Rob

All I have is Krause which says 0.500 silver

Albert must have been stroking Vicky's hair for a change.

I don't think so because the serifs at the end are much wider than the connecting bar, which looks to be very thin in the middle section. The I is a normal size, which on a halfgroat is small relative to the letters on larger denominations, but there isn't a lot of downsizing possible in the letters, with only 3/4d, 1d & threehalfpence as possibilities. On these you are still looking at a wider I than seen, if it was one. But thinking out loud, a datal 1 on a three farthings is smaller, so should probably be added to the mix even though the serifs are not usually that much wider than the upright.

The closest I can come up with is the cross on the orb at the top of the crown on P&M shillings, or the one below that. That's possible because the crown was made of composite punches. e.g. this one that was on AMR

Currently unique is probably more appropriate given the tendency for more examples to come to light once a new type is discovered. That guy had it for 10 years before he noticed. It's reasonable to assume that others have been similarly overlooked.

I'm not too fussed about the inverted A for V as this occurs on a regular basis across many reigns. The I over a cross however, is somewhat more intriguing as it looks to be a style of cross which I am struggling to find used on Elizabeth's coins. It's not the same cross as that seen on top of the crown and it's not a letter X because this would have to take the form of a cross pattee saltire, which is most improbable. That leaves us with a cross pattee of a style that harks back 300 years. Is anyone into medals that could possibly find a use for such a cross?

New one for me.

The Nicholson P565 went through LCA in both Nov. 2004 and June 2005 @ £2K and £2500 hammer respectively. It went to Japan on the second occasion, which is where I remember that from, and the previous November's sale had Stone's collection. I now remember why I didn't go for the W&M at both sales. Stone's sale in 2004 had a lot of rarities that commanded my attention including the 1719 grained edge 1st issue 1/2d (Peter Jackson had bought Nicholson's, but still bid against me in the room) and I picked up my 1734/3 halfpenny, which despite only a bit better than VF-gVF is still a full grade higher than the few others I've seen. It was a case of being spoilt for choice. Included in a few purchases at the second sale there were a couple of 1947 proof shillings which I wanted, and a 1673 halfpenny slabbed NGC MS65, which was obviously a 1675/3 in hand without magnification and would be a sensible replacement for my previously PCGS MS64 slabbed 1673 (also 5/3). Having waited for the 1673, I picked it up at opening bid , so sold the 1675/3 and replaced it with the new one, only to discover later that the new 1675/3 was in fact 1675/3/2. I never got round to replacing the 5/3. In addition to these three, I eventually ended up with a proof 1957 halfpenny, Nicholson's P607 and half a dozen others from the collection, a Weyl 1887 tin halfpenny, a few Vicky shillings and halfpennies and several hammered shillings in the space of a few days. Given sufficient liquidity I could have happily spent 10 or 20 times the amount considering the rarities on offer at that time, with both the LCA sale and Goldberg's Cheshire Collection up for grabs on successive weekends. Prices then look so much more affordable from today's perspective.

In that case I was thinking of something else going to Japan.

I remember that. I made a point of not bidding. I should have gone for the Nicholson coin, but I vaguely recall that went to Japan in Stone's LCA sale. Might be wrong though.

I think it is safe to say I couldn't live with that. It's like virtually every other rarity when it comes to regular currency coins. Once the variety is documented, a handful appear in reasonably quick time.

I just get a message saying this page is reserved for future use.

Eeee. That's a bargain. Cheaper than the £1-£6 they were selling for in Cuff (1854)

Vat is payable on the total cost of the imported package, i.e cost of item plus postage as well. I presume that makes up the difference, as £1.50-1.60 x 5 is £7.50-£8 which could be about right for a package depending on the service used. The exchange rate used will depend on the prevailing rate on the day, which might be the post office's own for currency, or could be the financial market's rate, or could be the buy or sell rate for someone else. It's not going to be a million miles away, so not really an issue. There is a cheaper solution to these clearance fees which is to book the import VAT at the point of purchase using an integrated ordering system, just as ebay adds a tax charge onto sales to certain US states. Once that's done, there is no hassle with having to clear a parcel manually. As a business, it's far preferential to have a system which eliminates human involvement wherever possible because the cost of putting bums on seats is significant.

They were producing DEI GRATIA obverses for all the silver in 1695. Probably just a case of someone forgetting the denomination they were engraving. A date of 1695 could mean as late as March, in which case you were only 5 months prior to the start of the recoinage. The decision to do this was made in 1695, so were they making dies in advance of the new mints opening as soon as the law was passed? Again, just forgetting what you were making.

£450

Collecting a specific series,date run, or anything that the coin in question ticked a box and I would be unlikely to find another would mean I wouldn't sell it, though might sell separately to a different person than the whole collection was consigned to when sold. This only really affects collections that are specialist in nature, because a generalist collection could always find an alternative to fill the gap.

I think the main problem they had in 1859 was flan lamination when using bronze blanks, with several varieties of 1859 decimal patterns suffering from this. The 1/20th shilling P1981 (F686) is only known with a laminating flan according to Freeman. My own example is laminated as expected and so is the F689 in my possession, albeit with a known corpus of 1. The list is not exhaustive, as I have seen others with this problem too. Whether this is down to alloy ratios, force used in striking, blank preparation or flan thickness, or a combination of all these things is uncertain, but lamination was certainly an issue on the thinner flans. The thicker flans such as the P2000 (F706A) or P2002 (F710) do not appear to suffer from this problem.

So how many die pairs for the 1860/59? If only the one, I doubt it is possible to infer much at all as you have no means of comparing possible variables.

Assuming a constant survival rate for all dies used, is there a percentage difference between ww and plain truncations when it comes to how well struck up the breast is on the reverse? The no initials master obverses will have been made to replace worn out ww below, hence the no initials (WW died in 1851), so any difference in the reliefs could be down to the engraver? After all, the breastplate does correspond to the highest point on the hair strands. The planarity of the fields might also come into the equation.

Have you tried matching with an image on Wildwinds?

I'd go for water damage too. Interesting that you collect 2ps. Based on the numbers I have sold over time, these are probably the least collected circulating decimal denomination. Why? They are the largest 'coppers' and size usually means more popular, though it's also fair to say that everything is dwarfed by 50ps and £2s which are the only decimals that have really caught the public imagination.

Dies are not necessarily swapped as pairs. Usually only the worn out/defective die will be replaced. That's how die links give the chronological sequence.

That's bizarre. Priceless.