argentumandcoins

No problem. The 1818 is the scarcest and the 1695 is better than most for wear, the problem is that both appear to have been polished/cleaned in the past. A nice gun-metal 1818 would have been £150ish on it's own. The other 3 are all common and only worth anything above scrap in top grade.

Bought on ebay 29/03/13 for £761 and sold less than a month later for close to £500 profit, not a bad couple of days work I suppose!!!!

As a group you would be looking at around £200ish depending on who the buyer was. If I was buying I certainly would not pay any more than that for them. Hope that helps.

What sort of valuation do you want? There are 3 main ones; insurance valuation, auction valuation or private sale valuation?

wha? He killed a Dragon Dave, most Scotsmen just marry one

John just offered you £10k but is probably wishing he'd said £2k now... I certainly am! Too honest for my own good Steve! I guessed it would be a keeper for Bob anyway

A very good find Bob. You ought to be looking at something around £10k to buy an example like that on this side of the pond.

A great find John! How many 1937 sets did you have to search to find that one? Any clues about what to look for? Pictures when it arrives, please, though I know proofs are notoriously difficult to photograph. Lots and lots and lots, but, they are obviously still out there for us Penny men to find Steve! The coin is now across in Durham but I will take a pic when next visiting the old boy. There are actually quite a few additions to the Pennies but most on here would cringe to see flat washers costing 4 figure sums......

So do you have all three in currecy as well? Yes, with multiple examples of most for sale in UNC. The 2 commoner proofs are already there as well of course.

Most dealers (decent ones that is) offer valuations for insurance purposes, although I must admit that nobody has ever taken me up on this. I have had hundreds of people wanting free valuations of course!!!! I would value your entire collection, giving individual coin valuations for any item over £1000 and bulking the remainder together. The valuation covers replacement cost, at current market value, on like for like coins. Most micro varieties have been sold before so a comparable price ius obtainable if you put the spade work in. You should ideally have this done every year and the insurance company should honour the valuation if the worst happens.

Well.... I bought a 1937 proof set this week to acquire the unlisted Obverse 2 proof Penny. If it comes in bronze or is a Halfcrown it would probably be sought out, although the completist tag is one that probably fits me better

The only fakes I have handled are 1928 and 1933. The easiest tells on them are raised dots in the fields, particularly the obverse as most of the reverse is filled with the design. They are generally slightly light as well (as Derek suggested). A magnet is no use as the fakes are non-ferrous, but the "ring" test is quite handy as well (as long as the saleroom do not object to you giving the rim a tap).

Marriage is like a deck of cards VS. All you need at the start are 2 Hearts, at the end all you want is a Club and a Spade!!!!

As far back as the 1940s/50s, and with provenance like those have? Sorry Peck but a printed piece of paper in a 1970's/80's Italian manufactured coin tray does not count as provenance that I would rely upon. I have seen lots of pieces of the cross of Christ with provenance from the Middle Ages that aren't worth the parchment that they are scrawled upon. I have no reason to doubt the inserts but nor is there any reason to assume that they are correct?

Hammered now, eh? Interesting. Although since I can buy six EF Charles I shillings, a meal for two and some chateau bottled Burgundy for less than £30 is a fair chunk of coin budget for me ... I'm not going to be hammering at their door for them to grade my coins just yet No, I'm sure it's reasonable compared to US TPGS. And I guess hammered are trickier to grade ..? But I'd like to see some results on that! I would have thought that the foremost experts in the country would struggle to accurately grade hammered coins. We have had multiple threads on here about this very subject and the general concensus was "buy on eye appeal or rarity, NOT GRADE" Just how 2 blokes, a row full of previously graded coins and a computer program will accurately grade a hammered coin remains to be seen! I really struggle in this area and even when you consider weak strikes, worn dies, planchet quality, environmental factors etc etc it is virtually impossible to arrive at a grade that is acceptable to 2 different collectors....

Yes, but .. what? If a coin was struck in 1640 and handed straight to someone who put it in a box, it's clearly uncirculated. Same as if Bolton handed a halfpenny to someone in 1797 or a mint employee pocketed 20p tomorrow, the amount of wear those coins have been subject to is zero. So ... why aren't they the same grade? As for using proofs for benchmarks, well that suggests to me that the grading is less about wear and more about how well a coin measures up against an idea. The idea of what a 'perfect' coin will look like. Seems to me to be a bit of arbitrariness here ... which brings me back to .. why do we grade coins? If it's a measure of 'perfection', well, OK. Though there are problems with that, I can accept the concept. But if it's to do with wear, why are we using different grade ceilings just because a coin is older? Yeah, I know. Not strictly about CGS is it? But I'm curious now what people think. The main reason for grading from my point of view is so that I can price a coin to sell. The only factors I consider when buying for the collection are; a; Is it an attractrive addition to the collection(if not it has to be hens teeth rare)? b; Am I happy with the price? c; Will I regret it if I pass on the coin this time around? The grade given to it by an auction house, another dealer or a TPG service is absolutely irrelevant when you look at my 3 main considerations pre-purchase.

