Peckris

I have emailed him twice. The first time telling him it was a pewter replica. The 2nd time asking him why he hadn't added this to the listing. Reported to ebay who do diddly. I reported it this morning too! He's a 'top' seller with a lot of feedback, bet they ignore it! What really annoyed me about this one was the blatant 'what is it'? You mean he couldn't actually read ELIZABETH on the edge of the coin and, putting two and two together (ie the date), realise it probably isn't Elizabeth II? I've messaged him: "INTERESTING COIN DATED 1562 - WHAT IS IT?" - it's a replica coin, composition uncertain, but the thickness tells me it may be lead or pewter. I used to be a dealer and was taken in by one of these in the early days, and had to refund the sale price to the buyer. Since then I've become expert at spotting them. Yours is almost identical to the item I had. I'd recommend you either withdraw the item and relist it, or amend the description to reflect the fact it's a replica. Hopefully he will take the hint, but don't hold your breath... I'm turning blue already, Peck! We should definately have a dedicated thread for OBVIOUS ebay fakes, which has all members emailing simultanteously! From a specially dedicated ebay account, goes without saying of course! I think the fake-meisters would soon tire of it! I actually got a polite, but rather incoherent reply, to the effect it was too late to change the listing with only 12 hours to go!!!

I have emailed him twice. The first time telling him it was a pewter replica. The 2nd time asking him why he hadn't added this to the listing. Reported to ebay who do diddly. I reported it this morning too! He's a 'top' seller with a lot of feedback, bet they ignore it! What really annoyed me about this one was the blatant 'what is it'? You mean he couldn't actually read ELIZABETH on the edge of the coin and, putting two and two together (ie the date), realise it probably isn't Elizabeth II? I've messaged him: "INTERESTING COIN DATED 1562 - WHAT IS IT?" - it's a replica coin, composition uncertain, but the thickness tells me it may be lead or pewter. I used to be a dealer and was taken in by one of these in the early days, and had to refund the sale price to the buyer. Since then I've become expert at spotting them. Yours is almost identical to the item I had. I'd recommend you either withdraw the item and relist it, or amend the description to reflect the fact it's a replica. Hopefully he will take the hint, but don't hold your breath...

The penny would be one of Peck proofs KP14 through KP20. It's all down to the number of leaves and berries, gunports on the ship, the nature of the K . : , olive branch leaves, waves, etc. Most of those include a bronzed variety, ranging from S to VR. If you don't have access to Peck, I can summarise each KP for you. The farthing looks a little less convincing, but it may just be the photo. If a genuine proof, it would be KF6 through KF10, which have minor differences, mostly the dot on the lowest fold of drapery, and die flaws in the legend.

Always amazes me that such ancient quality coins can be acquired at affordable prices, those are great Hus! Good Romans are plentiful. Not surprising when you consider the size and sophistication of that economy and culture. But yes, it's good that so many are available at such reasonable prices. Ironically, when you look at the late Republic and early Empire, the silver coins are much more affordable than the bronzes.

I'd still love to know how it could happen. The only possibility is having two reverse dies in place, but how that could be done on a one-off basis seems far-fetched?

I guessed as much. But still, you must admit that getting 'pock' and 'wart' into the same sentence is nifty!

I have a 1970 proof penny with two reverses and even under a x20 microscope I cant see any foul play. Have often wondered about getting it authenticated. The "genuine" examples - e.g. 1970 penny - will have been minted at the London Mint when they were on the way to being shut down. I wonder if the supervision was a bit lax if all they were doing was proof sets, and therefore could get away with a bit of 'monkey business'?

