Rob

Apparently, this guy received one of these in his change recently. Surely not. link. No jokes about the Welsh being a bit behind the times please.

Considering the huge numbers of these available and consequent low cost given their age, it is surprising that no die study has been made as far as I am aware. If it has been done in the past, the author hasn't publicised it very well!! I don't know what the production was of either denomination, but if the above number is true and you have 21 pairs of shilling dies I would think that you have most of them. An average of 30-35000 ish per die sounds like a reasonable estimate for the expected lifetime of the dies. In 1825, the halfpennies were averaging about 50,000 per die. With an allowance for technological progress over time, 30K plus doesn't sound too far wide of the mark for 1787.

You mean any government from 200 out of the last 250 years? Pretty much so. But as always, SIZE MATTERS That's true! By the way, did you know that the payment on the debts run up by John Major's government were higher than the current debt repayments? So much for 'Britain's credit card is overspent' The danger here is the question of lies, damned lies and statistics. I just read the article where you got your figures from which was hardly a paragon of political neutrality. Public debt rose in the recession of the early 1990's and consequently so did the repayments as there was a concerted attempt to balance the books as the economy came out of the recession. The problem was that Ken Clarke wasn't given the credit due for running a tight ship and rebalancing the books post-Lawson which he was due in my opinion. The FT was emphasising in 1995-6 how important it was for which ever party to form the next government as the economic tea leaves were so favourable. Consequently, when TB came to power he enjoyed the best economic situation for an incoming leader in decades (perhaps even millennia!!). If GB had sat on his hands and done nothing we would still be ok, but as with virtually all politicians, the temptation to bribe the electorate for their votes using their own money proved too much of a pull. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of prudence changed post-2000 to reflect GB's excessive expenditure over income receipts and became yet another acronym - P(ersonal) r(esponsibility for the) u(nfettered) d(estruction) of the E(nglish) n(ational) c(urrency &) e(conomy). I like that one!! The problem was that GB at no point in time embarked on an exercise to balance the finances. Consequently it is easy to pay less back in interest than your predecessor if there is no policy in place to repay debt. You also have to remember that interest rates in 1990 were much higher than they currently are. You are comparing borrowings at double digit rates of interest compared to a fraction of that on recent debt. I know we will agree to disagree on many things of this nature, but don't get me wrong. I'm all in favour of some social benefits as a safety net. If the country was wealthy enough with surplus cash coming in from trade and services supplied to other countries I would advocate spending some of the excess on structural social benefits. The quid pro quo though is that structural benefits require pruning if a structural negative cashflow situation occurs. Sharing is not a one way street, so just as we all want a share of a benefits handout, equally we all get a share of the crap. Indefinite debt financing is not an option because the creditor nations such as China, India, Brazil etc owe the inhabitants of this country nothing. They lend us money; we have to pay it back with interest - lots of it. Ultimately it is the greatest social leveller of all, as their standard of living will rise just as ours must fall until we approach global parity. If you want to buck this trend, you will have to export our problems to another country in the form of goods and services that they pay us for over and above what we import from them. Sorry - I get going too easily. Possible case of topic drift here, so rant over.

Looks like the CGS slabbed one hasn't sold off the site and has been entered into this Sunday's Lockdales sale (lot 203) . If anyone wants a nice one, it would be worth bidding on to see what price they are actually willing to let it go for. The estimate of £80-100 is clearly fishing. If anyone collects sixpences it has to be worth a punt up to the £300 level which is £350ish with premium as there is unlikely to be more than a handful out there.

You mean any government from 200 out of the last 250 years? Pretty much so. But as always, SIZE MATTERS

Found it hiding in the for sale trays. 8 over 7 on the left clearly seen as a straight line above the top of the 8. Not over 7 obviously just an 8.

Nice spoof - get it in the Sun. The smaller the number involved, the easier it is for the readers to get their heads around it. I'll keep quiet about the 50000 presentation packs, 20000 Ag proofs, 3500 Ag piedforts, the gold pieces....

What you say makes sense. I was just struggling to see the first letter as a G. It's late. That should have said I was struggling to see the first letter as a G without the second letter being an L. The second letter can only be an L if the first letter is a C, but the style of the C after Dot on the first ticket is not the same. The initial loop starts on the curve of the C in this instance and on the ticket below. The first letter on the other sides all start with the initial loop consistently to the left of the curve which would suggest a different letter. Taking the left curve down and through to the top of the upstroke and back to the base again as a letter would be a good fit for a G in my opinion.

Scan below. The one on the left is the first type with the deeper hollow behind the beard (much more obvious in the hand). The right hand one is the later shallow type. The first was found with both I of GEORGIVS to bead and space, so any 1911 1/- with the I to space is the deeper cut (Davis obv.1). Davies obv. 2 is the same effigy with the I to bead. The shallow neck was introduced in 1911 (Davies obv. 3) and adopted as standard from 1912 onwards, so any coin from 1912 until the end of 925 silver is this type.

