Peckris

That's EXTREMELY suspicious. The enlarged photographs, while not having the classic appearance of a negative, nevertheless appear to be the inverse of the NGC slabbed pictures. The light areas of the latter seem dark in the enlargements, while the blue areas appear red, and vice versa. At the very least, there has been some jiggery-photoshoppery.

Hiya again, got £100 for the gold one which i thought was quite good, since im pretty skint lol(that'll do my wee girls birthday next month)....though she did try to tell me she was only giving me £40 'hahahaha' was my reaction (nice try misses). Just shows you, they try to rip folk off. The other coins are doing terribly on ebay like you said £100 - good result for a fairly standard sovereign! Mind you, not being a gold collector, I have no idea if that's a fair reflection of current bullion values? But £100 is a LOT better than £40

interesting, i may try that for myself on 1 or 2 cheapie coins. i do like the lovely blue tone some of my victorian silver has, but i hate the extreme rainbow toning that the americans seem to like. Artificially assisted very often. E.g. petrol. The petrol,is that only used for silver or is it used on copper coins to the same effect.I have a couple of farthings I bought from the USA,graded by NGC,that are quite colourful.You have me thinking now.I did wonder how they toned to the colours. Hm - it could have been oiled at some point, but blatant rainbow toning (as seen on eBay) is usually much more obvious than that.

Possible - but if you look at GRA B and the upper crown between, you can just see what looks like original toning, making the cleaned scenario a distinct possibility. But it should retone, one would hope.

I think it was about 12 months ago Peter, 1st time i heard about it was when the ebay seller alfnail was selling one on ebay, it was less than Fine grade and sold for 540 quid i believe. I think that there's more known than the 7 Michael Gouby has now noted. The guy who own this one in the 1st post has noted himself 7 already in various auctions, then there's his, plus the one davidrj found and the one i have so that's 10 so far.Maybe John Stephenson has one, maybe it's time to dig out those old 1863s and take a looksy Earlier than that Dave, Not mentioned by either Peck (1970) or Freeman (1985), but Gouby illustrates one in his 1986 book, rating it as R7 (Exremely rare) with a price of £40 in Fine, also listed by Satin as his No.46 (2003) I'm really not surprised. It's got to be the smallest variety in existence (I mean, in terms of how significant the difference is, and how easy to spot). The narrow 3 - for all the ribaldry some here give it - is a massive change by comparison. Only the rare 1908 penny variant is comparable in 'now you see it, now you don't'.

St George and the Shetland pony vanquish the winged stoat

Amonia would certainly work on the verdigris, but it evaporates quickly, so cannot just be put on affected parts of the surface and if you immerse the coin in the ammonia you strip the patina. Being me, I would have to experiment, particularly as it is pretty much unsaleable as it stands. Oh, I don't know. The obverse is totally unaffected, and it's a VF coin otherwise.

I imagine those trials are extremely rare. As ever though, rarities depend on the size of the market for them. The very famous 1933 penny would fetch 10 times the price of an equally rare bun penny variety. It would certainly feel good to own something that rare though.

Hahaha - "I can see the join, Ern". Apparently it's a "misprint".

OK, here's my way of treating a toned copper coin coin with a verdigris hole appearing; 1) Carefully scour the hole with a needle to remove as much verdigris as possible; 2) Carefully wash coin; 3) Soak end of cocktail stick in ammonia for 15-20 mins; 4) Very carefully knock off all drips from cocktail stick; 5) Even more carefully insert stick into hole and twist around. What you are trying to avoid here is getting any ammonia on the undamaged surface of the coin; 6) Make up a paste of sulphur and vaseline. You only need a tiny quantity; 7) Take another needle and put a tiny amount of the paste in the hole; 8) Leave for a while. The longer it is left, the darker the area treated with the paste will become, so it is possible to some degree match with the colour of the coin; 9) Wash coin again; 10) Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt! Wow. Do you think your method would work on my 1720 halfpenny?

The collar is actually in 3 pieces with joins as follows; DECUS/ET TUTAMEN*/ANNO REGNI/L... The joins on some coins can be more noticeable than others. Thanks for that Derek, was a little worried initially It looks kosher, though very possibly cleaned. The edge collar can be quite variable - my 1893 is distinctly different in character than my 1900. Not a cause for undue worry I think. None of that series is rare, and therefore not subject to the forger's art IMO. By the way, your pictures resized for my screen, like everyone else's do. Did you upload them using a different method than normal?

Not if the green is only on the surface, as much of it is if caught in reasonable time. It takes (I think) a considerable time for verdigris to sink deeper into the metal, if the coin is not buried. All the coins I've treated the 'vinegar way' have successfully lost the green. The price you pay is that the coin lightens quite a lot, and where the green was, darker patches are left. For some, this might be too high a price to pay, but I found that a high grade 1853 farthing, 1922 & 1936 pennies, all came up quite nice with the green all gone.

That would be impossible - the nearest you could get to it is a brockage (where a penny has stuck to the obverse die) and that would show as a 1963 proper reverse, plus an incuse reverse on the other side. To get two 'proper' "heads" or "tails" together would involve machining two pennies together.

interesting, i may try that for myself on 1 or 2 cheapie coins. i do like the lovely blue tone some of my victorian silver has, but i hate the extreme rainbow toning that the americans seem to like. Artificially assisted very often. E.g. petrol.

Depends what you're doing. Left outside in a rain gutter, maybe only weeks or a couple of months. Otherwise it depends on where you live, how you store them, what kind of tone you want, etc etc. I'm using the flat top shelf of a mahogany cabinet, where there are no punched holes, to try some pieces. It seems to take forever.

