Rob

The pictures aren't very good, but isn't it a toothed border both sides? It doesn't look like a TB/BB mule which is the rare variety. If a TB then it's out by a factor of x100 and worth about Euros 4.98 (maybe a little more)

Only to a degree. The prices of the scarcer types are dictated by what dealers can buy for. For these there isn't likely to be much to play with, so don't expect consistency in any negotiated discount. This is why you need to have an appreciation of the relative rarities. Prices at the top end are going off scale simply because of the material shortage. For popular but rare items this is filtering down the grades. In contrast, a 1967 penny will for ever be well nigh impossible to sell.

The important thing is not to let the tail wag the dog. All price guides are just that. None are accurate. Do your own homework, learn to grade accurately and see what a specific variety is selling for in a particular grade. Although there is no substitute for seeing a coin in the hand, compare the images with the realised prices at auction, or the price in a dealer's tray and you will build up an appreciation of the going rate for a specific coin. At the level of Peckris' 1948 penny, the difference between an underpriced and overpriced item is no more than the cost of a cup of coffee and so if you overpay you are unlikely to go hungry that night. Certainly no damage will be done. But when you have no feeling for the coins themselves or the market you can get stung badly. That is why so many people pay over the odds on ebay for example. They buy the description and not the coin. Very few listings say this coin is crap or low grade, but an awful lot call crap - superb. If you are looking for a superb example, then this piece of superb crap is the ideal coin for you - sucker. As always, caveat emptor. As a beginner, you are probably better off concentrating on getting it right with the basic types. You certainly should not make a financial mistake at the same level as for a rare variety as there are more examples available to build up your chosen database. In this instance you may thus benefit from the occasional undetected rarity purchased for the price of a basic example. You also have to consider that there are fewer collectors of most rare varieties because there are insufficient examples to go around, so they are less liquid. A coin of which there are 3 known but only 2 collectors is therefore common.

This could take a long time to answer. The S/I is only one of many varieties that were not listed in Spink. Coins of England is really just a wide ranging selection of guide prices for all the recognised currency types with a few patterns, proofs and varieties added to the list (and some deleted) depending on the available space and as and when they pass through salerooms. Extremely rare historically meant that none had been to auction in recent times or that they had a recognised rarity based on specialised publications such as Peck or ESC, though this must be set against the fact that Spink also quote prices for some pieces which are not available because the only known piece is in a museum. To produce a publication covering all varieties would be unwieldy, horrendously expensive and consequently would not appeal to many collectors. Updating it on a regular basis would be a nightmare too. Most people collect either a wide range of material in lower grades or a specialise in a series - say bronze pennies for example, but with a higher average grade. If you collect coins from across the globe then you would probably look at Krause & Mischler (a US publication) for the widest coverage, but if you only collect milled silver then Spink and ESC backed up by Davies would be more appropriate. There are many varieties that haven't been recorded in the standard references which means that you need to do your own research using daa from past sales and dealers' lists if you want to establish a list of vaguely accurate rarities for your chosen field. You shouldn't take the values in Spink, CCGB or any other price list as gospel. some are too high, some are too low and some about right. No two coins are identical either, and so despite being in the same nominal grade they could command wildly differing prices. It is not necessarily a good thing to reject an apparently overpriced coin. Sometimes there is a very good reason for it, so you need to do your own research and establish what is out there in the market place and how much they typically sell for. If you collect both hammered and milled, then Spink's tome is the only realistic publication, but even then you come up against the problem that the price given is only really applicable to the commonest variety of the type. What looks like a £200 coin could easily sell for £2K if it is a sought after rare variety. Recent bidding lunacy in the bronze penny department bears witness to this as noted on other threads.

It has a lot of marks in the obverse field. The rim bruise at 6 o'clock could also mean that it has been mounted previously. The images aren't good enough to assess its value or whether it is worth having as a collectable piece.

It's not as bad as the all pervasive errant apostrophe's (sic)

1. As a security feature to make it harder to imitate. Copies of these tended to be cast and so you will find the imprint of the copper plug, but a coin that is tin throughout. contemporary forgery tin 1/2d 2. No. The Charles 1 rose farthings were before the Charles II etc. tin issues. Peck (2nd.ed. p.74) considers that they were made from what was clearly a copper rod with an axial wedge of brass inserted into a cut, then presumably squeezed together to hold the brass and sliced to obtain the individual blanks. I don't know if there were other issues elsewhere prior to them though. Here is a Rose farthing which clearly shows the brass wedge.

