argentumandcoins

Very nice example of the type and quite sought after.

Well... I stand by my assertion that there is certainly a new breed of ebay "dealer" Most of them know bugger all about coins, rarities, values or anything else and just see 300 coins being worth £5 each = £1500 on a £120-£140 estimate. They buy them and try and punt them on to some unsuspecting newbie collector. They are driving the market at the bottom end. People like me that used to do very well on bulk lots at all of the major sales are now winning bugger all because we know that 300 coins with that estimate are probably worth £600 tops (minus fees, tax, accountancy fees, advertising etc etc because we are registered with HM govt as taxpayers). We now have to buy small named lots with coins pictured (if bidding blind) or single high value items, so we are pushing the high end coin prices up. Add into the mix the new breed of cash rich investor and the old school collectors (who both have to pay more because of people like me) and you have your answer. The other big problem for knowledgeable buyers is the gold and silver price hike. An 1887 half sov was worth about £110/£120 before the surge in gold, it's now worth £110/£120 resale as are all of the commoner dates. Bulk silver lots are now worth more as scrap than they are as coins so we are also facing competition from traditional antique dealers who move in like sharks once they smell quick profits (although the margins are small the turnaround is immediate). All in all it's a tough world at the moment for those of us who do this for a living. I hope Peck is correct and the bubble deflates slightly or we'll all be finding it easier to get a mortgage than we will to buy decent coins!

Not many unless you find them in antique shops, car boot sales or hidden amongst other stuff in general auctions. My advice to any new collector is to buy the very best that you can afford. The most affordable coins at the moment are probably farthings and halfpennies as neither are particularly well collected at the moment (dons tin hat in preparation of attack from Colin and Peter). As such quite high grade pieces are freely available at decent prices and their day will come at some stage!

This tin Farthing was actually named in an auction lot as a tin farthing of James!!! If Carlsberg did tin Farthings I can gaurantee you that they wouldn't do this one! Free to a good home, so if anybody wants it (at least the plug is good) drop me a PM.

Operation Hide-behind-the-Northerners! Hide behind the northerner phah. Picture this, a bunch of burly scots tribesmens all pained blue (Rangers supporters) coverting the south as they had heard what a fair green land it was full of milk and honey. They get as far a Middlesbough and think "what the f..." and all go home again. Job done. Gary D They never went to the Boro Gary, that's why the A1 exists Besides I'm a Durham lad originally so they had to get through us first and even during the Bonnie Prince Charlie "the Forty Five" fiasco they decided to go down the West (Carlisle was a doddle) to miss out the boys Wise choice or he would never have reached Derby!

I think that what you have is more interesting than valuable or particularly noteworthy. As has been said dozens of times already, 1860 was a year (as were 62 and3) littered with minor anomalies and none are worthy of particular mention unless they are mules or corrected errors. T over another letter would be a find worthy of recording. Even in the pennies (which are very strong at the moment) it is not uncommon to find unrecorded overstamps that are nice to keep as part of your collection but not of any great importance.

To be honest, I was very pleased with the lot that I bought which strangely was not heavily bid; around 150 coins, 100 total junk but the rest quite saleable whether on e-bay or through my website. Not only did it include the cu-ni error coin that we have been talking about recently but also an 1804 dollar in condition approaching VF, an 1887 YH shilling above EF and an 1855 obv. 2 farthing in NEF. I would estimate that I could easily double my money without charging outlandish prices although to be fair I need a hell of a lot more like this to make a living... A feature of the auction was the number of bids from the floor, far more than I had seen at previous sales either there, at Lockdales or London Coins. I don't envy you, John, living so far from the main auction centres as it appears to me that in the present climate, distance bids are doomed to fail. Lot 20 Derek? You sod I had £320 on that so I was outbid by.....YOU The good thing about being up here is that there is very little competition in the Northern sales and what strong bidders there are quite often have a crack pre sale, naughty but nice As for estimates, they are supposed to be the price at which the auction house expects a lot to sell at, not "come and buy me" estimate. There is a possibility that there will be a major Northern house teaming up with me this year to run specialist coin auctions. The cataloguing and grading will be accurate and conservative (ancient and hammered will be a lucky bag as I am weak on those at the moment) and the auction will be a live on-line job. If it comes off it should be a good show (early days yet but fingers crossed). We get a lot of sleepers up here, as you saw from the 2 purchases I had in auction last month, so there should be enough to keep people interested. If the sales do happen I can say with certainty that the estimates will be what I would expect to pay as a dealer/collector so if you doubled the top estimate bidding blind you would be extremely unlikely not to win the lot.

