Peckris

There sure is! I just identified a 1902 penny with a low tide too, tons to learn, but already enjoying my new hobby. that's a bloody good find in a box like that...well done! Shame it is not in better condition... I would noob grade it... Almost Pants! Hey, you just invented a new grade - P You been peeking at my collection?? Collection of pants? Just to set the record straight, no matter what you hear... I have not been peeking at Peckris's pants! I'm bloody glad to hear it

Um, "no" to what, exactly? As to what books you get, it very much depends what your interests are. Seaby/Spink is always good as a reference, though the more recent, the more varieties are in them. For hammered silver you need North, for milled you need English Silver Coinage, for most varieties since 1816 you need Davies, and for a near complete micro-varieties of the 20th Century you need Dave Groom's book. For copper and bronze, Peck is the royal standard, for bronze it's Freeman, for bronze pennies it's Gouby, and Dave G also has a 20C bronze book too. Then there are Seaby standards for Roman and Greek, though Rotographic also do useful references for Roman, George III, banknotes, etc. For tokens there is Dalton & Hamer but an edition of Seaby Copper Coins includes tokens too. Spink only took over in the mid-90s. before then it was the Seaby Standard Catalogue, and you should be able to find a predecimal edition on eBay for only a few £.

You trying to make Mongo feel better by showing that we all have some crap coins?

Sorry Rob, I used up all my energy and time responding to Colin's points about disability benefits. I've nothing left for the banking situation. I'll read it all tomorrow and see if I have a sensible response to make.

