Peckris

For this read "The Royal Mint is delighted for the exciting opportunity to issue shedloads of overpriced commemorative crap"

(testing image upload - ignore..) YAY. It works!

oooh. Nice new look! Apart from the pages loading rather slowly, I like it

Is $8:49 (including postage) really the bullion value of a 1743 farthing... um, Australian sixpence... um, whatever he is selling?

Fingers crossed...

While you're on it Chris, can you sort out the "not being able to upload images" thing too? It's very frustrating, and I really DON'T want a Photobucket account with all the xtra hassle that involves!

[waves to all our Australian members ]

There are/were no scarcity ratings in the Standard Catalogue, apart from the occasional Extremely/Excessively Rare when they haven't got a recent price and it's known to be very rare. You may be thinking of the ESC ratings devised by Raynor? As far as I remember, only at R3 and above are these "significantly rare", though I realise that's something of a subjective rating. But from R4 they say: R4 11-20 examples known R5 5-10 R6 3-4 R7 1-2

Mmmm .. chocolate! And .. how the heck does anything confectionary related last from Christmas Rob? There must be something wrong with you. In my house it's an hour from gift unwrapping, tops! Simple. The hammered gold isn't melting here, though it is hot. All the chocolate however, is. That's why I keep all mine in the fridge

Not quite right, Peck. The only reason you are directed to the PhotoBucket site, is because that is where TG hosted his screenshot. The original webpage is here and, in my opinion, saleroom.com is one of the best auction sites out there. Bah. I think that's my fault guys. I must have somehow picked up an active link rather than an one from photobucket when I couldn't get the usual direct upload to work. Sorry! That's not what I meant to happen ... obviously! I wish Chris would fix this. I feel marooned not being able to upload images

[rant] Bl00dy useless auction site - you can't see the reverse without being diverted to the egregious Photobucket site. As for a grade of GVF, who are they trying to kid?? [/rant] But it's clearly one of the forgeries you found, and I reckon you did the right thing, contacting the auctioneers. As for other sales, all we can do is sit here saying over and over : "Buyers Beware!!" and hope that people see us.

We saw that sting on "Fake Britain" a while back, didn't we?

There could be lots of factors at work here. For one, we are looking with hindsight through eyes that have grown up with proof sets and their availability. Yet in 1839 they were in their infancy - the first being the George IV one, am I right? So the Mint would hardly have been geared up to producing sets. It's much more likely they would have concentrated on the higher value denominations and minted different numbers of proofs for each, according to demand and tradition. Then you've got the general attitude towards the base metal coinage. The Great Recoinage of 1816 didn't even feature them, even though it was accepted by then that a 'token currency' would be produced, so the piecemeal coppers produced between 1797 and 1807 would not have discouraged a new copper standard (which didn't appear until 1821-6). Yes, the three-halfpence is a strange omission if the set was commissioned by a completist. Yet there is a certain balance in that 17 coin set, that might have been thrown out with an 18th coin in it. But that aesthetic doesn't really satisfactorily explain its omission. It may be that the collector in question didn't really regard a 'three-halfpence' as a true denomination?

Which branch of Poundlands would that be and when? He's safe - £50k is nowhere near the estimate

Interestingly, the lot description doesn't mention proofs at all: "A VICTORIAN SPECIMEN COIN SET for 1839 comprising seventeen coins including a gold £5 coin, sovereign and half sovereign, in a circular Spink & Sons box. See illustration."

Yes, the rim/edge look much more prooflike on that example, though I much prefer the tone on Dave's non-proofs.

My own assessment would be they are not proofs, but early strikes. Mirror-like finishes are very common on 19thC coins, especially Victoria, and my gut feeling is those two lack the characteristics of proofs in terms of fine detail. Having said that, they are neither of them shabby

1st Test in the Ashes has been on Richard And what a finish that was... Booking in coins and listening to TMS on a sunny Sunday. Does it get any better? I had sky sports on the computer soooo, needless to say, little work was done last week It all starts again on Thursday........ Pfffft. I'll stick with Aggers, Blowers, Vaughany, Tuffers, and all the others I do miss the patrician tones of CMJ though.

