you find low to average grade lots in the major sales whereas on eBay they are the norm irrespective of what grade is claimed. You find that book prices or better apply in the saleroom simply because you aren't working with a complete unknown (or at least not to the same extent, nor as likely), nor in general is the grade likely to be out by as much as half a grade - certain places excepted. That gives people more confidence to bid higher, plus if an auction lot is misdescribed, then you can send it back just as you can with any reputable dealer. Prices on ebay seem to be based on a two pronged approach. The first is that any high grade claimed is more than likely suspect and so the item is priced down accordingly. At the bottom end, you find higher than expected prices, probably because Spink etc only price grades down to fine and so the direst item seen must therefore be fine. Using this assumption, it is easy to see that VF can easily be unc in the eyes of the average punter. Common things in less than unc don't sell at all well in auctions and are better sold on ebay where people pay over the odds on what is a minor outlay of some tens of pounds. The two venues genuinely cater to different markets. A currency KGV shilling would never make a single lot in an auction if only EF. In fact only rare dates would have any chance in UNC, with most being consigned to multiple lots, but that EF shiling would be your standard bread and butter on eBay. A rule of thumb seems to be that it has to have a fighting chance of making £40-50 hammer to be considered for a single lot.

Looks Roman given the amount of wear. Must be at least 2000 years of it there and not the 200 claimed.

I believe I should agree with the first as I have been made aware of an instance where this was witnessed and the info passed to the winning bidder (needless to say the hammer was at the max). Heritage I am not sure about as I have won things below my maximum on most occasions. I have never won a lot at Noble below my maximum; something that has happened to others as well.

There might be a small premium to book for some varieties, but on the whole there are so many micro-varieites that it is really only the preserve of the specialist die student. Missing stops or bars in the legend are frequently down to die fill, and so unless it can be shown that the missing feature was on the die in the first place, it isn't really a significant variety. Conversely, where you have say an A for a V or one letter struck over another different character is important because there is added detail which can only be due to either an incorrect character or a die flaw. Flaws have irregular edges and so it is possible to discriminate between the two. Personally, I take the view that varieties should have been on the original die and should not be the result of wear and tear. However, not all will agree with me.

Is this one of these? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HENRY-VIII-GROAT-SILVER-HAMMERED-COIN-/290633233622?pt=UK_Coins_BritishHammered_RL&hash=item43ab1734d6 That is the second one along in the gallery - same "coin".

Which is precisely what I've been saying all along. The only long term solution for any indebted country is to export its problems elsewhere in the form of a trade surplus. Wealth recycled within a country can be broadly neutral as incomes are spent locally, though there is still a drain on the national resources from the non-wealth generating section of the economy, for which read government departments and services.

Why on earth does it have 5 bids up to £3.99 already? Intrinsic value based on the spot copper price is 2.3p ish, less refining costs to remove the crud. Collectable it is not.

