Rob

The Adams coin was ex BDW 8 lot 388 where described as thought the only known example - a statement that usually brings out a few more. The coin sold for £900 hammer and was graded EF. I don't know if that was the same coin referred to by Gary as VF, but if so Adams 602 is certainly better than that and looks EF in the catalogue. Another example in EF passed through Spink in a private sale (Nov. 2001) for considerably more, but the Adams coin is probably a fairer assessment of value as it was an open competitive sale which the other wasn't. I've a vague recollection of seeing another lower grade coin, but don't have any records as I don't follow them, having no great interest. Mintage you've no chance with as yearly figures are the closest you will get, if available at all. Individual die mintages are only ever going to be available for trials, patterns or proofs and even then you will be struggling.

And lets not forget Chris' book, CCGB has some more realistic prices and comes in pocket size I mentioned CCGB in the first line of the list. As to pricing, nobody can give anything more than a ballpark figure. Many coins are available at a range of prices at any one time, usually dependant on the price paid by the seller - i.e. marked up by a certain margin unless acquired on the cheap in which case whatever you think you can get for it. Realistic prices are a personal preserve and will vary from one person to the next in line with their willingness or lack thereof to part with their money, or whether they have specific pieces in mind. The latter are more likely to have a grasp of pricing in their chosen area having missed out in the past.

Don't buy it, get it free from the stables. Speaking of which, reminds me of the time when I carted a wheelbarrow full of free pigs**t home from the other side of town when I was young. The looks of disdain were a wonder to behold as I slopped my way through the town centre.

That's probably because dealers would offer a more realistic price.

The last one was in 2000. There are no plans to do another according to what I've heard. It's a reasonably decent reference, but like all such publications has its limitations and obviously all pricing is irrelevant.

Probably, please explain more. Because it's only a VF commonwealth penny of which there are invariably examples for sale on ebay at any one time. Latest Spink price on these is £80 in VF which is about right. £207 is somewhat OTT even if it is a reasonable example. I'm still in the dark as to why so many people pay twice what they would if they got it from a dealer, be it a website, off a list or at a fair. It doesn't make sense. If I listed one in that grade at 3 figures it would stay unsold. An Aberystwyth penny in comparable grade sold in the last online CNG sale for less and there's probably only been one other example for sale in the last 12 months - I know what is the better buy.

Has everyone taken leave of their senses? link

Help please. Sometime between last night and this morning, all the links in my coin databases have had their pathways renamed but the images are unaffected. The previous path which included documents\coins\ through which all links passed has been replaced with a path AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\. Only that name in the tree has been changed. This is a pain in the A**E as it has effectively b****red quite a few thousand links to images of specific coins. Has my system been hacked? The AVG virus scan didn't pick anything up. Is it due to a Microsoft downgrade given only a single section of the path is affected and the replacement includes the word microsoft? More importantly, how do I correct the problem, or do I have to completely redo all the links to something I can use? At the moment I am reduced to trying to mentally correlate an image to a previously recorded provenance which for minor sales is proving well nigh impossible. My memory is good, but not that good. I haven't found anything else that has changed - yet. Thanks in advance.

The rename utility program makes no difference as it appears that the new pathway is that set in the autorecover mode within excel. The original paths can still be set if new data is entered. Is there any way to change the autorecovered path links other than doing it individually? I've tried replicating the error by entering a new bit of data into an excel page with only one other entry and shutting down without saving, but it still keeps the correct location for the previously entered data

Looks like corrosion to me. If you have contact with a corrosive substance, the reaction will take place on all contacting surfaces. Assuming equal rates of reaction there will be a reduction in height of the facing surfaces, but you will also get removal of metal from the sides of the legend which would narrow the character. If the micro structure of the metal is consistent, this should in theory result in a narrowing of the flat surface on top of the letter with the same angle on the side of the letter being maintained as the metal is removed until eventually you will end up with a sharp line on top of the lettering. Microscopic stress flaws may make this not happen in reality as it will be easier for the metal to be removed where metal displacement has taken place in striking as this action would disturb the crystalline structure of the flan creating small flaws and making it easier for the corrosive substance to penetrate the surface and do disproportionate damage at these points. This would mean a faster rate of attrition on the vertical sides of the design. The surfaces of both sides are pitted, which is indicative of corrosion. Consistency of metal mix would also result in pitting depending on the material affected. That's my theory. Any support or contradiction anyone?