That is the big problem with slabbing companies that don't insist on good quality images! CGS are as bad, a lot of their images are just token gestures, totally underexposed and blurred at times, as good as useless. Any 'jasmine' slabbers would surely be trawling the TPGC sites looking for the unidentifiable images and using those slab numbers on their own slabs, wouldn't they? I think slab buyers, and slabbers, should begin insisting on quality images, especially when dealing with milled coinage! I just bought a slabbed coin that looked much better in the hand than the photo had suggested it would. CGS had used very directional lighting that highlighted a surface flaw that 'in the flesh' was almost invisible to the naked eye. On the one had I was glad but on the other hand I know that their pic could be a problem if I come to sell it on. Although to be fair to them, even a bad CGS photo is almost always going to be better than a good ebay photo. I Take it you have'nt seen my photos then? My own opinion but i think my poctures represent my coins 100% accurately warts an all A pocture is a wart?

Nice. Rated only 'S' by ESC but hell, it's a great chance to own a pattern that's affordable!

The penny held up by King Harold at Hastings, when he said "Here, is that a 1033? I can't see it clearly. Let me just hold it up to the ligh..." Or when Nelson said to Hardy, "I bet you this Doriens and Magens shilling that we got them beat by sundown." Or the quarter handed over by Abraham Lincoln to the ticket office ("That'll be 10 cents for a balcony seat for tonight's production, Mr President") But actually, it would have to be any of the pennies laid beneath foundation stones by George V in 1933...

you learning Swahili, scott? That NGC slab is VF max in my book. Even allowing for differences between American and UK "gradining".

What's the reverse? My ESC doesn't give any illustration but does list the reverse of 206 as "Wreath".

Very nice.

It's all in the size of the picture, the presentation, and the description, I feel. Plus maybe the use of the word 'Belsen' in the description, which is a bit naughty as there is no other evidence for it being anything of the kind.

There's no point looking for a proof not dated 1927 - if they exist at all they will be mega rare and you should buy only from a reputable dealer. Otherwise, if it's dated 1927 it's a proof, if not, it's not. You won't see much difference between proof and non-proof wreath crowns, as they were struck in limited quantities to high standard (i.e., the mintages are too low to see die wear.) For some reason, you can see wear on the non-proofs, but this is probably more due to rubbing or keeping in a pocket, rather than genuine circulation. The 1927 crown will have a generally superior rim, and probably more of a mirrored field. Ironically, the 1927 proof is the highest wreath crown mintage.

Photoshop's compression scale runs from 1 (awful) to 12 (virtually uncompressed). Needless to say, the smaller the number, the higher the compression and the smaller the file. In my own experience, if you're displaying on a computer screen - i.e. not printing - you can reduce an existing large picture to 5 on the scale without seeing very much in the way of deterioration. Make sure that you do any Size reduction and PPI reduction and Cropping at the same time, then save. Refuse to pay that sort of money for Photoshop, I use a free program called paint.net which I believe comes from micrsoft, when you save to .jpeg it gives you a sliding scale from 100% down to 0% and shows you the file size as you adjust. It also has many functions of expensive programs such as the ability to work with layers and much more. If anyones interested you can get it here paint.net Actually, Photoshop Elements can do a whole load of stuff, but only costs a fraction of the full Photoshop. About 80% of the program for less than 20% of the cost. Also, Elements is cross-platform, which I suspect paint.net is not. For Mac users, there's Pixelmator, which supports layers and filters and text and a whole lot more, looks gorgeous, and only costs around £20. The GIMP is a nightmare to learn but it's free and open source and just as powerful as Photoshop.

Remember it well. For reasons best known to her, a girl I worked with dumped some in my umbrella. Used to get very strange looks when it rained... Bus stop bus stop, she's there waiting, under my umbrella...

