Rob

It was the appearance and attribution of the Plymouth sale patterns that influenced my decision to stop collecting halfpennies and shillings to some extent. 20 out of 31 gold lots would have fitted into the two denominations, adding a minimum of a quarter of a million to the cost of completion at the time, with this now unquestionably upped by a factor of 3 at least.

Freeman describes the second (rarer) reverse as having misaligned St. Andrew's cross arms on the shield relative to each other, widely spaced double raised lines and a slightly recessed shield rim. It is considerably rarer than a 7+G combination. I haven't found a mint state piece yet to tick the reverse I box.

Gold is always a problem with marks, and in the case of patterns where only a handful are known at most you have to take what's available. Some are perfect, but they are very much in a minority. The absolutely gorgeous double reverse 1790/1791 halfpenny that went through DNW in 2006 was one in question, whereas most of the gold patterns sold at Plymouth were definitely not FDC. But when every one is unique, you still buy them if you want an example irrespective of grade. The florin in question might have been cleaned a little looking at the surfaces, but at least it isn't holed, unlike a pair of unique Anne farthings made into ear-rings, or so I have been told.

Is that Peck's 6+J i.e. Freeman's 7+I?

Forget eBay for shifting things on at a sensible price as you are dealing with morons more often than not. The wife has just received a neutral for a fully described and illustrated item when the buyer said she thought she would be getting a reproduction, i.e the item wasn't 'not as described'!!! How the **** are you supposed to deal with people like that. You can't leave feedback identifying the idiot behind the id, but you as a seller are portrayed as a person shipping iffy items long after the 3 month period when things are still illustrated. eBay really do hate sellers and pander to the moronic majority.

Get a couple of cabinets. You can fit anything up to 1500 coins in a 26-27 tray cabinet if you optimise the trays.

If the starting price was a bit more realistic it would easily sell. It's only a laminated flan due to rolling the sheet too cold and trapping air as an inclusion in the metal, but a perfectly good example of the fault. e.g. here's a threepence. The dark area was the inclusion, but with this obviously taking up most of the flan rendered the remaining intact area insufficient to hold the blank together.

The 1826 was in a NGC 63 slab

So by making the coin blue, you improve the coin to a state of perfection? Shurely shome mishtake.

I presume the blue colour below is what you are referring to. 1826 halfpenny slabbed MS63 with unbelievable toning, that, not in the sense of the spectacular. It has to be due to either their 'conservation' service, or some proprietary toning agent

If you don't get too hung up on resale value, then buy what you like. If you want to maximise resale value, desist from buying coins until you have read a lot of books and searched through past sales results. There are many ways to collect, all equally valid and sensible.

The first question is 'What is the subject?' I recommend you sort that one out first.

Ah. MDM - the European equivalent of the LMO. I can see a turf war starting up here with reductions in the multiples of true worth. Maybe we will have things for sale at only 2 or 3 times what they should be.

It's all they need to do. There are sufficient nerds around to ensure that is unlikely to slip under the radar.

He has more than 10 available of these rare pieces. I wonder who has the other 180 million?

Maurice Bull's Charles I Half Crowns vols. 3, 4 & 5 covers that denomination. Morrieson's articles in the BNJ cover the various mints, Lyall's Chester in the SNC, Allen's W/SA in the BNJ, Hird's work on Newark, specialist denomination volumes will have the appropriate coins. Then there is private research.

Maybe he isn't supplying the CGS coin you refer to, so can't provide good images. Just a thought. With the historical baggage, anything is possible.

Most of the 1915 and 1916 pennies I see appear to have had said tool applied. Most unappealing.

I don't bother. I check for open 3s, 1908 1*, narrow date 1877 and 1879, halfpenny numeral 1862s and die numbers. O/w, they are given a cursory glance to see if anything is abnormal. If not, the grade determines whether they are worth putting in the trays or the scrap pile.

A case of Pavlov's Clogs?

Don't worry, it's a minor transgression compared to the hammered 1915/6 recessed ear pennies currently being discussed.

I don't know any girls called Sharon or Tracy, however, I have extended my knowledge. According to Google, TOWIE is 'The only way is Essex' and Sharon or/and Tracy comes up with 'Birds of a Feather'. It appears both are from Essex. Same cast? Sorry, couldn't be a***d to find out. 30 years ago, a past encounter with a customer's son who was 10 years old at the time and lived in Essex elicited the statement 'cor, you dun arf tawk fanny mite'. I recognised 'You', even if the rest was in a foreign language. There was a definite inability to compose a coherent sentence, just as I noticed on ITV's 'The Chase' the other day. The presenter asked the contestant 'If you was to win some money, what would you do with it?' My immediate thought was to buy him a copy of 'English for Dummies'. Viz's Fat Slags I do recognise.

Never heard of it.

It isn't important as a broad classification will suffice for most things. Every die is different, so the fact that a particular individual has done something in a personal style is neither here nor there as long as it conforms to a particular class using most features. You can always sub-divide a class based on the odd quirk seen on a particular die, but most of these are inconsequential. Some things clearly take a higher priority such as the initial mark, which we know is changed for a reason. But garnishing or embellishment is not easy to tie down as a deliberate and defining change of detail, and thus worthy of being designated a different type.

Not much has changed in the past 300 years. There's still no shortage of people who somehow failed to learn to read and write and live out fanciful lives.