Peck the comment that I am not disabled and therefore will never know, is a bit of a generalisation and in my opinion a very negative viewpoint. Hopefully I will never know, but I would much rather it happen in today's society than the ones that have gone before. In fact I would also it rather happen in this country than any other as well. The Building Regulations are formed following extensive consultation with numerous bodies incorporating a wide range of views and opinions in an attempt to ensure the guidance is relative, current and provides the maximum benefit for the greatest number of people. They don't always get it right, but Groups such as the former DRC and disbility organisations across the country, are included in the process, and with the British Standards also running in conjunction, I would personally argue we are in danger of "over provision". Of course provision can not cater for every individuals needs and as I previously said there will never be a "one size fits all" solution because of the unique nature of many disabilities and the way they affect individuals. In response to your individual points: 1. I find that response quite staggering, why should anyone, young , old, disabled deserve a job more than another person without determining the potential of the candidates to fulfil that role. If an individual has made that decision prior to going for a job what chance have they got. Yes there may be obstacles, and I am not advocating that every disabled person should be forced to work, but they should be fighting for the jobs that are out there like everyone else. 2. I agree with your comments, but you can never say that anything is definite, and I think that would be the wrong approach in all but terminal cases. What sort of outlook would there be for any individual without hope. Society is always changing, as an example I probably spend 3 days a week working from home via a remote network. Working from home is now common practise for many people and would surely overcome a substantial amount of the obstacles faced by many individuals. Yes the career options may be restricted, and the number of available jobs would be limited, but at least there is an option and it gives a certain level of inclusion rather than the isolation many people face. Blindness has historically been perceived as a permanent disability, but Mr Blunkett certainly did not let it obstruct his career, he did not accept a life of being told that there was no hope 3. They always manage to pick on the innocent and let the fraudsters get away with it, that is government for you But it should not be a reason to stop the regular audits/reviews. Lets get the process right not stop it because we cocked it up 4. It may be one of the benefits least subject to fraud, but it is happening, there are people in my locality who bend the rules to suit them. In my opinion all persons should be regularly reviewed when claiming benefits of any kind. If people are choosing not to work or are not able to work due to individual circumstances then the obstacles that stop them should be regularly reviewed to ensure they have not been removed by a change in individual circumstance or a societal change that has removed the barrier in question. In my mind this is as much for the benefit of the individual, although it also sends a signal to the tax paying population. Benefits should not be taken for granted they should be handed out only when all other options are exhausted. As for reading the red tops, I am not a newspaper person, never have been never will be, I hat the bleeding things!! The thing is if the system worked you would not be going through the stress you are because only those entitled would be claiming and therefore the persecution would not exist. Now who started this post, we will be attracting passing trolls with topics like this!! Colin, please stop quoting building regs at me - that's not the point at issue here. I'm talking about disability benefits, not general accessibility which as you rightly say, has improved greatly in recent years. To respond to your response to my points : 1. I wasn't talking about anyone's qualifications or 'deservingness' for a job. I asked WHY would an employer choose someone who presented them with all the problems I outlined, when they could have someone fit and able in body and mind, in fact their choice from probably 50 fit people for each job? For those disabled who CAN work there should be jobs, but you tell me who is going to provide them, huh? What the Govt are doing is saving money, and doing it at the expense of those least able to stand up for themselves and fight back. If that' not cynicism, I don't know what is. 2. Please don't air your ignorance about particular illnesses and disabilities. I find it personally offensive to have someone tell me, from no experience, that "only the terminal cases are exceptions". I already listed certain conditions that are progressive and incurable. PPMS - which I have - is one of them. Don't tell me I may wake up tomorrow cured, "no-one knows for certain". I've lived with this for near on 15 years and like all the experts and consultants and professionals, I KNOW from my own experience, that it is a downhill path from which there is no return. I don't need a non-medical joker assessing me for the DWP and telling me I'm "fit for work" when it's laughably evident to anyone with a pair of eyes or Mr Blunkett's guide dog, that I'm not. As for blind people, yes they can adapt and it hasn't been a major obstacle to Blunkett's career in politics. But it's a FIXED condition. It's not a progressive illness where just as you manage to adapt and get used to one set of drawbacks, tomorrow, next week, next year, there's a new and worse set, and you have to adapt all over again. And because of constant adaption, there's no energy for much else. Like I told you above, living with such conditions is a full time job in itself. 4. How many times do I have to say this? SOME CONDITIONS ARE PROGRESSIVE AND INCURABLE. People who suffer from them should be given the option of doing work if they can and if there is any, but otherwise they should be left alone to deal with their illnesses, along with teams of PROFESSIONALS. They should NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT be placed in the undignified and horrific situation of having to prove themselves over and over again, subjct to all the stress it involves, just because of a cynical penny-pinching money-saving exercise. And finally DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT TAXPAYERS. That's one of the biggest insults I have to deal with regularly, from all kinds of "outraged of Tunbridge" types but also decent folks who don't seem to understand this simple point - WE'RE ALL TAXPAYERS. No? I pay whopping fuel duty on my adapted car. I pay Council Tax. I pay VAT on everything I buy that's not 0 rated. I pay tax on savings interest. I'm issued with a P60 every year. My disability benefit is taxable. So DON'T please trot out the "taxpayer" line because it doesn't wash. I am a taxpayer. What's more, I paid into the system for the 25 years or so that I worked and paid NI stamps. My benefits are paid for - BY ME. Sorry to get so ratty, but you have trodden on at least three of the sensitive areas I have to live with, and defend, on what seems like a daily basis.

There sure is! I just identified a 1902 penny with a low tide too, tons to learn, but already enjoying my new hobby. that's a bloody good find in a box like that...well done! Shame it is not in better condition... I would noob grade it... Almost Pants! Hey, you just invented a new grade - P You been peeking at my collection??

Agreed - and being published annually, it's more up to date too.

Fair comments. My only comeback is this - surely the police wouldn't even attend a firearms situation ("armed response") if they weren't trying to protect the public? Otherwise they could just say, "Oh well, let them shoot it out and we clear up after". Which thank goodness, they - you - don't!

I'd split the difference and rate it Fair. No argument with the rest though. I wonder whether with some there is an interpretation that Fine is the lowest grade? Just a thought ... Yes, I'd go along with that. Even some high profile dealers aren't entirely free from that particular taint. It's quite extraordinary to me that grading can be reasonably accurate above F, but everything else gets bunged into the Fine bucket.

One thing that no-one else has mentioned : many rarities are more common in lower grades than other relatively common dates are in BU. So, my recommendation would be to track down the rarer varieties if they float your boat (for example, you won't find a 1903 "open 3" much better than Fine), but don't neglect the dates which are hard to find in BU. For pennies, the obvious ones that come to mind are : 1945 1944 1940 1934 1932 1931 1930 1926 1922 1915 most of Edward VII 1898 1895, or anything earlier than that. On the other hand, lower grade examples of 1953, 1951, 1950, all Geo V H and KN, 1902 Low Tide, 1895 "2mm", and some bun penny varieties less than Fine (1875H 1865/3 1864 for example) are not really worth bothering with.

