Peckris

Now go and stand in the corner and repeat after me...farthings are great!! And there was me thinking I'd created a Colin-friendly post! Ok ok. "farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great farthings are great" Can I stop now? Mummy says it's teatime

The 1909 I would give GVF whilst the 1917 probably around Fair. The fist might be 'worth' about £3 whilst the second has no obvious value. I have put 'worth' in inverted commas because that is purely a book figure; dealers are unlikely to want it other than as part of a bulk lot and you may struggle to reach that figure on e-bay. So make of that what you will! I would agree with Derek entirely, you can see similar examples in my shop as confirmation Thanks. What about the others? http://www.flickr.com/photos/25208007@N08/sets/72157626485813134/ A few of the last issue George V are in very decent nick - heading towards EF say - but the fact is, there are tons of the things in those conditions! As a rough guide, anything from 1937 needs to be UNC, 1926 - 1936 should be EF+ with lustre at least, 1911 - 1925 should at least be EF. Scarce dates are 1915, 1935 in high grade, ditto 1934 in top grade. Farthings are nice little coins, worth collecting, but will only ever be worth peanuts compared to pennies, unless you have something very rare.

The best one there is the 1915, which is getting on towards VF grade and worth somewhere south of a tenner. (Solid silver). But there's a lot of 1915s in good condition around. Most of the rest are worth no more than their silver value I'm afraid - they would grade from Fair to Fine (50% silver). The 1948 and 1962 would have very little value. The '62 I'd grade in EF, the '48 in VF+ but probably cleaned.

You may find Island coins listed in The Coin Yearbook? Which itself is in the larger bookshops, you might even find it in WHSmith.

This is very surprising news. Low-grade predecimal silver has been melted down for decades now, but as you say, modern proofs ought to be out of that. For one thing, the issue price is fixed not on silver value, but on quality and limited mintage (built-in scarcity). To make a profit on melting, a dealer would have to buy in at less than the silver value, which itself would be a mere fraction of the issue price, and a severe loss to the seller. Mind you, I CAN see that 1972 and 1977 proof crowns might be worth more than their issue price now, and they have never really risen in value very much as so many were minted, but that argument ought not apply to anything after the mid-80s. If it proves anything, it's that the secondary market in decimal commemoratives - always a nightmare for sellers who had paid the full issue price - must now be at rock bottom if silver values are higher than market value. (Where 'market value' = secondary prices realised, rather than values quoted in Spink which are based on issue price.)

Brilliant? That's an understatement. That seller ought to be a comedy writer. Perhaps he really is! My favourite part : If you don’t want to drive it you can just sit in the driver’s seat and I can make engine noises but there will be an additional fee for this. Even better that he goes on to say 'I can also make airplane noises my Airbus A380 is very impressive, helicopters are harder but I can try if that is your thing'! Pure genius! Woohoo! Post 100! Congrats Cerb I normally bookmark interesting web pages, but I went so far as to actually save that one (mind you, being eBay, old listings probably don't hang around long anyway).

You will find the 1939 and 1948 pretty tricky in anything higher than VF - those are scarce dates especially in high grade. After those, the 1938, 1940 and 1945 are easy(ish) in EF but surprisingly difficult in BU. The easiest George VI are - in approx order - 1937, 1942/43, 1941/44/52. For Liz, all the 1960s are pretty easy (ignore the value listed for 1960 - I've seen tons of those in BU), and 1953. The 1950s are much trickier except 1959.

Brilliant? That's an understatement. That seller ought to be a comedy writer. Perhaps he really is! My favourite part : If you don’t want to drive it you can just sit in the driver’s seat and I can make engine noises but there will be an additional fee for this.

Have been doing as you advise and looking out for threepenny pieces, and saw this on fleabay. He's offering dates from 1952 - 1971. Were any produced in 1971 just a few months before they ceased to be legal tender? If so, that's a tad short sighted I would have thought. That's just careless listing. The first coins were dated 1953, run continuously to 1967, and a 1970 proof. That's it. Obviously not a true collector / dealer selling.

