1949threepence

Here's my F67, out of interest. Ordinary rim and definitely not a specimen, but as you say there are other non specimens with a thick rim. High grade, but definitely a currency strike, and a clear difference to yours, which does have all the hallmarks of a specimen strike.

Apologies if this has already been posted, but e bay seller "The Coin King" has written an article about the increasing number of fakes being offered on e bay, including how they typically manifest, what to look for and where they might originate. Worth a read. link

In fairness, he did have the "or make offer" option available, as he nearly always does.

No, in fact the only specimens/possible proofs known of in the 1874 series, are the Heaton Mint ones (F74). I actually successfully bid for the Copthorne example, in 2016. Your F67 definitely does have the typical red/blue toning characteristics of a specimen, as well as that thick rim, especially to the obverse, which my F74 has as well.

Well I've now managed to obtain a really nice F176, again from John Jerrams (Topcarp2). Thanks for the heads up Jerry. Really pleased with this acquisition as the 176 is clearly very scare, even in low grade. So to get one like this is excellent. I'd say it's aUNC/GEF, with decent hair detail, although as so often with this era, the breast plate is somewhat deficient. Britannia's head well struck up, however. Tiny circular metal flaw on the King's head. Managed to knock him down from £320 to £280 best offer, which, given the condition, is a very reasonable price, with free postage and exclusive of any auction buyer fee. I must say, he does a good sell, and his write up's are always a pleasure to read.

Beauty - that's a hard date, especially in high grade.

Some interesting perspectives on the bronze coinage of Queen Victoria from 1860 to 1894, written in 1907 by Fleet Surgeon A E Weightman, RN. Although why he refers to Leonard Charles Wyon as Leonard Courtney Wyon, I've no idea - mistake, or did he know something we don't? link to pages

Thanks, that's a much better view and under magnification it's clearly obverse 9. Not bidding as I already have a decent F97 (and 96 for that matter). But I was just intrigued.

Copied and pasted that into the e bay search bar, but it didn't find it unfortunately. Thanks anyway. Never mind, I'll go with the majority view of Obverse 9.

Thanks chaps. I was poring over it off and on for several hours and switching between the two. Unfortunately there's no blow up facility with this one, so you can't get to see it really close up. I thought the same as you, Jon, but not sure. To be fair, it's a nice coin eitherway. Great toning.

What do you reckon, obverse 8 or 9?

Meant to post this a few days ago. It's my F160 now freed from its MS64 slab, photographed and suitably cropped. It's much the scarcer of the two 1905 types and I've been trying to get a decent one for some time.

Might be worth reporting to e bay. Problem is, no-one there would know the difference.

That makes very plausible sense.

I'd bet the cases were routinely broken open to spend the lot, scarce penny included. Would have been to big a temptation to resist, especially for kids, or if you were a bit hard up.

But presumably the one's you did find were from far less than £487.50's worth, which is what that stack of 117,000 pennies amounted to?

Did you ever get a 1953 in your change or a bank bag, Chris? I seem to remember once reading that there were a few knocking about in circulation at that time, and whilst very scarce, were not impossibly difficult to locate if you looked hard enough. That's why I was quite surprised that in the survey of 117,000 I mentioned, only one 1953 turned up.

Well I'm sad they've folded, but I have to say that in possibly 6 or 7 years of trying, I never once found details of forthcoming auction lots. Their website was an utter mystery to me.

Quite apart from the trident dot, Pete, that coin has a superb reverse strike.

OK, thanks Pete. That makes sense. I'm 99% certain the package hadn't been opened, but all the postage costs and details shown, were from the USA end. Absolutely nothing from Border Force/Royal Mail that I could see. I think they should be a bit more transparent with their costs.

Got no further e mail as promised by Royal Mail, but as the item was shown in USPS as held at a facility here in the UK, twice removed from Heathrow, I decided to click the tracking details on the e mail link shown in my first post, where I found out the customs duty was £15.42, which was less than 20%, but more than 5% - so, no idea how it was calculated as there was no breakdown of the cost. Tried to pay over the RM website, but it failed to work. Anyway there was a card pushed through the door when I got back from work last night, saying the item was being held at the local post office. So I decided to pick up in person and paid cash. I would have asked the girl at the counter how it was calculated, but the pick up point is at the back of the post office, it's all open and it was pissing down with rain, so left it. Well worth the hassle as it's a really nice coin, but that customs duty is a bit of a mystery. Apologies for rambling on.

Question is: can you fix the problem?

Here is the letter in full from the January 1970 edition, a copy of which I'm now the proud owner. Just need February and April for a full 1970 set now:- Colin Cooke alright.

Agreed - Spink archive is a complete mystery to me. Never found a thing on it yet. ETA: just searched for an auction, found it in the list and clicked on it. Got this:- Not Found (#404) We couldn't find what you were looking for "New and improved" apparently......

"Seller's privacy" just sounds like a fob off to me. Any auction house worth its salt would have sought provenance from the moment the vendor offered the item up. If it wasn't forthcoming, to then state "no provenance" against the sword at auction. Buyers are always going to be interested in the history of any object (where was it found, how long have you had it, where did you get it from etc) So to not bother, with something of that alleged age, is pretty bad form.