Just checked my bids online. 27 lots bid on with a zero success rate. 3rd sale in a row at Warwick and last time I will waste time and effort bidding there. I have seen one of the lots just listed yesterday on ebay that I was outbid on (the 1902 silver set in long case). So my theory about ebay dealers driving saleroom prices may be correct on this occasion.

Nice one Colin. If you ever pop out a 1726 halfcrown give me a call will you?

I have that very medal - in top condition of course. But, it's at least Crown sized not 25mm!! So though it looks like it, by the size, it can't be. And I'd echo the obvious question : how did it get so worn? They produced 2 different sizes Peck, the shilling size for peasants and the big boy for rich men, like yourself! Just checked up and it was indeed by T (Thomas?) Brock.

Up North, wasn't that put there to keep the scots out. Wot? U mean norf of Watford Gar? Strewf cor blimey do me a favour guvnor. I think you will find that the North was put here to protect all the Southern woofties from the marauding tribes in the North, West and Scandanavia. Any good officer knows that you always put the hard lads at the front in a fight

Just had another look at the pics.... it is the silver medal (I think it was by Brock, but I may be wrong)

Hello Terror! It looks like 2 very worn Victorian silver coins (diameter will tell which denomination but probably sixpences) that will have been machined flat on the reverse (tails side) and joined together. If you check the rim you should see the join. There is no chance of it being a mint error as these 2 obverses are 1887 at the latest for the first and 1893 at the earliest for the second. The 2 portraits did appear together on an official 1897 diamond jubilee medal in silver, but this is clearly not one of those. John.

I was instructed to go to £1000 but sadly it was already sold

Not only that, but you can't get jellied eels anywhere - mystery to me how you've survived this long. A nice ham and pease pudding stottie, you Southeners divvnt knar wat ye missin!

No Peter, HM Govt took them all back when they closed the pits. We have to stand outside when it rains now and we can't afford coal because it used to be free for miners but now they buy it in from Poland or somewhere. By eck lad, it's cowld up North!

I did do a bit of research on this, the concensus I got being that most people considered the garter to be part of the design rather than the legend. Since this bit wears so readily, if it was treated as part of the legend, there would be no coins (or at least the reverse of them) in Fine or Fair at all, the grading effectively dropping from VF straight through to Poor. I'm old school when it comes to grading Derek. It costs me money but I never get complaints or coins sent back due to overgrading. Even my grading seems very lax when you look at some of the graders from the old days at Spinks and their likes though! I can safely say that if Jim Brown at DNW saw this 1908 HC he would not give it more than Fine, if indeed it made it that high.

