Rob

You may also be interested in this link, especially the entry for 1974 !!! That is an advert in a newspaper by a retailer, so doesn't necessarily reflect the date of issue. It is the first time the advertiser had offered the product.

I had a problem with the US postal service once. A shipment from Heritage was requested insured, tracked and signed for, but when it went missing according to Heritage it could only be tracked once in the UK. Clearly this was not being tracked at all. Thankfully it returned to the US 7 months later. Of the two coins in the packet, the one with a few known examples could eventually be replaced, but the unique one caused me a bit of a headache, not to mention the need for clean underwear.

CGF

Mmmm. Beer, Pizza, Donuts, scrap metal - shurely shome mishtake.

All the insurance companies I've dealt with in the past insist on whole of property insurance, so you can't for example just cover the living room and a bedroom contents. Therefore, if you insured the general household contents but didn't declare the 'valuables' then they would consider it as underinsured if it came to a claim and you provided a list of missing items to the police. I think this would cause a problem when the claim was entered. For anyone in this position it is probably worth checking with your insurer. To only insure a few specific high value items is also a bit of a grey area as the same would probably apply. You can rest assured that a burglar is unlikely to spend hours sifting through the trays in order to weed out the most desirable items and leave the crap, so a total loss is more likely. The whole collection being treated as a single item has its advantages, as you then don't need to flood the postal system with revised insurance details every time you make a major purchase assuming the overall level of cover is adequate.

I tried several insurers and the results were quite interesting. The cheapest general household contents insured had the most expensive valuables cover and conversely the most expensive contents had the cheapest valuables premium. All the various combined totals were not dissimilar. What cartel? I ended up taking the most expensive contents as it had the added benefit of blanket coverage up to a fixed amount which was well in excess of the actual, so it wasn't necessary to worry about underinsuring when advising of the sum you wanted to insure.

I don't have any. I only have 10 bronze pennies in total.

The people I've just gone with would charge about £42 for £7000 cover That's pretty reasonable for peace of mind, and only represents 0.6% of the total value, per annum. I shall have to look into it. Do they need an inventory/photographs, Gary ? 1/2% of the insured sum is a fairly consistent premium across all insurers. My insurer requires a valuation every 3 years which by definition requires an inventory and so reflects changes to the collection. You would be foolish not to keep original receipts and sales info though as the loss adjuster will use any means possible to reduce the claim. Images of the coins insured will always be helpful when it comes to proving the stolen coin or coins are yours.

Yes, possibly. Maybe an object lesson on how easy it is to be taken in by a forgery, due to over enthusiasm. Not that I would have bid for it anyway. I must admit on closer inspection, it doesn't look right, although you couldn't definitively say it's a fake. I hadn't seen your post in the e bay thread. There's something a bit strange about the lion's mane, compared to other coins of the same ilk. It looks slightly too detailed. I don't think there is anything wrong with the underlying basic coin, it's just the vertical mark to the left of the 5 and the slight misplacement that raise suspicions. It's probably a 1903 or 1904 with the number changed, most likely the latter given the angle of the gouge. Attached is a picture of one acquired on ebay a few years ago, or at least I was going to but the page refused to load fully so that I could add one.

It is when the best known Charles II 3rd issue shilling sold for £56 in Lockett II (1956) compared to a complete denomination run of the issue for £17 in around the EF mark. Particularly as the 1/- needed an A4 sized ticket to write out the provenance!

Think AT. You can work wonders with a chemistry set.

It's a difficult one. There is possibly some porosity on one side opposite the split, but quite a lot of it is well struck. Grading hammered is always a bit hit and miss if not in the hand. The detail on the crown and elsewhere is quite good. £200 50 years ago is too much though.

First of all it started life as a 30s ryal, but was revalued in 1578 to 36s.9d (that's what the countermark means). Prices on Scottish coinage are not particularly well documented and so the best indicator would be to have a look at past auction prices. The last Scottish price book from Spink came out in 2003 and priced this coin at £235 in fine and £525 in very fine. I would grade your coin at better than VF and closer to gVF, but the striking split is a slight problem. Recent strength in prices means it should be worth more than the VF price. Perhaps Scottishmoney can help as that is more his scene. As an indicator the 1984 Seaby price guide gave £85 in fine and £400 in very fine. However, looking at a 50 year old auction catalogue - Glendining 18/6/1959, a job lot of three Scottish ryals comprising 1566, 1567 and 1571 (the last two countermarked with a thistle) and all in very fine grade sold for £16 hammer. This is wildly different to £200, so it might be worth checking the acquisition dates as the sums don't add up.