They could do better if they would buy in the mounds of large flan 5ps and 10ps, and 1947-67 'silver' as the extra weight means way more value in scrap vs face and more importantly a huge supply with nowhere to go - not collectable and mostly sitting in boxes/bags. Surely the RM as a government offshoot can see that this should be a no-brainer given the alloy has already been made. Or am I missing something? Sorry Rob, you are confusing common sense with policy/decision making...fatal!!!

I'll just take a 10% commission for use as an advisory service Stuart

Actually I'm not. Not sure lower grade is really their thing. Probably said this before but I've certainly seen one of theirs graded F which really should have struggled to make Fair. Could have been an aberration, but unlikely as it was hen's teeth rare. In this case I'd give it NF but could change in hand. A good £69 worth - that definitely doesn't suck! I concur with your assessment of Fair+ Peck (obv better, reverse only Fair), but at £69 you stole it! I am old school when it comes to this issue and find it hard to reconcile F, GF and NVF (which most dealers and auctioneers would grade it) with a coin exhibiting so much wear. I think W&W back then were more realistic in their grading, and (if memory serves) didn't rate it even Fine. But prices have certainly gone up dramatically since then! But it wasn't as much of a steal as my 1903, which I bought from a US dealer for the princely sum of £26 !!!! Ah, the good old days Ebay used to have loads of nice bits on across the pond at very reasonable prices too. Sadly our cousins have caught up in the pricing game

What? Warwick and Warwick? Aye, judging by what John has mentioned Methinks Rob had tongue firmly planted in cheek Dave Their grading alone is on a par with the majority of ebay graders (that was the reason that the BNTA had their pants down) and they have certainly been known to slip in fail to notice a couple of forgeries of rarish coins in bulk lots to catch out the unwary!

Actually I'm not. Not sure lower grade is really their thing. Probably said this before but I've certainly seen one of theirs graded F which really should have struggled to make Fair. Could have been an aberration, but unlikely as it was hen's teeth rare. In this case I'd give it NF but could change in hand. A good £69 worth - that definitely doesn't suck! I concur with your assessment of Fair+ Peck (obv better, reverse only Fair), but at £69 you stole it! I am old school when it comes to this issue and find it hard to reconcile F, GF and NVF (which most dealers and auctioneers would grade it) with a coin exhibiting so much wear.

Well Stuart, they are BNTA members, soooo..... in theory you should be able to get your money back as they have sold you a fake. On the other hand I did hear a rumour that the BNTA naughty boy commitee were threatening to kick them out a couple of years ago for being a bunch of shoddy b******s, so shoddy in fact that they attempted to sell (via auction) the stock that was stolen from another well known Birmingham dealer following a robbery after a Birmingham fair, even AFTER he told them that it was stolen property........... Good luck old bean!

Sadly that is not the case at all. Forgeries already exist in forged slabs, it will not be too long before the forgeries become better and then your online protection is not worth the stamp it will cost to post it. The rest of your post I have no argument with at all. If we all liked the same things, in the same presentation, the world would be a dull and very expensive place.

I would agree that the 39 sets were in production up until the 1887 sets and even after 1887 would they still have been available via the mint? It is conceivable that the dies could have been used up until the death of Victoria as the sets were "made to order" for want of a better term and the Una £5 would probably have been as desirable then as it is now.

No, in all fairness I bought it already slabbed. Anyway, here is a photograph on which you can just see the fingerprint at about 7 o'clock. The image also shows the difficulty of photographing through a slab - the coin is about 1000% better than it appears here! Thanks Derek. Two points here:- a) Even if PGS weren't responsible for the fingerprints, they perhaps should wear light gloves when performing the slabbing process to avoid fingerprints on the surrounding plastic. b ) The photographing of coins through slabs is an important one, as once inside, they are not camera friendly, and you don't get a good image. Quite important, certainly as far as eye appeal is concerned, when it comes to selling. I've not seen a good photo of a slabbed coin yet. Pity a more camera friendly slab can't be developed, or else, as both Peck and I suggested in the CGS thread, that it becmes possible to legitimately remove from a slab, and then be able to re-insert, without loss of official grade status. (If the 1894 was busted out of the slab, it might be possible for a fingerprint expert to say whether the prints on the coin and plastic, were from the same individual) Definitely, if you don't mind aluminium oxide powder all over your coin of course There is another method but that involves superglue fumes....