Forgive me John but I find your priority scale not only truly scary, but it also differs from the Army's seemingly. Now, if you'd said 1) The public 2) Colleagues 3) Me 4) The subject as long as he didn't make a threatening move, I'd feel a lot more confident about armed police. As it is, seeing the public at #3 is terrifying. No, really, I'm not exaggerating. Oh that it was so simple. The current cutback on public spending is b****r all to do with the banks, but a rebalancing of the state's expenditure. When Brown was Chancellor, he presided over a state spending plan that raised 44% less in tax than he spent over a five year period. This he called prudence. Heaven knows what he would have done had he decided to be imprudent in his eyes, but I suggest the lights would already have gone out. Any Chancellor has to balance the books over the period of a parliament or at least have a plan to do so if the policies are to have any credibility. Failure to do so without a rigged voting system ensuring 5 more years in advance means the government of the day can spend as much as it likes giving lots of freebies to the voter without being held to account and having to rectify the s**t it leaves for the next election victor. Politicians being self-congratulatory animals only want public endorsement of their policies. Playing Father Christmas is the easiest way to win the appoval of Mr Average UK who is on the whole pretty thick when it comes to the wider picture. Rant over. Sorry rob, but your rant is either naivety, or partisan political. What you call "rebalancing of the state's expenditure" is nothing but Conservative Party economics. You can see this quite clearly in Osborne and Cameron's list of targets, none of which include banks (despite Osborne's publically heralded "slap on the wrist"). But despite the Daily Mail's stereotyping of a sizeable minority of the British population as "workshy scroungers" (based on demonstrably false statistics) it's the poor wot gets the blame and are hit hardest. Twas ever thus. I really do recommend that you read Sebastian Faulks' "Week In December", all the while bearing in mind that he is no leftie. It will then be clear that what individual governments are pallid nothings in comparison to the economic power wielded by the world's banking system. All politicians do is scratch the surface in order to appease the readers of one particular tabloid newspaper or another. They actually make little or no difference. All Osborne's measures, that have heaped misery upon misery on those who can least afford it - have they had any real impact on the deficit? No. Could real measures taken against the banks, at which they would cough and sneeze for a week or two, have a much greater impact on the deficit? Yes. But no politician would dare, because if the banks withdrew their credit on which all governments rely whatever political shade they are - we would be "bankrupt" overnight. "Follow the money". Colin, I respect your engineering experience, but what you say generally about the disabled and their benefits cannot have any meaning unless and until you are disabled yourself. I hope that day never comes. However, I agree with what you say about enhancements improving accessibility for disabled people, and if that were the only consideration, I'd agree with everything you said. But it isn't. The following all apply : 1. There aren't any jobs for young people. Why would employers take on someone who can't control peeing and shitting, need regular breaks to rest or recover, have spasms, are getting worse all the time, can't mobilise, etc etc? Give that job to a young person with their working life ahead of them, I say. 2. As for 'leaving claimants stranded on benefits without routing reassessment" - to some extent that is Govt spin. I'd be more sympathetic with that stated view if certain conditions were recognsied as being progressive and incurable, and therefore there is no point subjecting such people to the misery of "assessment" : motor neurone, MS, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, to name a few. Some people should be left alone with their benefits, as they have a full time job already, just managing from day to day, all the activities which you take for granted. 3. Why did successive Govts hand the contract for reassessment to a French IT firm, whose professionals don't have to have medical qualifications (no word of a lie), in centres that are sometimes inaccessible to wheelchairs (ditto), where severely disabled people are routinely found "fit for work" only to have this laughable verdict overturned at an independent appeal, cause a significant number of suicides, cause anxiety and stress to those least able to cope with it, while at the same time issuing statistics that are at best misleading at worst downright false leading to IDS having to apologise to the House of Commons ... ? 4. What is the statistic for fraud among those claiming disability benefits? 0.5% - yes, that's too high, but it's the lowest for any state handout or benefit. Yet, the tabloid press - with the tacit connivance of the DWP - put the fear of god into honest decent folks - such as you - with their scary and made up "facts" about scroungers. In fact, it's harder to claim and get disability benefits than any other. The occasional idiot who runs around refereeing football matches while claiming ESA, is just that - occasional. I ask you to listen to me. Dig deeper than what you read in the red tops. There are people out here living in fear and anxiety and stress, worrying that no only do they have to struggle with every single aspect of their lives, every day, but that they might lose the pittance paid to them on which they have to survive, and pay for all the adaptions and equipment they need just to get through their own front door, wash, sleep, go to the toilet, cook, etc. Don't tell me there are more job opportunities for disabled people than there were ten years ago. I believe you. Give them to those disabled who CAN work, after first ensuring that all young people have a job first. Don't tolerate the state persecution of people who have incurable conditions. Remember which government it was, that first did that.

