Peckris

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year? I did start collecting from change about a couple of years before decimalisation. I don't think the mix available was much different to now, ok you could find the very occassional pre-George VI but it was rare. Most of that kind of thing came from grandparents etc. I started in 1968 - I found a few (worn) 50% silver coins, but I also found a 1949 brass 3d, a 1953 penny, a 1936 in EF, a 1926ME, a few 1946 mint flaw, a 1909 halfpenny in GVF+, and 1935 EF with lustre, a 1938 UNC with strong lustre, a 1952 GEF lustre.. I thought I did quite well, but I had to sift through one hell of a lot of bank bags!

What's fine? A Fine coin

I think I didn't make my point very clear, what I meant was not that coins would be melted and thus unavailable for collectors to buy, collectors will always be able to buy decimal coins due to the huge mintages. What I meant was that they'd be nothing of great interest actually circulating (or say scarce circulating), say for you to hunt down and find in change. With this I very much agree with Tom, we have nothing compared to the US and Switzerland where you can pull coins 100+ years out of circulation (by that I mean coins that are circulating as legal tender as they were meant to). How many collectors on here collect coins from change? Probably less than buy coins I suspect. Collecting coins through buying and collecting coins through change are two completely different experiences, at least for me anyhow. It's a bit like going to an auction/antiques house vs going metal detecting. One you know you're going to get something decent, the other you might find nothing. It's the thrill of the chase. British coins just don't have that, and for us folks born in the decimal era, we've never really had the chance to enjoy that. Personally I'd love to go to Switzerland and spend many hours searching through change, that'd be cool. Actually the most fun I've had buying coins is searching through the junk boxes, that's fantastic, love it. Which probably surprises Chris considering the kinds of coins I have specialised in over the years. The hyperactive Royal Mint issuing of proofs and commems has also had a knock-on effect in killing people's interest in collecting from change - why bother if you can buy a perfect set every year?

Because the price of silver was so volatile. The value of a Bank Of England "dollar" could - and was - adjusted in face value according to the rise and fall in silver prices. For the same reason, countermarked "pieces of 8" (Spanish) could have a face value set that was usually less than five shillings. If they had issued crowns, the value would have been fixed at 5/- and if the price of silver rose, they would have been melted down for their metal content.

If it's a good fake (Chinese) it will be very difficult to tell from the real thing. Otherwise, there are good pictures of the genuine article - the type, I mean, not necessarily that date (lots in the Crowns topic in the Varieties sub-forum here, for example). Any reputable dealer will be able to see if it's a fake, and a reputable auction house will take back any item that can be shown to be a fake, but you need a way to prove it's the same coin you won. Do you have a picture from the catalogue?

That sounds like my approach - you use the "darker coloured folders" method, i.e. the ones that show new content? No, I just look at the dates as I did with this one. I've never stopped to work out what all the various symbols and colours mean. Same ere, wot colors A forum with no new posts has a pale blue folder, which goes dark blue when there's new posts. Within a forum, topics which have new posts are dark gold in colour. I just click on the dark folders/topics.

Are these edge variations really significant enough to warrant requiring an example of each to consider your collection complete? I honestly don't think so. This is a much discussed point. Eventually you will arrive at an example of every die and combination produced. I suspect boredom will set in long before you achieve your aim. Well said. Some of the tiniest variations collected should be used as a test for Aspergers Syndrome

That sounds like my approach - you use the "darker coloured folders" method, i.e. the ones that show new content?

It's really strange how different threads show on the forum. I always click 'view new content,' and generally read everything before clicking 'view new content' again (to check for posts added whilst I was reading), before finally marking all as read! You'd think that would have me seeing everything, however, even with this approach I still stumble upon significant threads - which have had endless responses, which I should have picked up on with my method - that have just passed me by! Very weird! With your zoomed photography, I couldn't say underlying E. It looks more like a partially clogged B to me. Has the B/E every been clearly recorded? Interesting approach. I dive into each forum that has the "New posts" dark folder. Then within that, I dive into each topic that has the gold "New posts" folder. That way I should be able to see everything. And if I leave a topic and someone has been adding a new post, it shows gold again, so I can look again.

John, Here. Regards, Clive. Interesting grading. Very conservative. This lot rated as "fine to very fine". What do you think? Especially the 1887 double florin. http://www.dnw.co.uk/coins/auctions/rostrumauctions/auctioncatalogue/lotdetail.lasso?auction=British+Coins+12+Jun+13&id=282

That's a VERY good price! I'll add that seller to my list... Ah, didn't realise it was GB Classic Coins - I've bought from them before, including an UNC 1921 florin for about £50, which I thought was a good price for an underrated coin.

What planet have you been living on scott? It's been steel since the early 1990s!