Restoring the backup on the 9/1/11 didn't make any difference although I know it was working ok on 11/1, so I went back to the post microsoft update. Bulk rename utility offers both a 32 bit or 64 bit program. which one do I use and how do I tell? I can't afford to lose all this data, so don't want to experiment. Thanks.

Not a clue, but obviously of private manufacture and certainly not a British coin. It's almost certainly not gold, but you could weigh and measure it, then compare it to the dimensions of a sovereign which weighs 8g and is 22mm in diameter, 1.7mm thick. Those figures should be close enough to establish if it is brass or similar, which I would expect. Unless anyone know differently that is.

What you buy depends on what you intend to collect. If you want to go into depth in a particular field the following would apply but the list is not exhaustive. Some are more detailed than others. Generally speaking, the shorter the period covered, the greater the depth. Prices: British - Spink coins of England, CCGB. World - Krause & Mishler (US publication, so prices and grades differ from UK standards) Copper and bronze: Peck (1558-1958), Freeman (1860 bronze onwards), Gouby (1860 pennies onwards), Groom (20th century bronze) Modern Silver: ESC (1649 on), Davies (1816 on), Groom (20th century silver) Hammered Silver: various publications by Galata (1/4ds, 1/2ds, Elizabeth I (by Brown Comber & Wilkinson). Hammered coinage: North (660-1662) Sovereigns and halves: Marsh Tokens: Dalton & Hamer, Davis. Grading: Allen (red riley on this forum) In addition to the standard references there have been many articles in publications such as the British Numismatic Journal over the past 100 years on specific topics such as individual mints or the coinage of a particular reign. These go into much greater depth than is possible in the broader tomes. Coincraft, last published in 2000 covers 1066 to date. Quite useful, but with a few inaccuracies and omissions. There are many books relating to a particular era such as Norman, Charles I etc which go into depth. If you want to specialise in one area, PM me and I'll point you in the right direction.

Right all you genii, flying by the seat of my pants here. I've sort of arrived via the control panel at what could have happened. It appears that Windows did a critical update on 12/1/11 at 03:00. A security update for package KB2419640 and an update package for KB2454826. A previous system backup was made on 9/1/2011 and automatic backups weekly backwards from there. Do I restore the one for 9/1/11? It also says system protection should be on before you do it. How do I know? Alternatively, is it possible to make a global pathway change without doing a system restore? i.e. can I give a specific instruction to change the named path A\B\C\ to D\E\ which would therefore revert only the 5000+ affected links to their original paths. Obviously, redoing 5000+ links individually is not the ideal solution. If I go back to the configuration for 9/1/11, is it possible to then immediately redo the 12/1/11 update from microsoft or is that now history? I know this is possibly going to revert a working system back to one with a problem, but would confirm that the disruption was down to their changes and would save me entering any more data which would get modified on a later update. I don't know how often they do these.

It isn't metal flow. If a coin is struck without a collar, the metal is forced outwards due to lack of restraint. The corresponding flow lines therefore appear on the bases of the lettering as streaks in the direction of the centre of the coin. All of the obverse legend is sharp, so the shape of the letters is as on the die. There is no movement of similar magnitude on the ends of the T top bar, G top or C top which suggests the tails are by design rather than accident. Looking at the 7 of the date, the tail is now less curved which looks better and the leaf/berry detail agrees too. The obverse portrait isn't right for shape. The nose is the wrong profile and the hair between the two fillets is standing too high. This section of hair should follow the general curve assuming this holds for all second head sixpences. The ear detail isn't right either. It could be a Lauer obverse as Colin suggested, but if so, then the reverse is a very good copy. I'll do some digging and get back if I find anything. Don't hold your breath though.

