1949threepence

Good bargain - feather in your cap, and with those kind of bargains you can build up a good nest egg. But it must have been a bit of a flap when the crows beaked in - bleedin' stone me ! Could drive you cuckoo. Would have been interesting to have had a bird's eye view though.

Double struck 8? ETA: posted before I read Ian's post on the same subject !

I must admit, it's not hitting me in the eye. Is it possible to have a closer up view of the date? Possibly a Gouby D as explained by I

Thanks Ian.

Thanks Ian - yes that Gouby D is very definite. No idea how common they are, but as Bramah missed them, probably less common than the other two. I haven't seen one yet, but no shortage of examples of the other two. If you are able to send the eight 1858/7's examples, I'd very much appreciate it. But obviously if you run into technical issues, it's not a problem.

Indeed - the coin shown in this link is a very clear example of a Bramah 10b Whereas the one in this other link is an equally good example of a Bramah 10c As you say, there are no doubt more than 5 types of 1858/7.

*won't let me edit my post* Should just add that Michael Gouby has identified five of them, but has anyone here collected them as a stand alone variety?

Out of interest, have any pre 1860 penny collectors bothered trying to separate out the different 1858/7 varieties? Bramah notes: "at least five dies have been altered in this way, the varieties being perceptible by the slightly differing positions of the 8 in relation to the 7 below it". Peck makes reference to 1858/7 as a single variety. As Bramah didn't use any photos or illustrations, it would clearly have been extremely difficult for him to adequately describe each 8/7 variety in words only, as the differences would probably have been too subtle to lend themselves to word description only. It was different for the two identified 1848/7 varieties, 10b & 10c, which are very obviously different from each other. He described them perfectly, and of course, they are both available in relative abundance.

What Jerry is referring to is the number of feedbacks showing for given bidders, as per the screenshot below, which is from the auction in question. You can see that the winning bidder had no feedback, possibly implying that it's an e bay account set up specifically for shill bidding. Obviously there's no hard evidence to definitively prove it, but that is the suspicion. Conversely, the previous bidder had a feedback score of 250 implying that they were an established respectable e bayer. The percentage of positive feedback is the total number of positive feedbacks given by buyers/total number of feedbacks, given to that seller. So if somebody had 1000 feedbacks, 999 of which were positive, and one negative, their positive feedback would indeed be 99.9%.

For anybody interested, the June results have now been posted.

Congratulations to this bidder - £750.01, cheap at half the price lol Bidder Bid amount Bid time 7***3(feedback score: 0) £750.01 5 Jun 2020 at 4:21:06PM BST

Quite obvious shill bidding. The coin itself lost all semblance of a credible price when it soared past £230. Interestingly the latest bidder has no feedback. Of course, shill bidding is risky as the "shillers" can easily find themselves the only ones left in the race. Pretty obviously that will happen in this case.

The supermarket time slot difficulties are now beginning to ease. Many more available.

No. To quote from, and courtesy of Paddy's post from Friday at 11:17am, there are three types of EasyLive auctions:- LCA have chosen option 3, which merely shows the items. It's actually no different to just looking at the same coins on their website. Don't even know what they've fetched.

I agree with demonstrating peacefully. In fact I'd join them. But vandalism, looting and desecration of monuments will instantly distract from the gigantic cause the demonstrators have, and cause them to lose sympathy from the masses. It also hands ammunition to Trump. They've even vandalised and looted black owned businesses, and a black security guard was killed by them. The truth is that the trigger happy US police are out of control. Bear in mind it's not just African Americans and Hispanics they shoot dead/otherwise kill or brutalise for spurious reasons, it's also white people. Although, proportionately, it's mostly black. The Guardian ran a year long article 2015/16, citing every single person shot dead by the US police in those 2 years. Obviously some were reasonably justified, but what struck me was the number of people stopped for the most trivial of reasons, like a defective back light, and who then were shot dead in the subsequent exchange with the Officer. I truly think some of them are looking for an excuse to shoot people. That's what needs looking at folks, and it shouldn't be lost in rioting. That's a total distraction from the cause, which actually includes everybody. It's not solely a race issue. George Floyd shouldn't have died for a nil end result.

Thanks Ian, that's really interesting. I hadn't realised there were so many different small date varieties for this year. I never thought about Gouby's website and must take a look. Somewhat surprisingly Peck only mentions different date sizes in relation to 1857, 1858 and 1859. Yet there are obviously a number of others. Richard and John refer to obvious differences with the 1856. Also, for a further example, the pics below show two 1853 pennies with obviously different date sizes. The first darker one is a plain trident, and the other an ornamental trident. Reading Bramah's book, it's clear he didn't really rate date size variations as being of special relevance. At page 108 he states: "The figures of the date yield innumerable minor varieties of size, shape and position". He then only refers to one such variety in his year summaries, that of type 24a (1857 plain trident) "date in much smaller figures. (Numismatic Circular March 1895, col 1108)"

Talking about 1858 pennies, I've been collecting the various types of 1858, over the last month or so - and there are quite a few. One thing has struck me with regard to the "small date", which pertains to 1857, 1858 and 1859. The small date is made distinctive by the 5, which is clearly different to the 5's on the other 1858's (same with the 1857 and 1859). I've now got an 1858 small date, which co-incidentally doubles up as an 8/6 overstrike. Now I'm not sure whether all the 8/6's are otherwise small date, or whether the 1858 small dates are all 8/6. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Wow.......

Well spotted Paddy. That's a bit disappointing to say the least.

Good question. The mechanics of such events are very often not explained. I went into the easy live site a few minutes ago, and investigated so as to ascertain the precise position. It would appear that there are live auctions of various types every day, and they are listed. I went into one at random, and it is a live auctioneer who you can see and hear going through the bids. One thing I did notice is that even if you've already "registered" on the site and they have your details, you have to click "register" again on the individual auction, in order to bid in that auction. It's a bit confusing as when you see "register to bid", your first thought might be that you've already registered. If they must choose this rather circuitous route, it might be more logical to say "click here to verify personal details in order to bid on this auction", rather than employ confusing terminology. link to an auction taking place live now

If I bid for anything live, I'll make sure I video it for evidence, in case of any funny business afterwards.

Also you can be pretty much sure that the final hammer price is correct.

Certainly comes across that way doesn't it.

That does seem to be it. Obviously many potential bidders will be completely unaware as it's not flagged up on the LCA website. Or if it is, it's incredibly well hidden. Thanks for the heads up Paddy