At small sizes, that coin looks most attractive. But at larger sizes the attractive toning suddenly starts to look rather uneven. That may be all it was, rather than a dislike of toning per se. I couldn't accept a harshly cleaned coin or even a barreled ancient.I don't mind the black gunk removed from silver (or even accetate improved silver....in moderation).Gold won't need anything more than hot water and a PAT dry....Copper forget it[/b]. I don't collect medals but I have a few inherited and a couple have obviously been polished.They have retoned nicely. Again with coins its horses for courses and if we all had the same expectations there would be just one series of very expensive coins. I wouldn't go that far. Really bad green can be removed quickly with balsamic vinegar overnight, or with olive oil if you don't mind waiting several months. As for general 'film', or dirt or gunk, the use of surgical spirit applied using a microfibre cloth, can help with that.

I'm not sure at all. It's definitely not hammered, probably quite a lot earlier from the look of it. I'm thinking it may be contemporary with Celtic issues, but it would need someone with much more knowledge than I to confirm that.

The gold sovereign would be worth at least bullion value which is quite high right now. But you would need a decent picture of it for eBay (the sellers who post pictures like yours don't do very well! unsurprisingly). The other two are also only bullion value for silver. The 1887 shilling is the commonest Vic silver coin, and holed it would have no collector value at all. The 3d I can't see too well but it doesn't look high grade, so would be worth little. I would forget the silver and get a decent picture (both sides) of the sovereign for eBay.

I was at a provincial auction about 7 years ago and there was a lot of several late Geo V and early VI silver 3ds which had obviously had their Unc-ness enhanced. A fellow dealer I was chatting to about it said that collectors were a lot less bothered about cleaned coins than they used to be. Mind you, these weren't the 'fine crazing' nor the 'dipped dead dullness', they just looked a bit too shiny. I wonder if it's true though - maybe collectors are getting less fussy? I may have fallen victim to it too. My Vicky Gothic florin is almost untoned and has a kind of silky sheen, likewise my 1910 halfcrown. They could have been dipped very briefly, or simply had their lustre fade to a kind of silky finish. On the other hand my 1844 halfcrown was DEFINITELY too bright (Ian Richardson said, when I was exchanging 4 high grade Victorian halfcrowns for it, "Good choice, I'm surprised more people haven't shown interest in that one"!) - however, it's now toning rather nicely - the obverse to a reddish tone and the reverse with some brown/black around the edges. Exposure to the elements does seem to work.

Those are a mix of British and British Dependancy commemoratives and proofs. I've no experience of Isle of Man or Australian issues, but judging from the rest of them, they probably wouldn't be very valuable. The 1977 Silver Jubilee cupro-nickel crown is worth a theoretical £1 but you'd never get that. The Kennedy half dollar contains some real silver so has a bit of intrinsic value. The 1951 crown usually retails for around £10. The 1973 proof 50p, around £3 retail. The whole lot? Not sure really. Probably somewhere between £25 and £50 at auction, though as I say, I'm unfamiliar with some of those proofs. Don't retire just yet! Well done Peck...you beat me to it. The Kennedy half raised me £2.28 last week and how many 51 crowns do you want for £10? However the 77 crown is legal tender at 25p...thats what I paid with my pocket money when they were issued. Ah, well they have to be in the original cardboard case of issue, like our friend's here Astonishing to think that the Millennium edition of Spink listed them at £20 per!

Those are a mix of British and British Dependancy commemoratives and proofs. I've no experience of Isle of Man or Australian issues, but judging from the rest of them, they probably wouldn't be very valuable. The 1977 Silver Jubilee cupro-nickel crown is worth a theoretical £1 but you'd never get that. The Kennedy half dollar contains some real silver so has a bit of intrinsic value. The 1951 crown usually retails for around £10. The 1973 proof 50p, around £3 retail. The whole lot? Not sure really. Probably somewhere between £25 and £50 at auction, though as I say, I'm unfamiliar with some of those proofs. Don't retire just yet!

Whatever - it's a bloody gorgeous little coin

When he says "full", Joey, he means the size of St Paul's Cathedral

If it has the same profile, thickness and weight as a 20p, then it is a blank that got through. It should be flat on both sides as the relief is made by the dies. They usually sell for a few pounds at most, so there isn't a fortune to be made, but it's still a nice thing to have. Basically Hannah, you can group 'weird coins' into groups : • misstrikes and errors (which Rob has identified yours as) - these are collected by some, but even if you don't sell it for a modest sum, it is worth keeping aside as a curio • counterfeits - these might be created to fool slot machines, or like so many current £1 coins, to pass off as a genuine coin; some are historic : a lot of early 19th Century silver was counterfeited in copper and given a thin wash of silver, and these are now quite collectable in their own right. • forgeries - these are valuable coins which have been faked to fool collectors, and which are our biggest headache • tokens - produced to meet a shortage of small change (e.g. late 18th Century), or gambling chips, or even for political reasons • coins that have been 'tooled' or defaced after being taken from circulation - engraved love tokens in the 19th Century, or just worn on a necklace; some are interesting and collectable without being particularly valuable, others are near worthless, e.g. modern coins with initials engraved • coins that have acquired a patina or other unnatural tone - e.g. green from being buried in the ground, or turned into wafers from being immersed in acidI'm sure there's other groupings I've missed - it's worth a whole study in itself! I have a love token i thiink, says MV in very nice lettering, worth its silver at least Acid? What a nasty thing to place a little coin in!!!! Hummph > A picture of the "love token" might be worth a look? As for acid baths, I have the ghost of a 1929 shilling! I can only hope it was no better than VF when it was bathed, as it would have been such a waste. As it is, I have an interesting curio

If it's Indian, then it's most likely the Islamic part (Moghul?) - if that script is not Arabic, then it's Urdu. It's definitely not Hindi.