If they are Maundy money, and that is a definite if, because they might have formed part of the monies but were not made specifically for the ceremony as they were not struck every year - then it is possible that the 1702 issue was struck for the ceremony. According to wiki, Maundy Thursday can fall on any date between 19th March and 22nd April, so it would also be possible to have two or no Maundy Thursdays in the same calendar year. I can't find a date for Maundy Thursday 1701/2, but if it was immediately around New Year - say between New Year and the end of March, then it would be reasonable to produce pennies if there were none available for distribution just prior to the event, but dated correctly and so could reasonably be called Maundy money. As W3 died in March, this is very close to both the New Year and a potential Maundy Thursday and it would not have been possible to foresee that he was going to fall off his horse and die in advance. I don't know if this can be verified, but sounds plausible to me.

It's whatever is current that replaced a supposedly crappy version previous to that. One of those was Vista and the other windows 7(?), but I couldn't tell you which way round they went as I'm from Barcelona when it comes to computers, so left the changeover to someone else. I haven't a clue how to uninstall & revert.

Thanks Colin. I had a flag come up on the bottom of the screen this a.m. saying Microsoft updates had been installed. Could this be the reason? If I look at the folder above AppData, there is no sign of the AppData sub-folder. The implication that I could be part of a network could mean that I've been hacked (by Microsoft?)?

This looks all wrong. The border should be teeth with a raised rim, but there is no sign of the latter. The fishtail letters don't make sense. The 7 in the date isn't right either, though the die number 7 looks respectable. Not a clue, but it smells a bit fishy. The angled pictures are unhelpful.

Because dates up to 1752 were old style when New Year's Day was on the 25th March. William III died on the 8th March 1702 new style, which was still 1701 old style. The 13th regnal year was from 13th Feb 1701 (1700 os), so coins dated 1700 would have been produced between 13th Feb and 24th March, though it is possible there might have been a few days delay in actually changing the dies over to ones dated 1701 for operational reasons or lack of new dies. Following the change to the new calendar, all dates subsequently correlate.

LOL scott. Wait until Fergie, Neville, Giggs and Scholes are all retired, the Glazers call in their debt, and Sheik Mansoor REALLY starts to spend! Methinks City will start bossing the roost Not a chance. City fans are addicted to mediocrity. Success would result in mass disorientation. The NHS wouldn't be able to cope with the repair bill.

It is a £2 scrap coin which I would not entertain....why spend so much on a coin when you clearly have no knowledge....buy the books first. When all's said and done, we've all paid too much for something with hindsight. Better to make a tit of yourself early on and learn from a mistake than find out 5 years down the line after many more such purchases. It isn't possible to over-emphasise the need to research a subject before diving in with both feet. £120 would have bought a handful of books new - double or more that number second-hand. With a bit of luck the seller may even have thrown in a low grade coin worth a couple of quid as a freebie if you indicated you were a novice just beginning to collect and wanted to learn. Most dealers will spend time with someone wanting to learn because it is their future income. Keep your mouth shut and it will be assumed that you know what you are doing, in which case the seller can reasaonably assume that you want to spend an amount of money on a particular coin.

Was the dealer wearing a mask at the time you bought it? Yeh, he was dressed in green and traded just outside Nottingham.

If I could get £2 for things like this I would be rolling in it, but needless to say negligible demand combined with the time and effort required to sift and list means they sit in a pile for binning. The scrap value is about 3p at today's spot price, which for anything other than a significant rarity is not far short of its value.

You don't have enough to control the market. The mint estimates that between 100-200,000 were made. At the height of the feeding frenzy on ebay, this supposedly rare coin was the subject of 570 listings. That was just on one day. Most of the original mintage is still out there.