I agree, Peck. The actual price of copper might have a knock on effect with the bulk sale of low grade coins en masse, from any era. It would not explain the current craze for buns. However, apart from the very rare examples, like the 1869, 1875H, and to a lesser extent 1864 crosslet 4 and 1871, collectors are pushing strongly for the very high grades, which have a premium on them orders of magnitude greater than their pro rata value to lower grade examples would indicate. Maybe that's due to their increasing scarcity as more and more find their way into private collections and therefore permanently or semi permanently withdrawn from trade. You could argue that has always been the case, so maybe there is some other factor at work which we can only speculate on ~ or a combination of 2 factors only one of which we can readily indentify. That's a good point. I wonder if the same fever has extended to the commoner dates in high grade, i.e. 1887 - 1893 - anyone noticed? Not to the same extent, no. I found those dates much easier to obtain in high grade at a not too high a price. It seems to be from 1881 back, where the really steep prices begin. Interestingly, even the 1877, an UNC (40% lustre) example of which I bought last year for £75, has shot up, and buy it now instances of the same coin at the same grade, are being offered for over £200. That said, the 1882H, which I got UNC with about 80% lustre for £73 last year, was being offered for £325 in about the same grade recently. That coin has now gone, so I'm not sure what it went for in the end. It went for £325, I was the seller. You cannot confuse ebay auction prices with BIN prices. The auctions on there are so unpredictable that sellers sometimes end up giving stuff away. You also should not confuse ebay prices with market value. Some people only buy from coin dealers and are willing to pay a fair price, whilst others scour ebay in the hopes of building a collection on bargains. One thing you have to bear in mind with ebay is a sort of "peer pressure" or "blind leading the blind" when it comes to BIN prices. An example would be me listing the same 1882H penny today for £325. Mrs Miggins from the Pie Shop in old London Town finds one that looks the same in her dearly departed fathers sock drawer. She sells odds and ends on ebay and decides the coin is going the same way. She hasn't heard of Spink, Coin News, Coin dealers et al and doesn't know what it's worth. Rather than give it away she does the sensible thing and checks for like coins on ebay. She finds mine and decides hers is the same/better/worse condition and prices hers from mine. She doesn't know mine cost me £380 in auction with a halfpenny, nor does she know that mine is tip top Tommy, but I have now become the price setter for her and those that follow with the same coin. Look at something relatively common like 1927 proof sets. The price on ebay has gone nuts, the price in auction has gone nuts. Is it ebay sellers trying to buy in auction pushing the prices up, which in turn drives up the ebay/dealer selling price due to their having to pay more? Chicken and egg scenario.

Shanghai tin smelter? No, they wouldn't pay the postage! A forum member who shall remain a non e mouse Must have got it for the plug then, to replace a missing one. I thought about selling that plug to Colin or Peter. Then I thought I might just keep hold of it in view of the rising metal prices. Then I finally decided that it would at least be a type example for a new collector until they could afford to buy an overpriced one from me or you

Shanghai tin smelter? No, they wouldn't pay the postage! A forum member who shall remain a non e mouse

Turned on a lathe by the look of it and probably within the past week!

I would agree Peter although it only just scrapes over the line. I don't have your grading book Derek, but if the Y P and I in the garter are missing I call them fair, barely visible gives it a Fine as I grade. The obverse of this particular coin is certainly better than Fine, the reverse...? I am maybe harsh on grading this reverse type halfcrown as I have sold quite a few Poor/Fair 1905's over the years that now are Fine/GF in everybody elses grading scales!

A new home has now been found!

Er... so have I (that was me sitting near the front wearing an appalling Lonsdale sweater). I was prepared to bid up to £1600 on lot no. 1 (est £1,000) but the bloody thing went for over £3k and that continued pretty much throughout! I bought a couple of nice individual lots and a sticky and smelly bulk lot that had clearly been in somebody's attic for decades. Hopefully there are a few bits and pieces in there to make money on. Anybody want five complete Elizabeth II halfpenny date runs? It may just be my imagination but I get the impression that the hammer prices at W & W are even higher than those at recent London Coin Auctions sales. The general consensus is that Warwick prices are insane. Don't ask why 'cos I know not! In their last sale I staked 20 blind bids and got nowt, this sale I gambled 27 blind bids and expect the same return!

I posted the below earlier today on the 1861 thread; There is absolutely no sign of prices slowing down, never mind falling. Coin prices rise year on year across the board and a high quality collection really is better than money in the bank. The reasons for the rise are numerous and can be linked with poor interest rates in banks, rises in precious metal prices (this has pushed up the prices on low grade silver), publicity over things like mule 20p and 1933 penny stirring interest from new collectors etc etc etc. Unlike the majority on here I buy in auctions and I can tell you that they are smoking at the moment. This again pushes your buying price up because dealers are having to pay more at auction. Any of you thinking of selling think long and hard. Yes, you will turn a profit on what you sell BUT, if you decide to replace your sales in a few months/years time you may find yourself priced out of the market. Now may however be a good time to assess your aims. If you decide you don't like a particular part of your collection and would like to concentrate on one denomination/reign why not dispose of a portion and re-invest? Food for thought folks.