Peckris

Haha. Find a dictionary and a pin, see what words you can randomly hit then put it on eBay as a description.

As Neymar's price has just been quoted as £200m, he should be easily able to afford that!

What grades are the other coins in? If the 1905 is truly Fine, then I'd say you haven't done too bad. Without the dents that 1903 would probably fetch around £250 so you could say perhaps £100 or so with the knocks.

Coins were described as NEW PENCE until 1983 when the NEW was dropped. There's a few 1983 2p's that read NEW PENCE instead of TWO PENCE, but apart from those, none are rare.

Just about to get my bathroom converted to a wet room. Hoping it's neither eye-wateringly expensive, nor a lengthy process. Anyway, nice kitchen.

Me too - for the longest time I thought it stood for NorthWest Electricity Board

Welcome to the forums Cryogenic The worst example of what you mention is where someone has cleaned a coin to make it appear 'nicer' - this is the biggest no-no, as no cleaning can affect the wear that has already occurred, and will reduce its value. Another example is of people applying artificial lustre (or polish) to an EF copper to make it seem BU. Slightly trickier for the novice to spot, but with experience they soon become obvious. A third way is for a coin that has sustained some wear to be 're-tooled' so some of the detail appears to have been restored. Again, to someone familiar with the design of a particular series, this is obvious, but a beginner might be fooled. You can't make a coin 'better' than it is, with the exception of removing crud or very bad toning using very gentle and careful methods. If you're in any doubt, and you have pictures, do post them and we'll give you an opinion.

Does anyone know if Stephen Lockett (London Coins) is related to THE Lockett?

Replicas, fakes, forgeries ... it's a grey area. To take 1933 pennies as a single example. There is a replica (of sorts) which varies so much in essence from the original design, that no-one with any numismatic knowledge or experience would be taken in for a moment. They aren't stamped, but I wouldn't grumble if eBay enforced their removal, as a total newbie could be taken advantage of, and they are available elsewhere. But what about genuine Geo V pennies that have been expertly altered so that the last digit is a 3? If sold as a fake, people seem prepared to pay a few hundred quid for them, knowing them not to be the genuine article. It would be a shame if eBay removed those too, even if the description clearly stated it was not a genuine 1933.

You could look at Dave Groom's book - "The Identification of British 20th Century Silver Coin Varieties" which goes into greater depth than Davis.

Mint-sealed bags of many dates in the 60s (most denominations) were commonly advertised in the late 60s. Although these were sold between 1.5 and 5 times face value, their value slumped after 1971 and are still so common that they will never realise much more than face value, or intrinsic metal value. 1967 being the last year of predecimal coins is not relevant - all coins minted from 1967 to 1970 carried the date 1967, so they are among the commonest of all coins.

Well yes - but obviously I was talking about the obverse one! (His clearly wouldn't be the reverse one... )

I didn't know sulphur had a liver

Actually, the coin market was rampant from about 1979 - 1981/2, which is also the period when the Bunker Hunt family in the US tried to corner the world market in silver (Coin Monthly prices for BU George VI florins went from £2 to £12 for a brief period). Things then stabilised and became pretty stagnant from the mid-80s to mid-90s, when Spinks acquired Seabys and the Coincraft Catalogue had its brief flowering. Then eBay appeared etc etc [cont. p94]

Hunt down the collector who's got the double header and has been wondering, "I wonder what date it is?"

The 1933 Lavrillier patterns have a different portrait from the normal (you can see one in the Collections area on Colin Cooke's website). What you show above isn't even the standard 1933 obverse - it's pre-1927, probably pre-1922. It's just a penny that's been sliced in two. There is only one uniface 1933 by the way, and it's accounted for.

Have replied to your PM - thanks.

And DavidR too?

Yes, the top one definitely looks suspect especially compared to the lower one.

Your coin is most likely to be an 'antoninianus', which was the equivalent of the silver denarius in later Roman Imperial times. Essentially it was a bronze coin that was just washed with silver, and nowadays turn up anywhere from fully silvered to just bronze or any stage between.

It seems it is a rare item.

From my memory of Roman history, and the letters SABIN on the obverse, it could be a commemorative of the rape of the Sabine women? The reverse appears to show women being carried off. Apart from this, I can't help much. Here's a similar item on eBay - it seems my hunch was right: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roman-Republic-Sabinus-89BC-Rare-Silver-Ancient-Coin-Rape-of-Sabine-i28426-/230811767964

FAKE NUDES!

The problem with the shuv--ha'penny theory is that it's always the reverse that wears flat - obverses (Ed VII Geo V) were rarely worn that badly, and were a grade and a half better at least. The real cause of the problem was 1) the depth of the Geo V portrait and 2) the shallow reverse rims. Rims were better on pennies and farthings which didn't suffer so badly.

Ditto. I have about 3 in F+ (pulled from circulation) but I'd love one in EF or better.