I'd split the difference and rate it Fair. No argument with the rest though.

"Very Nice Coin in a very Good Condition Hardly Circulated Condition. Valuable Coin, and in VF-EF Condition. Well, Worth The Money, your paying for this item Loads Of Detail." Rough translation: "Coin is VG. It's been circulated hard for many years. Valuable coin - the copper alone is worth more than one drachma. Worth throwing into my wishing well. You're paying for this item, if you're fool enough to buy it. Loads of detail if your collection consists of nothing but washers."

I can see it fine.

My hobby!! Linda Lusardi, for example

I agree

Me too. The obverses are clear VFs though a couple of the first 3 reverses are perhaps a bit better (Spink tend not to go in for micro-between-grades much). The second group are minimum EF. And yes, I'd expect that standard of grading today, it shouldn't change period, let alone in a few years.

I think you'll find (joke grading apart) that the gold is not losing its colour. It's the effect of photo'ing through the slab, and if you look at the second pair of pictures taken from a greater distance, the gold shows its true colour.

If you want nice shiny UNC coins, then you can still get them and follow John's good advice to avoid decimals. The fact is, predecimal coins of the 60s were hoarded in BU condition in their millions, in the lead-up to decimalisation. You can pick up BU pennies and halfpennies dated between 1965 - 1967 very cheap, also brass 3ds, sixpences, even shillings. You pay a little more for florins and halfcrowns, though if you want shiny, 1967 is your date In fact, if you're looking for cheap BU predecimals, here's a quick rundown: Halfpennies and pennies - any from 1962 onwards Brass 3ds - 1937, 1953, 1961 - 1967 Sixpences - 1948, 1953, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1965 onwards Shillings - 1948, 1953, 1957 English, 1959 English, 1961 English, any 1964 - 1966 Florins - 1948, 1953, 1964 - 1967 Halfcrowns - 1948, 1953, 1966 - 1967 Crowns - 1953, 1965 Hope that helps.

Yet if you actually HAVE a disease (rather than your smoker, who MIGHT get one), you won't get an annuity rate any better than a smoker's.

The top three coins are respectable for a beginner - they are all in the range Fine to Good Fine, and you have probably paid about the right price for them, you certainly haven't paid too much. It's hard to see the bottom three, but the only doubt I have is the 1853 farthing - that's one of the most common Victoria coppers, and it has a spot of verdigris which should be avoided when buying coins. At 99p you haven't been "done", but for about £5 you should be able to find one better than VF, and £10 would get you an EF example. (Sometimes you should ignore Spink values, though it was a good move to pick up a copy - experience will teach you which coins are the most common.) I'd say you've made a sensible if modest start, and at those prices you won't be going wrong! Welcome to the forums .

Sounds like the Epicureans had more in common with the Stoics than I've thought up till now.

Any offers then? Trouble is, at 1.15 x 0.9 m (45" x 35", though being a tryptych it folds to half that) it doesn't exactly fit into an envelope, so postage will be a bit. The snake buckle belongs on the left with the rest of the found objects. I bet Damien Hirst is shitting himself looking at that You mean shitting himself and framing the result in a glass tank, don't you?

It appears that the obverse is the side with the Roman soldier with his septic septor and his toga and his missing lighthouse and trireme Wouldn't it have been simpler just to say "part of beaded border missing"? Not so much fun for us though.

The big difference is that casting bubbles are often raised, i.e. in relief (depending on whether the casting is used for a die, or for the coin itself), whereas pitting always shows as indentations, i.e. "pits". Also, pitting is usually irregular in size and spread, where casting bubbles are often found in little clusters, of roughly the same size.