Any use? The left says Baldwin 1948. The next three Briggs(sic) - M A Brigg sold his gold & silver in May 1939 and the coppers 4 years later. A really nice collection. The last says Spink. All three were popular sources for Rogers.

Glens were an auction house and not a dealer, so you wouldn't expect to get tickets from them for individual coins. The other sides of the tickets show the letters B, C, D & F. Ignore VICTORIA which is printed capitals, the joined up writing is the relevant bit. On the top left ticket, the first letter after the capital looks to be an a. The last letter has to be something with a tail i.e. g, q, y, z. Seaby ends in y, but I'm struggling to make the first letter an S. The last two letters fit tz well with the cross of the t starting the top of the z. That is my reasoning.

I agree with the translation so far offered. I think you've done a bit better than you realise. It looks to me like the reverse says Gantz and the price. A quick check of the Gantz catalogue for 23-7/6/1941 shows that the Rev. W L Gantz of Stanstead Abbots, Herts (d.1940) had only a handful of coppers in the Glens sale, but Manville and Robertson say that a portion of the collection was purchased by Seaby in 1926 and other coins sold privately in addition to the two sales in 1941 (the first sale was Ancients). If I am correct in deciphering the scribble, the price of 6d each suggests a private transaction with Gantz, though it could equally have come from Seaby. Rogers was quite heavily into small coppers in the 1920s as he wrote an article on the Chas.1 rose farthings in the BNJ vol.18 (1925-6), though the base coinage in general was his main sphere. I note that lot 1481 had a 1799 farthing, though at this time I doubt if anyone worried about the number of berries in the wreath when cataloguing as it is part of a lot of 14. The difference in style compared to my ticket could be accounted for by 20-30 years between the two styles which as a gift from Peck in 1957 was obviously written near the end of his life.

I think the only area in which you need play the waiting game is bullion value or close to items. Top grade pieces will always command a premium to bullion and rightly so with the exception of modern isues which are rarely encountered in worn condition and generally found only as collectables of bullion value in the secondary market. The intrinsic value of silver coins is not a primary consideration for anything vaguely collectable. The current fashion for snapping up the low grade silver is entirely driven by bullion values which attracts far more people than there are collectors. From the collecting point of view, individual denominations are varyingly popular at any point in time. Historically, the most popular pieces were the largest - probably driven by the ability of people to easily identify what they were holding. Conversely smaller coins suffer a greater likelihood of being passed over as a casual glance will probably not lead to the mental recognition of the item. So hammered farthings will not be as popular as milled ones for example which retain a sentimental attraction. However, outside of bullion, the majority of prices are driven by collector pressure being as they are well in excess of the scrap price. Whilst I haven't plotted out a value/time graph for individual denominations, their values relative to each other have broadly stayed in the same ratios over quite a long period of time. Any divergence from this relationship tends to be the result of collector pressure to acquire what is perceived to be a real rarity, be it the huge prices currently seen for minor varieties or the premiums paid for specific types in the inter war years. In the case of the former they are probably rare because nobody apart from a few individuals really cares about the actual variety detail, but greed dictates that everybody wants to find one to sell and so they will be found in the fullness of time. In the case of the latter, communications were considerably more difficult and so the awareness of relative numbers was the driving force. A crown with only 3 or 4 known examples might have sold for £20-30 in the inter-war years relative to a common issue selling for £2-3 each. Now however that price differential has been largely eradicated because we now know there are several times the number of pieces extant than was thought at the time. You do get fluctuations between denominations which I would suggest are driven by new collectors entering the market and looking for something cheap to collect at the bottom end value-wise whilst being aesthetically attractive enough for the collector to want to look at them. The top end is driven as always by a relatively few individuals with deep pockets. Most of these are successful in business being driven by personal ambition - a trait which in all probability will carry over into their collecting habits with the desire to acquire a better collection than the competition. With the accumulation of large amounts of data over time, there is also a better appreciation of what is genuinely rare and what is not. This is a moving attribute and always open to the possibility of having to be revised as a result of hoard finds. Today we have information that our predecessors could only have dreamed of, but we all have to bear in mind that we too do not have the definitive answers to the various factors that shape demand and hence prices. As with any asset category, bubbles will always exist at some point in time. Prices fell off a cliff in the early '80s for example following what was probably the biggest bull run in numismatic history in the 1970's when the government was failing to balance its books, giving in to inflationary wage demands, living beyond their means...... Sounds familiar?

I think it's called a 'tile nibbler'. Get it for a couple of quid or so from any tile shop, B & Q etc. No, it's not a tile nibbler. You need a sharp pair of edges on the jaws to get through the plastic. It's a heavy duty cross cutter.

It looks like clashed dies to me which happens when the two dies come together without a blank between them, so leaving an impression of either the obverse on the reverse die or vice-versa depending on which die was the harder of the two.