Forget the "is it a variety or isn't it" Dave - it's a nice looking penny, well worth it in its own right

"As Jessica opened the jar, I saw her immediately. She was literally lying there staring back at me," Literally? Wow. However did she manage to fit into a jelly bean jar? Did she have her legs spread? Was there a grassy knoll? Was the sweetshop in Roswell? I think we should be told. More worrying however, is the fact that the future Queen of England is nothing more than a jelly bean. They must have got a special licence for Westminster Abbey, I'm not sure a jelly bean ever got married there before. Will Archbishop Rowntrees Williams perform the ceremony?

Or, "we might think so, but you couldn't possibly comment", eh Declan?

Every coin collector knows that the reason for minting 1933 pennies was so that old Georgie-boy could lay a full set of coins of the year under the foundation stone of public buildings he was opening. there were about 5 or 6, which I assume was about average for a year of his reign. So here's the thing. What about 1923 and 1924 (no pennies or 3ds), 1925 (no pennies), 1929 (no 3ds), and 1934 (no florins)? Are we to assume he didn't open any buildings in those years? Then there's 1941/2/3 (no pennies - but I'm sure there was still a building programme and a royal presence, even in the War). And all those penny-free years of the 1950s - one of those years saw the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral, and that's just for starters. Why was there only a one-year mission - 1933 - to create complete sets of coins for foundation stones?

not to mention a quite hideous number of JPEG artefacts all over those pictures Az.

Thanks for that link 1949 - though the webpage is very poorly written! Interestingly, they don't mention the Edward VIII 3d bits, nor the 1952 halfcrown or 1954 penny, which are famously rare too.

Yes, I'd pondered the Lavrillier connection too. Maybe the team working on those got a memo, "Hey guys, while you're at it, would you knock up a reverse die for the normal penny so we can make up sets for building openings?" Or, an even more outrageous theory : maybe the 'set completers' were normally produced on the quiet, but the Lavrillier patterns blew their cover for just that one year?

Oh, those two 4-3 games, especially the first. Ah yes. I think you will find that City have beaten Utd several times in recent years. And I think you will also find that their ambitions are somewhat loftier. Let's see that banner come down Roll on the retirement of Fergie, Giggs, Van Der Saar, Scholes ... can't come soon enough for me.

Gary, I have found another auction result you might be interested in, described as "BMC --. F 164A. As Dies 1+C. Gouby B. Fine, extremely rare". It went for £800 with 15 bidders. Dont agree with the grading though! F164A James Workman Collection We discussed the F164A a while ago on this site... Here's a really nice example from a fellow member. Yes, I think when I sell my collection about 8 years time Colin Cooke will get first dibs. That will do a world of good for the grades (Hush ma mouth!)

Just wondering how you came to your conclusion if you have little knowledge and purely guessing, you've came up with a name already, how did you come by the name? Az, he said he has "a little knowledge" - there's a big difference between that and "little knowledge"

Wow, made in Ancient Rome? (SPQR = Senatus PopulusQue Romani ) A truly uncirculated Churchill Crown is worth approx £1. Even the truly rare VIP proof would struggle to make four figures.

Be even better if the Toon manage to sneak a point or 3 off them on Tuesday night! We can always hope... (or pray) City are in uncharted territory now. As the last point on the graph of their season shows, anything can happen and nothing can be inferred for the next game. Also, they usually conform to type and play in sky blue which is a watered down version of Stockport, Oldham, Macclesfield,... appropriately. Oh don't get me wrong - I'm only a City fan when they are playing the egregious Utd City are in uncharted territory now. As the last point on the graph of their season shows, anything can happen and nothing can be inferred for the next game. Also, they usually conform to type and play in sky blue which is a watered down version of Stockport, Oldham, Macclesfield,... appropriately. I bet the Citeeeee fans got a nose bleed going so far south, in fact i'm amazed they knew how to get to wembley its been that long They probably followed Liam and Noel

... and City dumped Utd out of the Cup which just made MY day

Aye it was the delectable Holly on my screen too!

"So Hamish, d'ye think ye could see yer way to repaying yon sovereign that I lent ye - ye've had it since last year and time is pressing on." "Nae nae Jock. Ye lent it to me THIS year. See here, I still have it, and as ye can see for yersel', it has this year's date on tae prove it."

totty? Scuse me, be back in a bit ... Oh VERY nice Mind you, I suspect Ena Sharples would look sexy compared to that "oil painting" Michael Darke (quite put me off my cuppa).