Difficult to say if it's had a slight dipping or not. It's certainly not been polished or buffed, and as Gary says, it's a nice coin and also a scarce one. If the money's right, I would definitely go for it. Do bear in mind, if you're a type collector not date, the 1927 is the same issue and would be a lot cheaper in BU.

Surely you at least wore a pair of cotton gloves? Nope!!!!! But I must say I was a lot more careful to only handle by the edges than they were!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edit: Ooops, now I've said it!! I suppose the thrill of handling such gorgeous coins made you impervious to the cold, then

Surely you at least wore a pair of cotton gloves?

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. What you say is perfectly true. I wonder if it's something to do with the fact that minting imperfections were almost inherent pre-Boulton & Watt? Or maybe it's more to do with the fact that people didn't tend to put coins aside in those days, as they were valuable things as money and only kings collected coins numismatically? It's certainly true that there are ARE early milled UNC coins, and I would grade my 1708 shilling as virtually that, also my 1697 sixpence. Both are quite common in those grades, so maybe there was a bag stashed away in a bank that didn't come to light for a couple of centuries. ETA: even in the early 20th Century, collectors weren't obsessive about high grades, as long as they could see the "fine detail" they were happy enough apparently.

I believe that was Peckris's intention. Misleading us poor coinies with an article about other such tricks. Yeah, but the April Fool's joke was my original post, leading to a site that gave the game away. It wasn't part of the joke to freeze up people's computers - sorry about that.

OMG. What fool would pay £850 for a 1967 penny, even if it was a CGS slabbed UNC98? Link

I think hammered coins present their own unique problems for graders Vicky! But I agree that early milled coins are different from, say, Victorian ones. Just look at William III. Weak strikes, haymarking, sometimes all the edge rim, sometimes not. Should those detract from a numeric grade if that is how the coin left the mint? I guess I'm still not quite sure what a grade is for. OK, coins have for a very long time been described at least in part as being 'very fine' or whatever. And certainly when dealers issued typed lists, that helped buyers select coins they would like to inspect. But nowadays most coins are illustrated and (providing the picture is decent) buyers can surely make up their own minds whether it meets their requirements? ... sorry. Just wondering aloud here. You'll have noticed that Spink don't list grades higher than EF for pre-1797 coins. And they have different grading guides for early milled and later milled. Got to be something in that.

This link completely froze my computer and send my hard-drive into a grinding frenzy, leaving me with no option but to crash it! Has it been OK for everyone else? Oh dear, that wasn't the intention at all. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Yes. I also remember leafing through a CM from back then and someone was offering a BU 1932 and 1934 halfcrown pair for a little shy of £200. You'd probably just about get that now, but as you say - 8 weeks wages back then! ..........and yet somebody must have bought them, otherwise they'd never have commanded such high prices for the time. I wonder where some of those coins are now. Salted away forever in private collections, probably. I remember CM had an "Auction News" section towards the back, with a list of hammer prices realised. That would, I'm sure, give the true prices that people were prepared to pay, whatever the (ever optimistic) dealers lists trumpeted.

Indeed. The Pound stayed the same. The d and the p did not. Considering the "d" stood for denarius, what would we say was the predecimal and decimal equivalent? Although nowhere the same buying power, I nominate the silver shilling for the former (though on size alone, the sixpence gets it). As for decimal, there seems to be no suitable denomination that shouts out "I'm a denarius!". Perhaps the 50p, in its dreams?

As has been said already Ozzy, if we had crystal balls we'd all be very rich now! (ahem, Peter, did I hear you cough somewhere there in the background? ) But you will find 1950s UNC cupro-nickel is hard to find - sadly it is already priced to reflect that. Early 60s may be a good place to start, as it is still mildly underrated IMO. To make life easier, why not start with a few sets that were put together in the late 60s in 'Sandhill cases' (clear plastic both sides with inserts for each denomination)? If you can track down UNC examples of such for 1961-1965, you won't find them too expensive, but do make sure the coins are genuine UNC. A lot of those sets were thrown together with circulated examples of one or even all coins.

Talking of 20p - I saw recently that among the early 60s patterns for decimal coins, not only was there a 1/4p, there was a 20p too. Makes you wonder why it didn't make it until 1982 and wasn't introduced in 1971. Maybe the experience of the Double Florin was haunting them! Long memories! Mind you, it wasn't exactly as if florins were "that there new fangled thang" anymore. I sometimes like to hold a Double Florin in one hand and a 20p in the other just to remind myself that they are the same denomination. Yes - not quite a sov versus brass £1 comparison is it?

Yes. I also remember leafing through a CM from back then and someone was offering a BU 1932 and 1934 halfcrown pair for a little shy of £200. You'd probably just about get that now, but as you say - 8 weeks wages back then!