Says Rob quickly hiding the hammer and chisel! Personally, I prefer a hacksaw around the seal... less splintery bits! No hammer and chisel for me - this is the tool of choice. It nibbles away the seal around the edge. The only one it has difficulty with is the early fat NGC holder. CGS come apart like a dream, followed by PCGS, then NGC in order of ease.

The 8 is cut over a 7 either because the 7 is a mistake, or in the case of successive years as here, usually because the die was not worn out at the date changeover and so used on the grounds of economics. Additionally, sometimes the underlying year had dies produced but not used. Rather than throw the dies away they were cut with the new date or initial mark to ensure they were compliant with other dies and put to use. Hi so are there two of that type (1888 1888/7) ? and if so how do i tell the difference . thanks You've chosen a funny one there, because all 1888 shillings are actually 1888/7. If you have an 1888 shilling, get yourself a cheap 30x jewellers loupe, and have a close look under good light. That'll show you what you're looking for - a clear overdate, if the grade is high enough. Not all 1888s are over 7. The straight 1888 is considerably scarcer, but does exist and is not rare as such. If I can dig both of them out I'll post a comparison as the 8/7 is quite obvious, consequently the straight 8 is equally obvious in the hand.

The 8 is cut over a 7 either because the 7 is a mistake, or in the case of successive years as here, usually because the die was not worn out at the date changeover and so used on the grounds of economics. Additionally, sometimes the underlying year had dies produced but not used. Rather than throw the dies away they were cut with the new date or initial mark to ensure they were compliant with other dies and put to use.

None of the copper coins in slabs bought for myself have come out in spots. The slabs have a problem though - they tend to crack and split and come apart into a few pieces.

Davies is British Silver Coins since 1816 by P J Davies. It goes into more detail on die differences than ESC (English Silver Coinage since 1649) which only has the most obvious varieties, but covers a shorter period. Your interests are labelled as shillings, pennies and halfpennies, but the books most suited to you will depend on the dates covered and so only some of the books mentioned will be of use. For pennies and halfpennies then the bible is Peck which covers 1558-1963 in the second edition (1964). Slightly more specialisation is found in Freeman's The Bronze Coinage of Great Britain (2nd.ed 1985 or 2006 reprint). Pennies are studied in depth in Michael Gouby's The British Bronze Penny 1860-1970. Hammered halfpennies are covered by Paul & Bente Withers excellent 5 volumes of Small Change covering Edward I-Commonwealth. Dave Groom has produced a book on the "Identification of English 20th century Silver Coin varieties" and another on the bronze, but this covers only post 1900. Generally speaking, the greater the detail, the shorter the period covered. This list is not exhaustive. All of these books have something to offer, and so it really depends on your chosen area. This was recently discussed in the Oooh err, hmmm section link

The date spacing on any coin prior to 1879 is due to the fact that the dies were finished with the addition of the last two digits by hand. The footnote on p.135 of ESC refers. If you look through past sales you will find that pennies and other denominations exist with only partial dates such as a copper 18 penny, or the 181 half crown. True wide or narrow dates are uniformly spaced so. Thanks Rob so its just a normal.Sorry new to all this some members seem a bit sharp Thanks again In my opinion, undue attention is paid to the position of the last digit or two of the date given we know they were hand made. It's ok as part of a die study for a series as it is one of the few ways to readily identify different dies, but for the average or new collector this is not really relevant. To go back to the previous point, here are a couple of images from another thread. 1862 halfpennies with different end spacing and Wide and narrow date 1876H halfpennies. The first is a random result and although technically a variety, it arose by pure chance. The second is a design feature as the dates on both are equally but differently spaced, and most importantly of all consistently so between nominally identical dies.

The date spacing on any coin prior to 1879 is due to the fact that the dies were finished with the addition of the last two digits by hand. The footnote on p.135 of ESC refers. If you look through past sales you will find that pennies and other denominations exist with only partial dates such as a copper 18 penny, or the 181 half crown. True wide or narrow dates are uniformly spaced so.

ESC 1338E yes that is right not no line .shorter or longer line thanks .going down right track now No problem, my thought processes were malfunctioning too - I hadn't considered faulty question as an option.

Well done. Living proof that if you want to obtain a rarity, best is to publicise an example of something unrecorded in any literature and suddenly the whole world has one too. 2 dies as a minimum means there will be more out there somewhere.

What is the reference for the no line shilling? Spink doesn't list one. Davies lists 3 varieties - cross to bead, cross to space and SHILLING more spaced. No mention of what would be a blindingly obvious missing line below SHILLING though. ESC lists a shorter line which is the same visual effect as a more spaced SHILLING. Coincraft hedges its bets and in footnote 10 says lettering and line length varies. I've never seen or heard of one. The immediate reaction would be that no line below shilling is most likely due to a blocked die or it has been physically removed.