Although I believe that some of the problems today stem from greed, I think the bigger problem lies with the politicians. Rarely do you get a government minister who is a complete master of their department with adequate experience in their chosen field. Politicians want to be liked by everyone because the people deliver their votes and the party offering the most sweeties usually gets the majority. Left or right, neither is exempt from abrogating their responsibilities to society. Margaret Thatcher is still slated for making people less caring for others by rolling back the state's influence and privatising state resources. I agree that certain utilities could and should have remained intact, though whether public ownership would have allowed for improved efficiency in the workplace is a moot point. When there is no profit and loss account to consider and a job is effectively for life with promotion/pay level increases at predetermined intervals, you have a cozy existence in the workplace where there is no incentive to rock the boat. People become very complacent in this environment. By comparison, 12 years of Labour government led to an explosion of spending over receipts which was mainly focussed on consumption, whilst at the same time ignoring the wealth generating capacity of the workforce. You can't have a booming economy based on an explosion of red ink. Mr Average UK thought this was wonderful, lapped it up and spent much on imported consumables. There is no one isolated reason for this country's present state. People want to consume and don't have the self discipline to wait for something until you can afford it. Our society today is now far too polarised, with many people living off the state and having no incentive to replace benefits with income. Those people working in wealth creating employment can rightly expect to reap the rewards that come with capital available for distribution. This polarisation is divisive because the state can not and should not provide a standard of living on benefits equal to someone generating wealth which also gets taxed to provide for the other side of the equation. The question of community spirit and its lack of today is also a product of technological advance, educational opportunities and ambition, not only greed. Today we can travel much further than our forefathers in much more efficient aircraft that fly faster, or get from A to B domestically in much less time than when I was a child. Improved transport links allow people to live further from the workplace. Most families have a car or two. Holidays to the Med only cost a few hundred pounds. When I went to university in the 1970s, approximately 10% of 6th form leavers took this route. Ten years before the number was 5%, yet today this number is 40% or so. There you meet people from other cities or countries and your eyes are opened accordingly seeing new opportunities for employment and travel. None of this was available to the generation before mine where marrying someone from the same area, or even the same street was the norm. People moving away from the area they were brought up in inevitably leads to a breakdown in communities when the members are less likely to be related and to have shared common experiences. VAT is a bit of a red herring when you are talking about energy because it isn't charged at the full rate. Energy prices are much more closely tied to fuel costs. It is also important that energy companies stay solvent. Nobody cares if a fashion outlet goes down the tube, but if an energy company's workforce was locked out because the business had folded then this would have an effect on supplies to everyone. Power cuts might ensue depending on the amount of spare capacity in the system at the time. Everyone likes a whipping boy, but the incessant complaints about banks are a little disingenuous. Banks lend money to individuals or companies based on a plan which can be either personal or business. Any loans taken out should reflect the ability of the borrower to pay the interest and capital back. 100% mortgages or fully funding any other loan applications have always been wrong in my view because the borrower has put no equity into the asset purchase. Banks are always accused of not lending to small businesses or individuals, but clearly they are not short of liquidity because the interest rates on offer for deposits are very low. If they needed to raise capital over and above the current rate, then the interest rates offered would have to rise until sufficient capital was raised. Banks are just like any other business, i.e. if they can see a way to make an acceptable return on their investment they will do so. The problem they have is a lack of clarity regarding the borrower's future income and cashflow. Just as few on this forum would buy a coin if the image was dodgy, or at least only with a large safety margin, so it is reasonable for banks to be cautious when lending. They have also been required to increase their tier 1 capital by the regulators. This is where the money has gone to injected under quantitative easing. Banks are only businesses and should be allowed to fail just like any other company. If someone has all their eggs in one basket (ie one bank), then you can't legislate for stupidity. Somewhere, someone has to take responsibility for their own actions. Economies always come out of recession by people spending more money than they previously did, but the flaw in this is that currently that money would be from increased borrowing leading to even more debt. That isn't a solution to the problem, more another spadeful of soil. There are other ways of helping the economy though. If you have a choice, buy goods or food produced in this country. Import replacement is just one way of improving the lot of the taxpayer because it wil be produced by people who pay taxes and so the money gets recycled. Money retained within the country that goes round and round is to everyone's benefit. Money spent on imported goods has left the system for good unless it can be replaced by exporting home produced items. That is why a positive balance of payments is so important. People could also grow their own food where possible. Potatoes will grow on even the most run-down estate in a way that shopping trollies and empty drink cans never will. Germany has been successful because its folk have a much stronger work ethic than in this country. It rebuilt itself after WW2 and the results are there for all to see. In Germany you have to save for 10 years or more to get a loan to build your own house. The loan has preferential rates, but more importantly you have a significant equity stake. Nothing wrong in that. In parallel there is a tendency to buy quality goods for the home that cost twice as much but last at least twice as long. German companies produce these goods, and in general will be the first choice of the German consumer. Germany with its products, ethics and attitudes is a blueprint that this country could do well to copy.

Just because large companies make billions of pounds in profit, that doesn't mean to say they are greedy, nor that the return is excessive. To get an example, I just had a look at the latest figures for Scottish & Southern and the important numbers are as follows. Turnover £28.33bn Gross profit £3.19bn Profit before tax £2.11bn Net profit £1.50bn I don't know if these figures are representative of the industry as a whole, but a pre-tax profit of under 7.5% is hardly an excessive return, and the treasury benefitted to the tune of £607.2m from taxation. There is no point being in business unless you make money. Taking the anti-capitalist viewpoint whereby no profit should be made, then the shareholders would be better off folding the company and putting the money in the bank - then we can all live happily ever after in our mud huts with none of the capitalist paid-for benefits such as medical facilities, social welfare, transport, education, etc. Company taxation pays for some of the services that everyone wants, with the rest paid for by government IOUs. The latter is not sustainable. All those who want greater funding (or even the preservation of current levels of benefits) would be better off backing businesses instead of looking to see who they can strangle with taxation next. Tax receipts spent are money that's gone up in smoke, almost invariably on consumption. A sustainable business model can produce taxable profits, the taxation of which can provide sustainable benefits for all. That is the only viable way forward if there is to be any hope of maintaining this country's living standards. If a sole trader made the same rate of return on turnover, in order to earn the UK average salary of about £25K he would have to invoice £1/3m. Multi-billion pound companies make multi-billion pound profits, but the important number is the percentage return, not the cash number.

