Rob

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.

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.

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.

Agree 100% Rob. I simply had to make a choice, I couldn't afford to collect the coins that I was now hankering after, so I had to bite the bullet and put everything up for sale as the core of a business. Unless you are willing to sell high value choice items that you would as a collector keep, you will struggle to make a living. Those are the customers which have to be concentrated on. Collectors of low grade material will automatically migrate to ebay and overpay - but they are in the right place. Collectors of high grade material need to be weaned off ebay where the risk and cost of mistakes is high, and use lists, fairs, websites and any other means which offer the opportunity to examine the piece in question before a commitment to purchase is made. They might not get the bargain they automatically expect from ebay, but using knowledge and physically handling the coins before purchase will lead to a better understanding of what's available, what it costs and a greater level of overall satisfaction. For the vendor, that means repeat business which is the key to any form of business success.

The problem with combining dealing and collecting is that you have or want the same items that your customers want. The very nice rare piece you can't bear to part with is the same desirable object in their eyes too. The easy to get pieces that you wouldn't mind parting with on the grounds that you can always replace them with another are consequently difficult to sell because as common items there is always a chance they can pick one up on ebay for 99p instead of wasting £2 by purchasing from a dealer.

George III coins dated 1802 are a bit thin on the ground in base metal, so a picture would be useful. He was also ruler of Hannover in addition to this country which is one possibility. The 1840 sixpence should have an inverted die axis. The normal, or en-medaille (as a medal) die axis was only adopted as standard from 1887 onwards.

Not had that with CGS - yet. But I've had a half a dozen PCGS & NGC slabs graded at 64 & 65 which have had edge damage exposed on removal. It p's you off a bit when you are spending hundreds of pounds a time to find this out.

Agreed:) It's just a shame that Coin Shop closed. They had quite a good selection of Decimal Coins. Also the owner wasn't adverse to opening a Royal Mint Set if there were particular coins that you needed from it. I managed to obtain a few of my BU £2 and 50p Issues that way. I don't know what else the shop sold, but decimal coins are not a very good basis for a business plan unless you can monopolise the market. The average cost of decimals is too low to make much of an income. When you are selling coins for pence or a few pounds at most, you need to sell too many for it to be cost effective. Mail order would be different, but passing trade would definitely not supply enough customers on a recurring basis.

I see the winning bidder has a feedback of 1000 so surely not a fool. Looking at the winner's recent bid history they have all been on coins, so you would assume at least a little knowledge. Having said that, most of the things were European or world coins. Why pay so much on ebay? The mint will supply them by the thousands or millions at face. Bizarre.

That isn't a bad price. Unless you get a damaged one, most are not in poor condition. A relative lack of circulation means that most examples come up around the VF mark - and are certainly commoner than in fine. So a groat or less likely a threepence starting at around the £200 level is a reasonable amount to pay.

You will pick up the early ones if you keep looking. Any examples of these that I get in bulk lots which have got more than a few bagmarks I automatically spend. I've recycled at least 20 or 30 in the past year & I can't be the only person to do so. They aren't particularly common, but unless in top grade also not worth collecting. 'Low mintage' is a relative and not absolute phrase.

The brass 3d has a thrift plant on the reverse, not a thistle. On the assumption it is a standard 3d but silver in colour, I would expect it to have been plated post issue.