I've heard one theory that it is due to grease blocking the die detail. This will not compress when the die is used if an airtight seal is formed and so the design is either non-existent or only weakly struck up. I have a few pieces like this.

That's quite a difficult one. Usually you need to look for a specific area of collecting and then find the books to suit. There have been a wide range of books over the years which have covered the topic generally, but it is difficult to say what you need. Clearly you need to identify coins, but if this encompasses the whole world you need something like Krause which would be overkill and prohibitively expensive for beginners. If restricting yourself to British coins post 1797 then Chris' CCGB would be ok, but any earlier and you need to go onto something like Spink's Coinage of England which is produced annually. Both of these have a glossary of terms which is useful if you want to understand what is written about coins. Most books tend to cover a restricted field but then go into some depth. You can look in the gallery to see the sort of coins people have in their collections. There is everything from Roman to the present day. Obviously the easiest to collect are those from circulation, but for older things you would have to do some research regarding what is available and who can supply.

Edward IV second reign

It depends on which part of the market you are talking about. The choice coins rarely find their way onto ebay for the simple reason that your avarage punter doesn't have the ability to recognise true quality for a given type of coin. It has kept the middle market up remarkably well with the assistance of photography sometimes showing what isn't there. The bottom end of the market has been stratospheric with most coins deserving to be melted achieving prices wildly in excess of this value. Agreed on that last point. The only problem is that more than 95% of what's on offer is dross. Finding quality is well nigh impossible and most people simply don't have the time to trawl through the lists. So you are going to end up with a welcome expansion of collectors, but whose grading experience is in the main derived from ebay listings and won't look at a coin described as gVF or nEF despite it being a grade or so higher than the UNCs in their collection.

her ya go obviously ive had to turn the coin so its the right way up I think we may be talking with our wires crossed here. When you say you had to turn the coin, do you mean the date is behind the top of the head, or is it behind the cut-off line on the neck? the date is behind the top of his head im guessing this is normal.lol That's normal. Until the Jubilee Head sixpences of 1887, almost all machine made coins were struck with an inverted die axis. There were a few exceptions to the rule such as the 1787 issues and some inadvertent errors. This inverted die axis is known as en-coin. The term en-medaille you mentioned at the start of this thread refers to coins where the two sides are the same way up. i.e. if you turn over a coin on the vertical axis from left to right it will still be the same way up. An inverted or en-coin die axis will be correct if you turn it over on the horizontal axis i.e. from top to bottom. I had assumed that the phrase "and noticed that my 1831 had been minted in medal alignment. is this the same for all sixpences minus pre 1787" was an accurate description of what you wanted to say. As all pre 1787 sixpences have an inverted die axis, by logical extension you were talking about a normal die axis otherwise known as in medal alignment.

her ya go obviously ive had to turn the coin so its the right way up I think we may be talking with our wires crossed here. When you say you had to turn the coin, do you mean the date is behind the top of the head, or is it behind the cut-off line on the neck?

And the reverse?

All the William IV sixpences I have seen have had an inverted die axis and there is no mention of this in either ESC or Davies, so this is clearly irregular. First of all, is it genuine? There are quite a number of Geo.III forgeries about, but I haven't seen any William IV. Post a decent picture to establish whether it is genuine and we can take it from there.

Yes please.

Thanks. I'd accept any reference which mentions them, even if it is only a paragraph or two.

I am trying to compile an article on the Weyl patterns and I am looking for references to any literature outlining the history, trading dates, products and any other info regarding Lauer, the manufacturer of various toy coins etc based in Nurnberg. It can be written in English or German. Chris? Thanks.

If you clean it you will damage it in any case, so best sell them on as is. Are you sure they are proofs and not just an early strike? People who own proofs usually know they are a special strike and the chances of them getting into circulation are therefore unlikely given they would only have been current for 35 years from production. Good hi res images would be needed to ascertain whether they are proofs or not as there is more than a polished field required for a proof.