The difficulty in getting people to agree on grades is exemplified by this coin. In various sales down the years it has been assigned completely different grades as follows Montagu 516, very fine Hamilton-Smith 95, an unusually good specimen Lockett 2460, mint state Willis 298, very fine Lloyd Bennett, good very fine or better. For my part, I'd give it nearly EF because the amount of friction is minimal. It has flat bits, but the traces of friction to the high points which have removed the toning show little actual wear (or as Peter mentioned in a different thread - as struck can be almost flat!). A comparison with the two other decent examples of this type (Morr. 1645 F-7) shows the inconsistencies you have to deal with even with coins struck from the same die pair. In the case of these two, different parts are struck up better or worse. And all that is compounded whereby the reverse die is too big for a half crown! Most hammered coins are curate's eggs.

On the whole, low quality silver isn't an issue until the Henry VIII debasement, though clearly any emergency issue has been produced under less than ideal circumstances. The problem of bits falling off is usually due to the digging tool rather than silver quality or thickness. Ghosting doesn't affect the grade because it is clearly seen for what it is. Obviously, the thinner the flan, the more prone it is to ghosting, but if all the unaffected areas are clear, then you can assign a grade with confidence. Ok, here's an example with a bit of everything. Grade this. It has flat bits, well struck up bits, striking splits, very slight double striking and isn't round.

The problem with grading hammered is that there is usually a requirement to qualify the grade at some point because of the uneven strike. Double striking is common and depth of strike all come into play. It is a field where XXX for issue has some bearing on the grade. Although it is nice to go strictly on wear when giving a grade, the vagaries of human inconsistency lead to a lot of subjective input. A similar depth of strike to both sides occurs on occasions, but more often than not one side will be stronger. This manifests itself quite well with Elizabeth I shillings where the portrait is frequently weak whereas the lions' faces are clear. The larger the coin, the more likely it is that you find areas of weakness interspersed with what appears to be fully struck detail. It is even possible to have a coin as struck with virtually no detail, meaning that grading doesn't lend itself to a volume such as Red's milled book. It would be possible to provide a few visual guidelines at the risk of it being limited to a handful of contributors, but the images would soon show the inconsistencies you have to deal with. Far better that people do the research to recognise what is normal for the issue in their chosen speciality and that means lots of images captured off the web together with a fair sprinkling of auction catalogues for the better quality items. For low grade references, eBay as usual will provide all the detail you could ever need.

What about no. 20? Presumably the senior member of the family, but it does make you wonder what happened to numbers 1 to 19. Perhaps they've been subjected to a spot of digital euthanasia.

It's no surprise that US collectors take a liking to British coins when other parts of the former empire have many collectors in this field. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa have all produced good collections of British, so why not the US? Americans are big into their roots, so there is also a healthy collecting base of many European countries as well as other parts of the world. Irish and Scottish coins are similarly popular. There is a parallel collecting base interested in the investment side of numismatics which becomes noticeable the wealthier the country, but the collector is well represented in all fields. As has been said previously, some investors inadvertently find out that collecting can be fun too and so pursue the hobby.

Today seems as good a place to start as any. So many people sharing the same birthday. I'm not sure why they bother. mohiboliv01 (26), saymajaan22 (26), najfalinia (26), Gollapeebb (26), porshi (26), tasfiamoni (26), Labonna (26), saymajaan20 (26), janemanroba (26), saymajaan21 (26)

The key to a good catalogue is not to put too much info in it. You only have to look at the early Anglo-Saxon sceats to see than an attempt to be more comprehensive has resulted in a section that is difficult to use. People want to see prices, but any attempt to be comprehensive is likely to result in rejection by the reader. Basically avoid any ext. rare references, but don't attempt to be over complicated.