***For Comparing our 1850/46 ...PICS of 1846, 1849, and 1850 "Plain" Dates*** sorry but they are way too small to do anything with. The 1850 pic is 121x48 pixels and just 6kb of data. You have obviously cut the dates out of an existing pic which in its self must have been quite small. To have anything workable then the date pics have to be at least 500 pixels in width. If you are using a camera use the largest pic setting and get it as close to the coin as poss, if you are scanning use the highest resolution setting to obtain the largest pic possible and then cut the dates outs into a seperate pic. In any photo editing software you have an option to save as .jpeg which will tell you the size of the saved file and allow you to compress it to a given data size ie 150kb. If the quality of the pic is reduced too much by the compression then reduce the size of the original pic (usually under "Image" and then "Size" or "Resize"), say the original is 1000x500 pixels then reduce it to 500x250 this way you reduce the data size by half (not quite true but good enough) and then save as .jpeg. Example- The pic of the 1850 shilling from azda above is 1024x1009 pixels and has a file size of 372kb and I bet he has reduced that before posting it. Photoshop's compression scale runs from 1 (awful) to 12 (virtually uncompressed). Needless to say, the smaller the number, the higher the compression and the smaller the file. In my own experience, if you're displaying on a computer screen - i.e. not printing - you can reduce an existing large picture to 5 on the scale without seeing very much in the way of deterioration. Make sure that you do any Size reduction and PPI reduction and Cropping at the same time, then save.

Hello! Thanks for the response, appreciate it. Figured out a way to compress a couple of pictures of the date and posted them a few moments ago. As mentioned in the prior post, we are waiting on a USB magnifier. Once it arrives we will take better pictures of the date and post them. Yes, we also agree with you on Rayner over Spink. Since we are new, is the upload limit per picture or is it an overall per account? Have a great evening! Neither. The limit is per post, irrespective of how many pictures. For each new post the 150k applies again. No limit per account. It's an "erb".mannnn. If you like Oriental/Asian food you've had some. Ahhhhh sooooo, Stuart thinks the 1850 shilling pic i uploaded is Chinese? Very cryptic, but i'd love to hear the theory why..... Stuart may be mistaken... patchouli oil was the hippie fragrance of choice of the 1960s. Now if he'd said MSG or jasmine or lychee or egg foo yung, I could have understood it!

Brilliant idea, that animation! If I had one criticism, it cycles too fast between them, so you can't study each state closely before it changes. But, it certainly looks as if the teeth and rim are different between those two. I used to have quite a sample of 1936 pennies, but alas I'm now down to only about 3. It would be really interesting IF (a big if) one of those two was much rarer than the other. Bear in mind, 1936 had the record penny mintage before the 1960s, by a long long way. Good spot.

If you can edit a super-enlargement of the date area only, and upload it as a medium quality JPEG, it should come within the 150k limit. Agreed, the upload limit per post is mean in the extreme, but you'd be surprised how big a picture you can post if you use an image editor to increase the compression of a JPEG. Do remember that the resolution only needs to be 72 (ppi) for viewing on a computer screen. Many of us would be interested to examine the date closely. However, as you're probably aware, it is often very difficult to get widespread agreement on overdates unless they are immediately obvious. Having said that, I'd trust Rayner over Spink anyday.

Yes, that's absolutely right. There can be a great discrepancy either way between the counterstamp and the host coin, which is why they are graded separately. My understanding is that a good counterstamp trumps a good host? I think that's entirely possible. The raised bits on the reverse where the counterstamp has pushed the design out, looks kind of 'fresh', as if done comparatively recently and the metal hasn't had time to tone back.

Yeah - hope you had a really good day Patrick

I tried to post my Reply and got a pink message about the Administrator not allowing more than one post in such a short space of time. I hadn't even managed one Reply so I hit Back and then tried to post again, only to see my post was there twice over.

Welcome Kris, Its impossible to be 100% certain from the photographs, but the second picture suggests what I would immediately assume to be true. One side of a 1962 halfcrown has been hollowed out on a lathe and a second coin, also reduced on a lathe, has been let into the first. The join is just visible in places along the rim. I have a couple examples of this and I suspect many collectors do. They have no value except as a curiosity. Good for 'heads or tails' though Yes, I agree. It would be impossible for this to be done at the Mint, so a lathe sounds the most likely way it was done. And yes, I'm almost sure I can see evidence of the join on the right hand picture. Good curio though, and worth keeping just for its own sake.