At just over £300 each, they were low priced currency coins. Be positive, tell her you could have spent considerably more on Edward VI, Richard III and Henry VIII currency farthings. Clearly yours were a bargain.

There are at least two dies with this overdate. One has a comparatively clear 2/1 and the other a well defined loop of the 9 directly aligned under the 0 with the bottom of the loop in the centre, but only a whisper of the 1. The pricing really boils down to whether you want a type example, in which case you can get a virtually unc example of a common variety for the same price as this, or whether you are looking to get the series, in which case you are probably going to collect them in the highest grade you can find. This is why I think it more likely that you would hold out for a better one. As crowns go, this is quite a cheap series, but the denomination as a whole is not and so the typical collector of crowns has relatively deep pockets.

It's genuine enough. It's a rotated and double struck example, hence the two heads and 4 tie ribbons. I've got a DIL 1698 with 2 heads, 4 ties and the obverse reading GVLIELMELM ERTIVTIVS with the reverse . BRBRITANIA•16981698 I've also got a 1697 with 2 heads and 4 ties reading GVLIELIELM TERTIVSVS and the reverse BRITAITANNNIA• I think they look quite cool.

It depends entirely on what you want. There is no such thing as a compulsory list of "must haves".

ESC R3 which essentially means extremely rare, but more than 20 known (because R4 is 11-20 known). I don't think it is extremely rare, but is still worth a premium. As for 400BUX, what BUX are we talking about? If US$, then that is a bit cheap. The reverse looks better than the obverse. I would put it at about £300-£350 given the reverse marks and the obvious wear to the obverse, but the price is getting into that problem area where you are spending a reasonable amount of money for a less than pristine coin that is not impossible to obtain in better condition for a bit more money. If you could get a goodEF or mint state example for say £750-1500, then you wouldn't want to spend £300-400 on an obviously sub-standard piece. Just my opinion.

I suspect that the answer to this puzzle may be something running in parallel to what is known for the 1848 half crown. The article in the 1958 BNJ (p.191-193) using information supplied by Stride refers but the gist is as follows. At the time it was thought that all 1848 2/6ds were 1848/6, but in 1957 two 1848's appeared which were unambiguously not over anything. (The 1848/7 was unknown at this time.) It was known that there were 4 obverse matrices from 1845-1853 and the number of punches was increased from 6-7 in July 1846.Based on the numbers of known dies that were in stock according to the mint records, it was possible to assign the numbers of variously dated dies at the year ends. Year end 1846 there were 35 obv. dies, all of which would have been dated 1846, 28 were sunk between July and December. Jan & Feb 1847 16 obverse dies were sunk but it is not known if they were dated or not (thought unlikely at the time of the article). During the year, 22 of the 35 1846 dated obverses were destroyed. It is thought the remaining 13 were used to strike 1847 coins but without the date altered. 347,488 2/6ds were struck in 1847, though none dated 1847 are known. Only 91,872 were struck in 1848 with the bulk being supplied by recut 1846 dies. At this point in time there was a sharp fall in demand for 2/6ds, so the 13 remaining 1846 dies would have been sufficient to strike the small issue at just over 33000 per die if all were used. All of the 1848 dies examined appeared to have a misplaced E in DEI, but the plain date 1848 is from a die without the misplaced E which ought therefore be one of the 16 dies sunk in 1847 from the new punch, but completed in 1848. The matter is then complicated somewhat by the 1848/7 die which also has a misplaced E in DEI, as do some but not all 1849 and 1850 dies, so the conclusions of the above article need to be revised. For about 5 years from 1847-1851 there was a considerable reduction in mint output with halfcrowns, shillings, sixpences and even small silver having gaps in the dates or very low mintages - probably related to the proposed decimalisation given the large output of Godless florins. Unfortunately, Hocking is not clear on this point as the only things listed are : two halfcrown punches dated 18-- (item nos. 1263 & 1264), plain fillets, one with w.w. on the truncation and also a matrix (item 1250) as for the 1839 proof but with 18--. It is therefore unclear where Stride got his information from. However, the existence of an 1847 sixpence is quite feasible based on the inferences that could be drawn from the half crowns. All that would be needed would be an undated die or one dated 18--. This would be in keeping with a misaligned date and from known pennies etc and retained mint material we know that dies were kept with either none or a partial date.