Not really. That doesn't work for me. Neither alt and prtscn together or alt then prtscn seem to do anything. Going to the pictures folder where all the jpags are kept doesn't result in an image of the screen appearing either when I do a ctl-V. Never mind, I'll just stick with writing it out manually. Pressing PrtScn on its own doesn't seem to do anything either. Peter, you are right. Maybe the computer/operator is too old - or broken. Pressing PRTSC just appears to hold the image Rob. Like doing Copy, nothing else happens until you are in a document or whatever and tell it to Paste. I need an open image based window - I use Paint as it came with the computer, but I guess anything you can draw in as, although you can do it in say, Word, I have no idea how you'd save that as an image file! - then with that visible press Ctrl+V. The whole screen then appears as the Paint image. I still have to save that (usually to my desktop) to use it. That help? I think so, thanks. It copied and saved it onto a word page which is an improvement on my pictures which didn't save previously. And doing a manual save I could now get it into the pictures folder, so I may have an image but it thinks it is a word document. AFAIK, only on a Mac will Copy/Paste work for files, but even there I'm not sure you can paste the clipboard anywhere as a separate file. What you need to do is use one of those key combinations to copy the pop-up to the clipboard, then open Paint, and 'Paste'. You have done that in Word instead, which will also work, but as you've discovered, you can only save it as a Word document not as a picture. If you use Paint instead of Word, you can then save it as an actual picture into your Pictures folder. So, open the Word document, select (click on) the image there and then 'Copy'. Open Paint, and 'Paste', and then save it as a picture file.

If you still have the link, that would be useful. Was it a modern Spink box or could it possibly have been made prior to 1875? As mentioned earlier, that is the earliest reference I have to a 17 coin set. In 1839 the fractional farthings were not current in this country, only being proclaimed in 1842 or 1843(?). However, once they were legally able to circulate, it is possible that the mint would have added examples to the set in order to provide an example of each of the circulating denominations. The box is definitely contemporary (I would guess mid to late 19thC) with the gold braid edge tooling and blue velvet roundels for all coins, no ribbon lifters - a single push button but with no swing hooks (as also used on the "standard" spade shaped case) - the coins were unfortunately mixed in quality but I did not see them in the hand relying on my agents description. Thanks. It certainly looks 19th century. The fact that they were differing in grade is not necessarily surprising. Within a few years of 1839 the auction catalogues are describing some of the £5 coins as impaired e.g Thomas Thomas 1034, Soth 23/2/1844 - and there are other references noted as such. However, if the fractionals were notably different from the rest, then surely that would have to imply the set wasn't original? IMHO the use of a Spink labelled box would imply not as issued by the mint unless there are other boxes so labelled and preferably with 15 coins inside. Unfortunately that still wouldn't clarify whether the 17 hole boxes were made for the mint as a one-off or commissioned privately. If as issued this would potentially help clarifying the order in which the dies were used. Fortunately the early catalogues go to great lengths describing the £5 pieces, which helps. Finding complete matched sets in original boxes would help too as it is unlikely many would have been reconstituted if matched. Agreed - one would need to see a Mint case with 17 recesses in, to be certain. But, and this is a puzzle, surely the quarter farthing is a currency example anyway, as I can find no reference to the existence of any proofs for them? That would imply it was almost definitely a dealer's compiled-to-order set; it could even be a one-off, if the completist collector in question had the the means to shell out for a custom made case (and in the absence of any others, that must be the assumption).

Safari gave this : (Damn! Still getting upload error!! Chris? HELP!!!!! How did the rest of you get your screenprints uploaded? Has the 'server upload error' gone away for some of you?) Basically, it's a grey window with information on it, and a red banner at the top saying WARNING - VISITING THIS SITE MAY DAMAGE YOUR COMPUTER

Is it possible that the seller had simply bunged the fractionals into the box to make the set 'complete'? I guess you'd have to see whether there are recesses specially made for them, or whether they just 'float free'.

That's an interesting looking piece. It does seem to be right for a halfpenny that's had its legend removed, but a double header? Are there any signs that it's two 'heads' that have been not only treated (legend machined off) but then stuck together? There would be a faint join along the full length of the rim.

Yes, there's quite a variation in date spacing - especially the final digit - between 1896 and 1899. You have one of the wider ones there - unfortunately although of interest to micro-variety collectors, it's not worth a great deal more than a regular example, and probably only pence more in that condition.

You can certainly have linked pages on a blog (the 'pages' are nominally dated entries, but you can name them what you want, and have them as a 'Contents' on your home page); you maintain or change copy as you like, probably even easier than a website. The difficulty I suppose, would be if you were selling stuff there - shopping cart etc - as I imagine the people who supply the facility (Google, WordPress, or whatever) would look askance at that and probably close it down? However, if your 'shop' was on eBay, you could probably link to it from a blog and have better pictures and sales patter.