The picture isn't clear enough to say, but if it's a penny then 58 is the only option as there were no 38 pennies, only halfpennies and farthings. The last two are about 28 and 21mm dia respectively. Pennies are 33mm.

Yes, no and about Fine in that order. They are very common in low grade. Boulton struck at least 1000 tons of copper into cartwheel pennies and twopences, of which only about 4% was twopences.

It's an Edward I hammered penny minted in Bristol. The reverse reading in full would be VILLA BRISTOLLIE which tells you where it was struck. It looks like a type 3 which would have been struck in 1280-1 - perhaps someone else would like to give an opinion on the sub-type. It looks as if it may have been slightly clipped, but nearly all hammered coins are irregular to a greater or lesser degree due to the method of manufacture i.e. a piece of silver was put between the two dies and then hit with a hammer - not a very consistent means of quality control. The important thing at this time was the weight because a penny contained a penny's worth of silver. In fact all coins prior to the introduction of token coinage had a value equal to that of the metal used. In the case of a penny at the time of Edward I, their weight as proscribed by the relevant law was 22.2 grains (1.4386 grams). However, this is an average figure and so coins could be above or below this weight. The heavier ones were usually either set aside or clipped due to their higher intrinsic value, whilst the lower weight pieces were spent.

Without the coin in hand, it isn't really possible to give an objective opinion on the relief of the date. If the coin is slightly dished, then the wear could be uneven. Dates are also punched in unevenly. The two types of 1860 1/2d BB reverses are a good example of this with a choice of wider spaced 60 or a narrower one with a lower 0.

Or simply just a case of correcting an error in the punch used.

From the image it looks as if there is a trace of the colon after BRITANNIAR as this is set a bit low with the top stop about half way up the R and the bottom stop below the base level. It looks alright, but for completion's sake - what is the die axis?

If there was some way of ensuring all the copies went into a replica folder, that would reduce the number by at least 10% overall and more for the older categories such as hammered and early milled. Like Peckris, I simply can't find the enthusiasm to trawl through the pages of crap. It is possible to use mental filters as well because although many listings are textbook examples of illiteracy, the ability to copy and paste means you can frequently identify a known purveyor of crap by the spelling mistakes in the title and say the background colour characteristics of the thumbnail. Others may simply list all coins in the hammered section or wherever. There are plenty of ways to identify certain sellers without viewing the listing, but whether this compensates for the vast numbers you can't readily identify is a moot point. There are additional pointers that can be used to identify rubbish such as the regular use of inappropriate words.

I have one or two Adolph Weyl patterns and several Lauer play coins all 1887. Weyl is not so hard to get a brief history for try http://www.rpcoins.co.uk/c14.html and if you can talk with Rob Pearce, I hope you are not the same Rob, he is also working on an article concerning the provenances of all Weyl coin patterns. What Weyl patterns do you have please? Anything of 1887 would be of particular interest. Andrew Sadly, I fear I am the same Rob that met the same Andrew earlier this year.

I was going to make a collection of a coin by each attributed designer. Prior to 1970 (about 450 years) there were about 75. Since 1970 (the ensuing 40 years) there have been about 40 up to the end of Spink's 2009. I'm not going to bother post-1970 because by the time the Olympics are over the number will probably exceed the 75 mentioned above - and I suspect none of them will be collectable because the mint output is verging on a serious medical condition that needs urgent treatment.

Presumably Guy Newson bought it at the M&E sale. He's been spending a lot of money in the London sales of late. Much if not all of what he buys resurfaces on ebay.

Text for the M&E catalogue was copied verbatim in the previous post. I don't have a copy of the Christies Rome sale.

It's the one from the last Morton & Eden sale (lot 263) where it was catalogued as a proof. Didn't see it though so wouldn't like to say. The provenance suggests it could possibly be a proof because if the future King doesn't get one, then who would, even if it doesn't have the raised edge? But given it was polished we will probably never know. The lot description says "The edge lettering on this piece is finer & less deeply impressed than that found on circulating coins and it could be argued that the coin is therefore, strictly speaking, a pattern. Provenance: Christies Rome 17th June 2004, lot 605 and formerly the property of Edward, Duke of Windsor. It is likely that the Duke, as Prince of Wales, would have received such as coin and the cleaning which it has undergone is typical of many of the pieces in his collection.